Steve Guttenberg reviews an ATC active?

@dbphd wrote:

I couldn’t help wondering if his gushing review of the ATC speaker was atonement for his previous denigration of active speakers.

Interesting suggestion. There may be an aspect to this, but with the ATC’s Steve has found something to hang his hat on, namely or in particular avoiding active speakers with a DSP to act as the active crossover and instead an all-analogue electronic ditto. Which is to say no conversion steps from analogue to digital and back (or with a digital input a D/A-conversion only). Steve apparently hates DSP’s, it seems mostly due to the conversion steps involved (with what I regard as unfounded deductions on their assumed detrimental sonic impact), but there’s also the more hardware related issues for being stuck with whatever DSP module and typically class D amp varieties that have been implemented in a given, bundled active speaker solution.

I’m not wholly unsympathetic with his views here, but simply labeling DSP’s as sonically undesirable in an active speaker system is not seeing the forest for the trees, and fails to take into consideration the opportunities offered with quality DSP’s and their more elaborate (and precise) filter settings compared to an all-analogue electronic XO - not least FIR-based iterations, although they also come with their potential issues. I’m not taking a swing at ATC for not using DSP-based active filters, but Steve’s blanket statement on DSP’s is just rubbish.

Finally Steve doesn’t appear to comprehend that active can be outboard as well as bundled, but here I’m also referring to previous videos of his with the regurgitative rants on active speakers. I get that outboard active isn’t representative of active speaker systems in general, but he has never even considered outboard active as a solution to the problem with bundled systems and the lack of component choice here. I mean, at some point in the process you’d wonder why he hasn’t questioned himself about it, and whether outboard active was at all possible.

Still, he posted a very positive and informative video review of the active ATC’s, so at least he acknowledges what reaches his ears from actual experience with a balanced approach to their qualities, and not the typical audiophile resentment of hearing what such active speakers can deliver as being "too revealing," "not musical" or whatever that doesn’t comply with their exposure to dynamically weak, low and upper octave tilted, sugary and overly laid-back "high-end" speakers. oh well, I digress..

@spoutmouzert wrote:

"Which is to say no conversion steps from analogue to digital and back (or with a digital input a D/A-conversion only)" I must admit i am confused by this, i am playing some tunes through my Eve Audio DSP monitors in my office which do not need a dac. I have attached a dac to them however but never really compared with or without.

What’s the confusion, exactly? The ATC signal-level active crossover works in the analogue domain only, whereas a DSP (Digital Signal Processing) handles it in the digital domain. Analogue electronic XO’s has an analogue in- and output only, while a DSP can have both an analogue and digital input, the former requiring an A/D-conversion step (to where the processing is done digitally), and then a conversion back to analogue (D/A-conversion) to the outputs going to the amps. You could also output digitally to amps with digital inputs, where the final conversion to analogue is done on the output side of the amps just prior to their respective drivers/speaker systems.

With regard to your active Eve speakers and whether to use only their build-in DAC or another one in addition preceding them, try it out and see what you prefer.

Most studio folk spend little (compared to hifi folk) on their preamp (desktop controller). How does say the Adam S5V speakers below process dsd files or respond to a tube dac preamp as you cannot bypass their conversion? Apologies if i am being dim. Cheers

Don’t use DSD playback myself, but sending a DSD signal to a PCM-based DSP of the Adam speakers requires a DSD to PCM conversion in the playback software, like from JRiver. Doing that seems to take the piss out of what to some people makes DSD a desirable trait, however, so better to just send a PCM-signal to the Adam’s.

One could try the analogue as well as digital output from the tube-based DAC to the Adam speakers, which has both XLR and AES3 inputs (analogue and digital). The latter effectively bypasses the preamp section of the DAC (and a possible volume control) in addition to the A/D-conversion step in the speakers, but that’s not necessarily to say it’s the preferred route. Here as well the tube-based DAC could be bypassed with a signal coming directly from the source, as with your Eve speaker example above, and with digital-input amps the signal could remain digital (with a digital source) all the way to the output side of the amps.

@willywonka wrote:

I've always loved ATC speakers but my God the price on their speakers is just over the top! 

Compared to what? Veneering is expensive, not least tower versions of the ATC's. What Steve didn't mention, oddly enough, is that the pro versions in duratex black (that are the same speakers) come cheaper: the SCM50ASL Pro retails for $17,500/pair, which saves you $4,500 compared to the version Steve reviewed. And, again: it's the same speaker. For $23,000 the SCM150ASL Pro can be had, so just $1,000 more than the ones in the review.

Still not cheap speakers, but the build, parts and engineering quality is indisputable, and in that light (and their active configuration considered) the pricing is actually fair. Many high-end speakers in the same "weight class" of the SCM150ASL Pro just mentioned are way more expensive - sans amps, that is - and none of them houses a world class midrange driver like the one found in the ATC's here.