Atc ?

Hi everybody,
What is your opinion about ATC?

Particuliary
-SMC20.2 passives
-SMC20.2 actives
-New 40.

Thank you very much
J-C

 

Its like Marmite, some people love it, others hate it.

 

...and even more loath it with a passion that passeth all understanding.

 

it would be nice to give J-C a correct answer..... but how to prevent another ATC thread turning into a joke?! i thought this was reserved for naim topics only.

 

OK let's try.

they are rather brutal. they are not for gentle french souls.

 

they are warts and all, if its on the disc you'll hear it.

great for hifi, not so well loved for music.

personally, i lust after them.

 

thoughts generally ..

studio versions seem much better value than hifi versions..

.. you can check out studio websites for second hand bargains (rare)...

...very expensive when new...


you need to hear them mate. There's no doubting the quality, but do you like what they do?

 

I don't agree, I quite like them for music.

 

I think the actives are about as good as reproduction gets for the money.

 

I don't want to start a PMC vs. ATC thing.. but if you are looking at the active 20's please also listen to the PMC AML1's. IMO they are a fair bit better.

 

i disagree with tenson on this. i think that PMC has more hi-fi pyrotechnics but less realism plus it costs more.

it's a big pain in the ass to partner ATC 20 active correctly, but if you are lucky enough to find a perfect preamp / source for them, you will be rewarded with some of the best sounds regardless of money. but you need a room not bigger than 25m2 for them, otherwise it is ATC 50 you have to go.

if you can get a s/h 20s, go for them. they are practically undestructable and the age just doesn't matter. mine are from 1999 and they just play as any new pair.

if you use one source only (a CDP) i would suggest to try to feed them directly from a CDP - before you have to choose a CDP with a variable output. in this case you should take a special care about cable matching but if you hit the right spot, you won't need a preamp. a reasonably priced combination i heard in my room that rocks big time is quad 99 CDP-2 through VdH the second or even better (actually cheaper) integration to ATC 20s.

the best preamp i tried was a DIY TVC so i would suggest experimenting in this direction. i haven't heard MFA TVC preamp, promitheus can be an OK choice if you order a particular version with more weight in sound than a stock one. EAR 864 is a particularly good match as well as pass labs X2.5. electrocompaniet preamps are quite a synergetic match but they do have colourations, although pleasant ones.
the smaller ATC preamp i'm not crazy about at all - you should hear the big one to understand why. but still EAR is a better choice.
i know this will sound pretentious, but i honestly think you can't buy a better dynamic speaker of that size. however they are not for everyone because they brutally reveal whatever they are fed with. when a source and a CDP are right, they can't be beaten.

yes, i have them in my living room and the only thing i would trade them for is a big tannoy with two 15" drivers, one for sub and another for DC. but that would be another audio planet.

 

just a few things more re passive 20s: i bought active 20s in faith after hearing passive, but actives are another league. passive 20s are more of a traditional BBC monitor type of thing, they can sound sweet and involving depending on amps they are driven with, but they are very very difficult to please as far as amplification goes. a friend used to have krell ksa 50 and he upgraded to some mark levinson monsters, but active 20 still have an edge over it and it is obvious.

generally passive 20s offer less crazy monitoring insight into recording than active. if active 20s are matched correctly, they are in a league than no passive 2-way speaker can come even close.

you just have to be confident you can live with such a revealing speaker. and don't forget that practically every fault addressed to the active ATCs such as being bright, forward, spitty and so on, are actually to be addressed to other components upstream. they beatifully disappear when things are matched properly and you will not have them in your room anymore.

 

But... have you heard the AML1?

First it is not part of the Hi-Fi range, its part of the studio range. I agree the Hi-Fi range is more, well, hi-fi and not as to my liking.

Second, it is unlike any other PMC because it is a 2-way and uses a very low crossover point to a large tweeter, which gives excellent phase response, tonal neutrality and imaging. Oh and a much better decay (CSD) in that area than a woofer would too. So its really not like any of the other PMCs you might have heard.

 

well, if the AML1 is the current 2-way PMC studio monitor that looks quite sci-fi than i listened it quite thoroughly at a very serious demo that local studio equipment importer here made a few months ago.... along with a range of bryston amps and some upmarket PMC passives. i hate to make conclusions after such a demo, i thought it was just great but i did't hear anything that made me wanting them instead of atc's. this doesn't mean anything, i know, but i just didn't get any immediate upgrade bug and that's it.

actually i am not into a usual PMC/ATC division at all - i quite like some, especially older, PMCs for how they handle rock and generally any music recorded with more studio compression. having a fun factor attached, in this matter i found them to be not too far from big JBLs from the 80s and my favourite was the one with dynaudio bass driver and vifa tweeter - could it be that it was LB1?

actually LB1 is such a great speaker - so easy to drive it with normal amps with excellent results. a friend uses exposure super XXV and i would always rather recommend that speaker than ATC 20 passive, just for being so much easier to please without breaking a bank for amps.

 

I guess it could be called sci-fi

www.pmc-speakers.com/imgResize.php?img=images/products/14554b66e1dfcd_aml_1.jpg

LB1 is nice, AB2 is also nice for passive speakers.

 

yes, that's the one. i thought my atcs are the ugliest bloody speakers on earth until i saw these

 

You really have to listen to them.

Very well engineered and a can be found second hand for not much money considering what you get.

I had a set of SCM35's and never really got along with the bass...there was either too much or too little....nothing in between

 

i doubt this has anything to do with the speakers.

 

Probably, I tend to listen to some crap recordings...

I need gear that just smooths over all the rough edges.

 

the best way to smoothen up ATCs is to match them properly. then they can even play bad recordings - at least in a way that doesn't make them sound worse than it should be.

finding synergy for ATCs is such a pain in the ass that it's unfair to recommend them to someone who doesn't want to hassle around for ages until great results are found. but, the sound they have recently produced in my room with a borrowed, DIY TVC preamp was beyond belief for size and price and dynamic speaker in general.