Just to add my ha'porth, I had the scm50 actives.
I was expecting deep deep bass and massive insight.
I could BARELY lift them up the stairs, they were SERIOUS heavy, shudder to think what the 100s and bigger are like.
Even the magnet on the bass unit is heavier than most speakers. together with 350 watt mosfet amps, active xovers and that midrange unit, my lips were watering.
I was a bit dismayed, again as a result of wild wacky claims, they were quite good, not ruthlessle clinical as I was led to believe, but in a way that some analytical kit is, with the detail, you still get a bit of emotion.(carfully avoiding words like musicality, flow, swell, accurate) strangely directional too, you had to sit in a certain place, took a while to adjust to the balance.
but no deep bass, in fact quite disappointing, after modelling the thiele small parameters of the bass unit in a program, I found they only goto 40 hz flat, and the 100 wooofers in a 100 litre cabinet the same.
No punch, no thwack, god knows how hard you need to drive them to get them to smack in the bass. I think these are usually speakers which are thrashed.
I don't know what that big magnet is for with all that B times voice coil length....that's a lot of magnetic force, too much and you lose bass.I suppose these are designed around linearity, ie little distortion at high spl's. in other words, engineers accuracy.
Ok speakers, great value for what you get, by todays standards active xovers and amps build in, but to sum it all up, datas law still has been found to apply: the most fun in hifi lies at the cheaper end of the scale, conversely, the more you pay, the more pain you get.
There are now, numerous competitors, ATC was traditionally, 20 yrs ago king, but now we have, genelec, quested, meyersound, pmc, some big harbeth 40s,all recognised world class names, with definite traditions.
any more...have I missed any?
Thorsten, I have asked James (devil) many times for a definition of accurate, I have never had a satisfactory one.
The fact that there may be 10 speaker monitor companies using different amplifiers, cones, magnets, cabinets, each getting a flat frequency response( that is mostly what accurate means BTW, its an engineers goal of zero amplitude deviation across the frequency band)
and claiming theirs is accurate, they all are, but they are still different.
There is no such thing as accurate definitively. James...(bangs head against a brick wall, bangs James head, too...)....that's all accurate means, it measures flattish frequency wise, no more. ps mixing engineers are a rather anonymous bunch, btw, apart from the american hard sell sales technique of.....(american twangy accent here) randall j thomas III has used ATC all his life, he aint' 'bout to change now.....
There are tons of accurate measuring speakers. All will give accurate results.
i don't question the validity of your being loyal to ATC ( I do to MANA) having just ATC is like having a grand prix with just ferrari, it would be bloody dull eh? vive varite
I 'm glad you like ATC's, but I don't want to listen to the sound of a dry control room myself, I want a concert hall, euphony, emotion, music.
