ATC buying advice

Come on, people, jump in. A man with unlimited budget needs free consulting service. That's what we are here for, right ?

Hi - here are a few pointers based on experience (i.e. subjective).

ATC active vs passive: like you, I would go for active.

SCM40 vs SCM50: the 50s are definitely better, albeit industrial looking compared to the 40s By better, I mean truer to the source material; so, for large scale orchestral music, or opera the 50s will outperform the 40s. For pleasant sound the 40 are nice - dynamic & precise with the wonderful ATC midrange

Pre-amplification: buy yourself the best possible within the price you can tolerate. The ATC mid & upper FR is precise and you will hear preamplifier shortcomings. Buy used if necessary. I am thinking of CAT Ultimate, EAR 912, FM acoustics, CH precision, and similar.

-My experience comes from listening to 40s, 50s and 100s - mostly passive. I had the latter at home for a while. I listen a lot to, and generally judge by, classical and jazz.

-Positioning ATC speakers starts with finding the right listening position first, otherwise yuo might find them bass-shy. Locate the optimum bass point(s) in the room: that is (those are) the listening position(s). Place speakers in relation to that seating position.

Good luck!

@inna you are right, budget is around the 30k-50k, but I didn’t want to limit the options because I am able to stretch the budget if needed (say for a SCM150ASLT with a good preamp) and people tend to limit their advice based on the budget. But then again, your assumption is that if someone has saved up and determined that his (or her?) budget easily accommodates for any of the ATC speakers within the 40-150 range, he or she ‘has unlimited budget and is looking for free consulting’? 🤔 I think you are underestimating how intimidating the space can be, and the more you read, the more difficult it gets. Over the past months my search for a good set up has resulted in a list with over 10 different ‘great brands’ for just for the preamp alone, from McIntosh to Luxmans, Naims to Passlabs. That’s just the preamp, I haven’t even started looking at passive vs actives speakers and possible amp combos, cables, good combinations with turntables and the right phonostages and amps for those, subwoofers, speakerstands etc. It’s not easy to determine a starting point when you don’t have a reference and I don’t have the time or interest to drive around the country from store to store and audition them all.

So I do think these forums can be very valuable to those who are looking to get some advice from people who have some experience as opposed to going to a dealer who wants to sell what he has in store.

@gregm Thank you! In terms of your experience with the 50s vs the 100s, do they make a big difference? By the looks of it the 100’s seem quite large for my space, or do they open up on lower volumes too?
Will check out your preamp suggestions and take your positioning advice to heart.

Get the main speakers.  Try to place them as best you can.  Use the AM Acoustics room mode simulator to find the lowest modes and keep the speakers out of the lowest modes.  Same for your listening location.

Go from there.

Chances are you'll at least get absorbers and diffusors in the room which may be all you care for.  If you are still feeling a lack of bass that requires more care and feeding to do right, so this is IMHO a good stopping point.  As I wrote here, you have no idea what the room response is going to be until the speakers are in the room:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2021/12/room-speakers-eq.html

Given the 100s may be too large for your space, I wouldn’t hesitate to go with the 50s and a pair of good subs (IMHO you’d still want subs with the 100s anyway as they only go down to the mid 30Hz range).  The subs will help you better manage the bass in your room and go much lower than either the 50s or 100s giving you a more full-range experience, which is not a small performance boost.  Also, if you share what sound characteristics are most important to you you can get some very good preamp recommendations here to help narrow your choices quite a bit and make your search much more manageable and less daunting.  Hope this helps, and best of luck. 

I recently purchased the SCM40s (passive, driven by Benchmark AHB2) and I think the low frequency response (45Hz) is under-spec-ed by ATC. Due to their sealed cabinet design, I was able to place them closer to the rear wall and dial-in the desired low end.

Room treatments are a good investment as mentioned. I use corner bass traps, first reflection point baffles, as well as a ceiling baffle.

The 40s are very musical speakers. The soundstage is wide and detailed, and the output is dynamic and revealing. Whichever model you choose, I’m pretty sure you’ll have an excellent experience.

Best, JAMES.

Not as an owner but my experience is the SCM50 is a more special representation of ATC then the SCM40. There is big difference.

Owner of both ATC 40A and ATC 50A.  ATC 40A is wonderful.  Lived with them for 3 years.  ATC 50A is a whole 'nother beast....in all of the right ways.  ATC 50A floor stander is more dynamic, throws a larger sound stage and of course deeper bass with a larger woofer and a ported enclosure.  You see deeper into the music.

I've run several preamps and settled on the Luxman 900u.  I've also run the Sugden LA 4 to great affect.  My experience is that very good tube preamps were not fast enough, so I have stayed with solid state.  I do have the ATC SCA2 preamp which is quite good, but not as refined as the other two mentioned.

As far as cabling, the system took a big leap with Chris Romeo cables he custom built for me.  XLR to XLR from preamp to speakers.  The speakers also benefit from Townshend Podiums.

This speaker is my endgame speaker for the foreseeable future.  Hope this helps.

Hi @n777 

The 100 give a much larger sound and, in so doing, require subwoofers to be really full-range on a grand scale. In a reasonably sized room, the 50s will probably end up being a more full-range sounding proposition -- i.e. the low end does not seem to be lacking in weight vs the rest of the FR. Regards

...a shout-out to @erik_squires ; thanks for the AM Acoustics RMSim comment...Nifty....👍

Thank you all for taking the time to share your experiences and advice! I am going to audition the 40A and 50A and see if I can test the Sugden and Luxman with both speakers. Any other preamps I absolutely should hear in combination with the ATCs? I will upgrade my Pro-Ject turntable too to a Rega but still have to listen to the P8/P10 and possibly the Naia. Since I will need a phono stage for this, am I right to assume a preamp like the Luxman will do well in this setup as well?

@soix As for your question about the kind of sound I prefer, I find it difficult to put this clearly into words. I did end up at ATC because I want to hear the music as it’s intended to sound. I listen a lot to classical music, jazz and electronic orchestral (like Hans Zimmer, Nicholas Britell and Johann Johannsson), but also r&b, soft rock and pop from the 70-90’s. I would say I aim more for ’warmer’ more musical experience than a clinically clear one. If that makes any sense?

I do like the look of the towers of both 40 and 50 in satin black, even considering they are around 10k more expensive than the pro 40 and 50. From what I understand it is mostly the hand finishing (inside and out veneer) of the consumer hifi and cabinet for the towers that differs from the pro’s, correct? The sound should be about the same since they share the same internals?

@erik_squires Thank you. Will definitely look into this and like @jimboman suggested look at room treatment at a later point in time.

If I were going with ATC, I would very seriously consider the active speakers they make. The ATC SCM 50 ASL or if you want floor-stander, the ATC SCM 50 ASLT. They offer a good range of veneers or black ash. The actives would give you well-matched amplification and eliminate your need for a separate amplifier, keeping things simpler. You could reduce your components to the preamp and DAC (or get a preamp with a DAC; there are many excellent options available.) Rega doesn't appear to offer a separate preamp in their domestic line. And then you would need your sources.

@n777 - With regard to the difference between pro and consumer models, there are some in consumer that do not exist in pro anc vice versa. SCM40 has no equalivalent in pro, as its a sealed low end cabinet. SCM19 has no equivalent in pro, it is "warmer" than the SCM 20. SCM 7 has no pro equal. SCM 200 and SCM 300 in consumer are towers, no equal in pro as the soffit mount versions in pro use a different tweeter for reliability. There are some pro models that have no equal in consumer as well.

The 50, 100, 150 do have pro and consumer versions; Yes the differences are primarily the veneer, but the monitor versions have grilles (no grille in pro) and the tower versions are unique to consumer plus have grilles. Pro is in housed in the cheapest possible black paint MDF box because pro doesnt care about finish. Some have thought "oh the black is like balck ash or high gloss black- no its rough, has flaws, is not built for looks at all. Studios beat the hell out of them moving them around so a finish like we use in consumer is a waste. However, the consumer version veneer work is all hand done, one at a time, high gloss is literally 10 coats of laquer with sanding in between, veneers are book matched, inside is also veneered for pressure balance (otherwise the wood would bow over time). So this kind of work is very time consuming and expensive. The cabinet shop ATC now owns used to do custom furniture for a hot shot interior design house in London, so they are capable of some very impressive work. The can also do custom work, say a unique wood like European Crown Cut Walnut that is an amazing wood finish. The veneer is worth the money charged. It is not done by machine. Think "Bentley Dashboard" as this part of England is where much of that type of work is done.

(I am the US importer of ATC pro and consumer so I know what the facts are regarding ATC) 

Brad

I did end up at ATC because I want to hear the music as it’s intended to sound…I would say I aim more for ’warmer’ more musical experience than a clinically clear one. If that makes any sense?

Great info. Given that the ATCs are basically a blank slate of neutrality you’re open to “flavoring” them however you’d like. Given your preference for warmth and musicality I’d definitely skew towards a tube preamp if you’re open to tubes, and a couple brands that jump to mind are VAC and Allnic that have musicality in spades but are still nicely detailed. If you’d prefer solid state I’d mention Pass Labs and Ayre although I still think given your preferences tubes are the way to go. For cables I’d highly recommend looking at Acoustic Zen as they’re also very natural sounding while communicating lots of detail and won’t rape you in terms of price as many others can. Hope this helps, and best of luck in your quest!

BTW @lonemountain thanks for chiming in here with some very helpful info. Do you have any thoughts on good tube or solid state preamps that you or other active ATC owners have used with good success and given the OP’s stated preferences for musicality and some warmth?

I am am using meager 19's in a small room though...I would think active would eliminate the amp in compatability somewhat,Have heard great thing about them as well.Using simple zavfino prema's with great success. This will interesting to hear your outcome.Since using atc19 i have little desire to stray from them...would be up the chain fwiw.

     As communicated in other postings, I tend to live now in the active world.  I'm not a volume rocker listening, but I do really like the immediate attack and dynamics of active which I personally could not render with passive and some very good amplification.  Just my experience, not gospel.

     I also drug a friend of mine into that world and we've enough equipment to play with to do comparisons.  We've never looked back.  To that end, my wife's system IS with ATC 20 passives and a Luxman integrated, and is quite listenable.  Very sweet too.

@soix 

Regarding tube preamps, I don't have any recommendations for I have not listened to nearly enough of them to make a judgement.   I would say ATC active's reveal a lot about what is upstream so it better be a great tube pre!  You will definitely hear color. 

Brad

I came to ATC by way of producing music. The SCM25A's changed everything for me. I'd never heard a more accurate speaker which is essential for mixing/mastering. Everything you hear about the midrange and high end detail is true. The SCM25A has the same woofer, but different tweeter than the SCM40A in a smaller ported enclosure. I would expect the 40 to have more pleasing bass performance, but this is not an SL driver and while good, it is not going to fill a room with bass. When mixing, it is essential to know what is going on in the bottom octave. Subs are needed for this with these speakers. 

The 25's gave me confidence to purchase SCM19's for a fun room. These are beautiful sounding speakers. Thanks Brad at Lone Mountain, I agree they tend toward warm. While beautiful, the magic with ATC's is with the 3 ways. 

I then added passive SCM50's that are 2 generations old due to attractive price. As was pointed out earlier, these are entirely different beasts from the 25's in all the right ways.

I will back up and say you can't beat active ATC's. That is the way to go. Nobody mentions the zero phase crossovers along with discrete amps for each driver. ATC amps are excellent and zero phase crossovers make a world of difference with clarity. It's the same as using a linear phase EQ like the Manley Massive Passive; zero phase crossovers cannot be beat for clarity. That's why these are used almost exclusively in the Pro/Studio environment.

That said, the passive crossovers are insanely massive in the 50's and sound amazing nonetheless. The 50's use SL (Super Linear) drivers with underhung voice coils. This is big boy land. Brad at Lone Mountain can clarify, but my understanding is the mid and tweeter are SL versions as well with stronger magnets. This and the coffee can sized passives must be why they can handle 1500 watts if you decide to go that far. For me, the 50's fill the entire audio spectrum as they should. I still use subs, but they only fill in the lowest registers and don't work much other than to add dimension. I use a pair of 15's and always will. 

Beyond 50's, there's also the consideration of how loud do you want them. Aside from playing deeper as you go up the range, each model becomes 3 dB more efficient. 50's are quite inefficient at 85 dB SPL. You gotta hit 'em hard! They are a sweet spot size-wise tho.

I like it loud so I think I'd prefer 100's or 150's, but I do have a limited budget. It's interesting that the 150's 15" driver switches from rubber to foam as I understand it to better control IM distortion in larger drivers. Now we're talking tank like size compared to the relatively svelt 50's. SCM150's are used in mastering studios the world over. Check out Black Bird studio's various ATC rooms too if you want to see how room treatment is done. 

I say 50's or up and active if possible. Enjoy!
 

Jeff explains it well!.  FOr clarification, the "SL" (super linear)  LF driver is in the 50 on up, and the mid and tweeter of the 50 on up are much larger motors for higher SPL, wider dynamic range.  The amps inside the active 50s on up are also much larger for that increased dynamics. 

The SCM 19 passive and active is the one exception, it also has this super linear Mid/LF driver built just for that speaker,   This is a carry ovwer from ueyars ago when Billy developed a smaller SL  and the line was just the 20/50/100/150..   

Since I already had an integrated amp I really liked, with a lot of juice, I got a pair of passive SCM40s and a couple of SVB-3000 subs. I’m happy with this set-up. It feels like there are diminishing returns for me by going up the product line.

For a number of reasons, I have to use stand mount speakers.

Replaced my old (2004) Quad 11L with ATC SCM19v2. Will probably be my last set of speakers. Love them.

I've found Auditorium 23 speaker cables a good match, and love my Audience Au24SX RCA cables from Dac to amp.

Recently bought an I2S cable, Tubulus Argentus for DDC to Dac. As well as a Puritan PSM156.

All good matches with the ATC speakers.

I hear a lot of support for "active" speakers. For speakers to be active the signal has to be digitized. This can lead to a lot of back and forth conversions. I am a firm believer in digital signal processing, it is a necessity if you want to get to a SOTA system now and in the future. Like a symphony orchestra it is best to have one conductor and traditionally this role has been taken by the preamplifier. There are now several preamplifiers with full DSP capability including room control, bass management, crossovers and EQ. The DEQX is the best of them all. The DEQX Pre 4 and Pre 8 utilize a 64 bit floating point system with the most current processor and are constructed in SOTA fashion. The Pre 8 even has a 4 way crossover! You can make any current loudspeaker "active"!  It even has a phono preamp. You have almost total control over the way a system sounds withing the context of the speaker design chosen. You can not turn a point source speaker into a line source one. 

@mijostyn You are not looking at this right.

Active has zero to do with digital or "digitization". Active can be analog or digital crossovers and all class D amps. Active is simply an electronic crossover (analog or digital) operated at line level before amplifiers, amps hooked directly to drivers and no passive elements in between.

In the brand I work with, ATC, it is 100% analog: analog crossover, Class A/B MOSFET amps, no DSP digital anything inside. Same with older Genelec and many other active systems. You have to research this to know for sure.

Some of these active systems bundle DSP in to do "correction". What that correction is important because it could be "DSP room correction" or "DSP speaker correction".

Room correction attempts to fix an acoustical issue with some kind of EQ. This is controversial as you are now changing a speakers direct output based on the reflections in the room. What’s coming out of the speaker may not be wrong.

Speaker correction looks at correction of the crossover itself and how it affects speaker behavior and driver performance.

TRINNOV and DIRAC are room devices, addressing the acoustic problems in the room. This is still controversial, as fixing a "room" electrically is still something many experts argue about. The brand I work with (ATC) hates it as they say why fix direct sound when its reflections that are messed up? The only thing that may be right is the speaker itself but now you want to change that based on what the room is doing. Purists would say "Fix acoustical problems acoustically and electrical problems electrically".

Whether amps are digital (Class D) or not is not part of the DSP room correction. You could use DSP room correction in front of analog speakers, like your preamp or receiver having DIRAC but used with pure analog speakers. Or using a Trinnov in front of a ATC analog speaker. In the case of DEQX, it is a replacement for crossovers and speaker correction, a very different "problem" compared to room correction.

Brad

@lonemountain 

Hi Brad,

DEQX does both speaker and room correction, separately. I greatly prefer the DEQX system which is more like the TacT system I am use to. I do not yet know how much manual tweaking I will have to do. As far as room correction is concerned, there remain issues that have to be handled acoustically. The room has to be in tolerance or you will just clip filters. The types of loudspeaker being used are also important. Certain speaker designs have far less room interaction. When it comes down to brass tacks there are two major types of errors, errors in amplitude and errors in time. These are easy to correct for, to a point. You cannot correct for echoes. There are problems that have no analog solution. Other then by shifting position there is no analog way to put a delay on a speaker, and the dimensions of the room and other practicalities put severe limitations on how far you can move anything. 

Yes, you can do an analog active loudspeaker. The only good reason to do that is you do not have the engineering to do it digitally. Digital signal processing including crossovers is, in every way, superior to analog signal processing. Analog signal processing is about as useful as tits on a bull.  The only exception is in the mind of the audiophile. Audiophiles are as change resistant as cyclists. It took a decade for the cycling community to accept synchro shifting. 

As for the type of amplifier that again depends on the loudspeaker, even the independent drivers can dictate amplifier choice. 

Yes, you can do an analog active loudspeaker.  The only good reason to do that is you do not have the engineering to do it digitally.

@mijostyn That’s just simply not true — there are lots of benefits to an analog active speaker, but I’m sure @lonemountain could do a much better job than me describing what they are.

The idea that it takes superior engineering to do digital crossovers or eq is hillarious.  Anyone can do that.  The only reason to do digital is because you don't have the engineering to do it analog, obviously.  

@soix 

There may be advantages over regular methods in some designs but they pale in comparison to what can be done digitally. You have to remember the designer has no idea what environment the speaker is going to be placed in and the room is 50% of the equation, some would say more. Analog can not deal with this. Eventually systems could be digital all the way to the speaker enclosure. With good cable you can easily run a 300 foot AES-EBU line without any loss. 

@jon_5912 

You have to be kidding me. Analog electrical engineering has been around for eons. I built my first amp when I was 13 years old. Digital signal processing is about 25 years old. It is an entirely different branch of electrical engineering and requires specific training. Programming the crossovers is easy, but that is not designing the circuitry. 

The only reason to do anything in analog is to hand an analog signal to the amplifier so you can listen with your analog ears. Unless you have a large record collection everything should remain digital up to the amps. Not only will such a system easily outperform any analog set up but you can also tune such a system to sound any way you want without any added artifacts. I digitize my phono stage and do the final RIAA correction by computer.  I also use tube amplifiers to drive ESLs.

Just wondering how long my brand new ATC SCM100ASLT take to fully run in ?

I am assuming the 12” woofers will take the longest to “bed in” ?

@seadog137

ATC is not big on the idea of break in. They heavily QC the drive units and "run them in" at the factory. SO I dont think you’ll find any break in is necessary. In support of that, I have never in 20 years had a customer tell me a replacement driver every sounded different from existing drivers in the speaker. If "break in" with ATC is always part of it, if it was clearly audible, how could all those owners over the years miss it?   Strange isn't it?

Fair call then, I’ll assume they are good to go.

@mijostyn

I get you are trying to be progressive, looking at the wonderful opportunites DSP can offer for "room" correction-but it just isn’t the great pancea it is cracked up to be. It can help some users, usually those with room conditions that are so adverse that any change in the right direction is welcome. But the core problem with DSP room correction [so far] is that it cannot distinguish between direct sound and reflected sound. So you are modifying the thing that is not wrong (direct sound) to compensate for the thing that IS wrong (the reflections). Does that sound like a wise move to you?

From a sales perspective, room correction sounds great in principle, to "fix" the room (as this is the problem the user is typcially trying to attack). But at best, you are not only modifying the direct sound, which is a bad idea, you are doing all of this modification /EQ etc for ONE singular location in the room, not everywhere. So great, it sounds good where you put the microphone, which is often NOT where you sit. You ;put the microphone on the floor (more reflections from the floor to the mic), a table (more reflections from the table to the mic) both of which skew the compensation even more, altering the actual sound at that precise location. Some astute users try to get the mic up high, or put a blanket on the floor or blanket on the table, but none of those things work unless the mic is located exactly where your ears are when you sit. A speaker has a specific dispersion pattern that is not symetrical, (low dispersion is different than tweeter dispersion 99% of the time) and where you are located makes a HUGE difference in how the speaker sounds. Where the mic is located makes a HUGE difference in compensation..

If people are rarely willing to even move their speaker to see how it sounds within a room, how are they going to get a mic location right? How are they going to make it sound good over a wider area when the room correction doesnt work like that? Room correction cannot address these issues, unless you have a very advanced real time measurement system feeding the room correction computer real time (which is not what is being discussed here) and have a room that is only minorly messed up so it doesn’t have to make dramatic change to the direct sound of the speaker? And now on top of all that, you want to send all your audio throuogh a digital EQ? Why would you worry about cables or phono stage and then use a $5 digital EQ across everything? And you think you cannot hear that?

Yes, ATC is all analog. No correction. No digital processing. No little cheap software EQ changing the direct sound you spent so much money on. ATC is absolutely ready for the future when we have some of these technical issues addressed!

The only solution at this date is make the room sound better without EQ.

All of the above is NOT about DEQx. Yes they have a very advanced system but they are more focused on speaker correction than room correction. To do speaker correction requires some pretty extensive measurement and modeling, not sometihjng an end user can do at home. I actually do think DEQX is on to something, they may indeed be the future of it all. We are a ways away from that future right now with all this junk being sold to people using misinformation to do so!. .

Brad

@lonemountain 

I'm afraid you are totally incorrect. Room correction is not an excuse to avoid room treatments. The best way to control the room is to use speakers that have controlled directionality. 

I have never measured a perfect loudspeaker. Most are fraught with amplitude deviations and worse, no two speakers are exactly the same. Even if they were exactly the same, put them in two different locations and they will be different. Digital EQ can correct this perfectly. I find that I still have to look at measurements and make adjustments manually to get both channels perfectly equal even after the computer has it's say. 

Room correction is a misnomer. It should be called speaker correction. It corrects two types of errors, amplitude and time (group delays). It is a panacea for subwoofer integration. The computer ignores the effects of late reflections and only corrects the amplitude errors caused by early reflections.  

None of this can be done in the analog world effectively at all or without causing other distortion. In the digital realm it is just juggling numbers, nothing else matters.

Let's assume for a second that you can design the perfect loudspeaker. Next try to build it and you will discover that all drivers and components deviate to some degree from perfect performance. All are designed to function within limits. The more tightly controlled devices are of course more expensive. 1% resistors are more expensive than 5% resistors of the same type. All these errors compound and create a degree of variability which can not be avoided even if you buy the finest components. 

I'm sure analog will persist as a niche market. People still collect Model Ts and old EV Patricians, one of the worst loudspeakers I have ever heard. But, like the cell phone, analog signal processing is doomed in the audio world. It is woefully inadequate. Granted, it is more of a challenge to put together a SOTA analog system. I can make a better performing system with less expensive components in a fraction of the time required to do it in analog fashion and that is really the key. Audiophiles on a budget (most of us) will be able to take huge leaps in performance at a very reasonable cost. Every audiophile I have done an in home demonstration for has immediately purchased a processor. It is fun to watch their eyes go wide when I kick it in.  

@mijostyn 

Wow, you must not be reading my posts or not understanding what I wrote.   

The "room correction" I was referring to above (and most people consider room correction) is software inside a receiver or other piece of home gear that is a single cheapo mic and free software that costs nothing.  Think DIRAC.  It may have some features similar to DEQx, but it aint even close. Ignoring late reflections is not something most of this "room correction" software is capable of.  So you are using a esoteric product (DEQX) as an example of all digital signal processing and that simply is not how it is out there.  Most of this digital processing sucks and does not sound good.. Will it get better?  Of course!  But implying this junk people sell as "room corrective" is great is a diservice to the users.   DEQX is not part of that generalization- DEQX is off on its own technical level that is far far above what most people think of as room correction..      

Are you a DEQX dealer?