ATC


I heard some ATC studio speakers to see what the fuss was about. I was not that impressed by the midrange performance. Is better midrange possible? would magico do it? what speaker produces even better midrange?
kenjit

Showing 3 responses by jon_5912

Jeff Bagby did a writeup of the ATC midrange and included a lot of information about it.  He thought it was about as good as it gets.  I can understand why ATC wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, though.  Their overall balance is best at higher, more realistic volumes.  

"As you can see the nonlinear distortion is extremely low, with 3rd order in the neighborhood of -70dB at my low crossover point. These levels are very close to the noise floor in my room and I would consider this to be in the state-of-the-art range for midrange distortion. "

http://studio-hifi.com/images/ATC75-150S_JeffBagby.pdf
@kenjt, ATC made some metal cabinet speakers 15-20 years ago.  There were metal 10, 20 and 70 models.  I think I remember reading somewhere that they stopped because they didn't think it was worth the money.  I don't think the EL 150 could be mdf but I'm not 100% sure.   IMO Wilson, magico and YG are all vanity first brands.  They're more oriented towards talk.  Exotic technologies, space age materials, etc.  I don't know how much those things actually improve performance and neither does anyone else.  I don't think it matters.  They're sales features.  I'm not saying that I think those products are bad.  I would never consider buying any of them even if I had a billion dollars because I don't admire the approach.   
I believe ATC stuffs their boxes full of some type of fiber to absorb a lot of the sound.  The light weight 3" midrange has a 20 lb magnet and that alone is enough mass to keep any box flex from impacting the transients.  The problem here is that none of us know how much difference various types of boxes make.  Manufacturers do, and an engineering driven company is using what they think is the best solution from an engineering standpoint.  Marketing driven companies have different priorities.  I had B&Ws for a long time and when I switched to Thiels my eyes were opened.  The number of talking points doesn't translate to improved performance.