Hi,

So, you have no way of knowing if what you heard replayed was a direct mike feed, unaltered, unprocessed (most likely not) or if it had been jazzed up, compressed and eq'ed, quite possibly (if your friend monitored during setup via the ATC's) such that it would offset the character of the ATC's.

THAT is why I was asking for the details.

I had the chance to test the old MEG's (the east german mid 80's RL-900) against direct mike feeds, as I had the chance to do later on occasions with many western monitors, including ATC, PMC, Tannoy, Urei, JBL and many others (I liked best personally some massive TAD custom in wall system, big wooden horn, 2" exit driver, 15" Woofer, passive X-Over, timealignment via mechanical means). I found the MEG RL-900 to be very faithfull to what I heard when I walked up to where the mikes where.

Many highly regarded western studio monitors showed anywhere between some mild to extreme colorations (the old JBL's where jolly well all over the place, as the studios fiddeled with the midrange and treble controls instead of leaving "flat", but even flat they where pretty far of "neutral").

As for my Pink Floyd reference, their music is what I call "artificially created in the laboratory". It has scant if any reference to actual real instruments. It is therefore particulary unsuited as measure of accuracy or quality.

Try purely acoustical classical recordings, like Tony Faulker does during live performances at the Barbican (shame he cannot make the at RFH, the acoustics at the Barbican are awful).

Ciao T