Originally Posted by svarthvitt ➡️

We know a lot about the reproduction of sound today. Take a look around at AES over the years.

We’re not blind, we’re not deaf.

Originally Posted by SashaGray ➡️

Brad, don't feed all these trolls littering up those threads claiming Neumanns/Kii..etc are better speakers than ATC ahaha. That in itself shows user like Janex or Keith have not the slightest trace of what they are talking.. throwing in terms like "spectral linearity" or "SPL requirements".
This thread made me laugh badly.. thanks at least for that

Originally Posted by AndreiPiatra ➡️

It saddens me to read such comments, absolutely not fair to talk like this about someone like Jantex or Keith. <SNIP>

Originally Posted by Brad Lunde ➡️

You are right Andrei, it should not be personal. It saddens me and is not fair to see a couple of guys talk about other people's (loudspeaker engineers) hard work as though it doesn't matter because they don't understand it. Their position is justified by their "experience". For those of us who've been at this a long while, we know its actually lack of experience that gets us out there arguing everyone else is wrong.

The difficulty is you can't challenge people who never experienced the problem or the issue a particular design choice is designed to address. Like the flat earth argument, unless you've actually traveled beyond the edge, been on a tall ship or studied the movement of the stars, it makes no sense that the earth is round. You can see the edge as clear as day! To say there is no edge is to say you cannot believe your own eyes! Deny your own eyesight, stick your head in the sand, that's what that is!


Brad

Originally Posted by Brad Lunde ➡️

You are right Andrei, it should not be personal. It saddens me and is not fair to see a couple of guys talk about other people's (loudspeaker engineers) hard work as though it doesn't matter because they don't understand it. Their position is justified by their "experience". For those of us who've been at this a long while, we know its actually lack of experience that gets us out there arguing everyone else is wrong.

The difficulty is you can't challenge people who never experienced the problem or the issue a particular design choice is designed to address. Like the flat earth argument, unless you've actually traveled beyond the edge, been on a tall ship or studied the movement of the stars, it makes no sense that the earth is round. You can see the edge as clear as day! To say there is no edge is to say you cannot believe your own eyes! Deny your own eyesight, stick your head in the sand, that's what that is!


Brad

Originally Posted by Jantex ➡️

It is sad to read such patronising script. But it is the same like our ATC distributor has, so it is probably is a way to sell these items - pretentious, like their price is.

As mentioned before, ATC are great drivers and fine speakers, I had them and worked numerous times with all of the models up to SCM150, but they are just another "conservative hi-fi mentality" competitor at todays crowded market...and especially targeted to cater "flat-earth" believers that don't believe there has been new things and technologies developed in the last 20 years. Rolls Royce wouldn't survive if BMW didn't buy it and improve its technologies, no matter how great their engines were. Engine is only a part of the car, same is with drivers in a loudspeaker.

Originally Posted by puriteaudio ➡️

Pretentious and patronising, how long have you been selling ATC Brad?
Keith

Originally Posted by Brad Lunde ➡️

Jantex, I read your posts from time to time. You explain yourself passionately and that's cool. I think sometimes the things you attribute to a speaker- why this one works better than that one- is actually the room, not the speaker. I think you miss that sometimes but it does explain why you like corrective DSP. That's actually fair enough. But you through around descriptions or judgements that have nothing to do with each other. You've said something quite ridiculous: ATC 20s are overpriced and the KH310 is better monitor without a doubt. That's two ridiculous things in one sentence.

The ATC 20 is actually way underpriced. If you understood the science of drivers, if you actually saw the SL driver inside a 20 and understood why it is the way it is, you could never make such a way off the mark statement. The design is so far beyond conventional driver designs as to be laughable when comparing it to a traditional 6 inch woofer used in 99% of monitors. The 150MM (6 inch) driver is an engineering masterwork, from the hand made short coil to the composite used on the pole pieces to control eddy currents (to keep the 3rd harmonic distortion low at excursion extremes) to the doped cone to provide maximum stability across a wide bandwidth. The massive motor in this SL driver is larger than most 15 inch drivers! The LF driver assembly costs more to build by itself than most studio monitors do complete! Combined with a sealed box design to get the ideal 12/octave roll off behavior, the 20 has more output at 40Hz than most ported systems tuned with a 75-80Hz boost do. The grafted proprietary mid dome, grafted to the LF cone, gives the 20 better midrange than almost any other 6 inch 2 way in existence. All of that is just a start! I don't think can you find another monitor that is entirely built by hand- drivers and all electronics-in one building by the same group of people. I think this combination of elements doesn't exist except in 10K per pair super high end hi fi speakers.

The KH310 is a great speaker, no doubt about it. I actually used to import its way distance cousin, the K+H 0198 back in the late 90's. But the mid driver in the KH had issues off axis and the woofer overloaded too easy and the entire system wouldn't play loud enough for the US market. But the engineer for K+H, (Manfred?) was brilliant and I loved the speaker under 100dB SPL on axis. It was in fact designed for German broadcast, a completely different application, and it worked fine there. But not in a US music studio.

The Neumann 310 is limited to 100dB Max SPL. The ATC scm20ASL is good to 106 to 108dB SPL. That's a lot and to some people it's very important. TO someone that needs louder as part of what they do (or what they have to do to please a client) it could be critical. Some like the ATC 20 because you hear a zillion details that are masked on other speakers. To others that need more low end, they might go for a SM9. TO those that need low end and level both, a Barefoot is very attractive. Each has its own special thing it does and excels at - but that something may not be important to you and that's why you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a speaker. So saying one speaker is far better than another without knowing the application is not right. Dismissing a ATC 20 out of hand like that tells me you never understood the speaker to start with or have some agenda. Because the statement "the latter are a better monitor without a doubt" is a statement that is not educated opinion. Sorry to bust you on this.....

Brad

Originally Posted by Noctambulant ➡️

Hi, I know import and distribute many quality brands to the USA and you are defending your product, which isn't bad, but "The ATC 20 is actually way underpriced." is a ridiculous statement.

Engineering technicality, details, and overconstruction be damned, the ATC SCM20 does not accomplish much sound-wise beyond midrange for the price. <SNIP>.

Originally Posted by AlexK ➡️

Some of the statements flying around is thread IMO can only be attributed to a lack of real world studio experience, seeing as they seem to fly in the face of general consensus amongst most of the engineers I know, work with and trust.

Either that or we have some really new, amazing knowledge being imparted here which the rest of the industry needs to pay attention to.

I’m not going to name names and I’m outta here

Originally Posted by Deleted e09cd8e ➡️

Hi, I know import and distribute many quality brands to the USA and you are defending your product, which isn't bad, but "The ATC 20 is actually way underpriced." is a ridiculous statement.

Originally Posted by puriteaudio ➡️

Do you think there would be a market for a monitor equipped with ATC drivers, but which had perfect step response, phase coherent, completely full range , with a cardioid response, sophisticated boundary filters, tone controls built in EQ wide even dispersion etc etc.
Keith

Originally Posted by AndreiPiatra ➡️

Sure there is, Keith, but for how much? From manufacturer perspective absolutely not, it would be way too expensive to produce and sell, it won't work(considering this DSP route of course).

Both KIIs and D&Ds are already too expensive in my opinion. For 1/2 current price tag they should sell very well, and we do know that the components(including drivers) are not the most exquisite on the market, so there is a large enough gross margin to play with (so it seems), but who knows what their strategy is, maybe still playing the novelty card?

For any entrepreneurs out there, I think it's a good time to start making DSP speakers with cheap(ish) parts, but solid software, it's an empty niche right now that could do very well among young bedroom producers. If I were KII or D&D I would play this role, since they already have the know-how, so I would either create a sister company (if I don't want to be assimilated to cheaper, less optimal products), or make it under my own name by getting down of my high horse, stop comparing with ATC and other analog manufacturers and fulfill this empty niche I was talking about, while heavily advertising the DSP benefits. But again, depends on what strategy and goals this companies might have, I'm sure they know what they're doing better than me.

Originally Posted by Brad Lunde ➡️

How can a jaguar be 150,000 and a Ford be 15,000? Both have axles, motors brakes etc. The answer is simple: the cost to build. If jaguar wants to order a brake part, they buy 50. If Ford wants to buy a brake part they buy 500,000. The cost per part from the vendor is completely different. IF you can scale up and build 500,000, it can get very very cheap. If you have to custom make 50 of something, or 20, its very very expensive.

Brad

Originally Posted by Jantex ➡️

Interesting that you consider ATC SCM20 underpriced while D&Ds on another hand overpriced. Price should not be about how overengineered a certain product is but about how it performs. And in this case, you can use D&Ds as your only speaker, being totally full range, while SCM20s are far from that. Mind you, even SCM50 don’t give you the bandwidth, tightness, coherency and balance of D&Ds unless you have a 200.000 EUR room to support them. So think again about what is underpriced and what is overpriced.

And one more thing. Don’t think ATC gives you parts worth of their price...as mentioned already in the thread, for 10.000 EUR you can buy a brand new car, that has 1000kg of iron, glass, new technology, paint, seats, airbags, tires and also loudspeakers... just engine is worth more in parts than all silly loudspeaker drivers put into these speakers...now think about it again when calling something overpriced and underpriced. None of these speakers is even remotely worth 10% of their price in parts nor ATC nor D&D nor Kii. And ATC being comparatively more overpriced, especially since their official street prices and actual prices that you can get them for have a huge spread. They built their niche market with high margins and producers making more complete products have all the right to compete with prices...but as mentioned all this is totally overpriced, but as long as the market accepts it, it will remain like it is.

Originally Posted by DougS ➡️

Its treacherous (to say the least) to try and compare pricing of a mass produced product like a car where potentially hundreds of thousands of units a year are produced to high-end studio speakers made by a boutique company where the product is essentially hand built and they only produce a few hundred units a year.

Originally Posted by AndreiPiatra ➡️

Jantex, this DSP speakers can not compete (and why should they) against analog speakers, specially very well designed like the ones from ATC(it doesn't matter what you think, in the proper room -the 200k Eur room if you wish- it will severely outperform any digital pair of speakers in the market placed in a zillion Eur room), and this is the reason why I consider that companies like KII Audio or D&D are not well positioned on the market at all. They should however compete for the bedroom producers, that do not afford to properly treat their room. Selling digital speakers for 10k competing against the big boys...it's not something I would do if I were them. I would be less focused on the drivers (ATC are almost religious about this topic, so why fight a company that has 40 years of know-how in this region), and more on the software, to make it work well in poorly treated and configured rooms.

Again, I might be wrong about the whole thing, it's how I see it, you understand better the technicalities than I do, but regarding the ATC 20s, I wouldn't change one screw to make them better in any regards, they are so wonderful. Or perhaps my room is perfect for them, who knows...

Originally Posted by dinococcus ➡️

Now here and today or yesterday, regarding the step response of the atc smc25, tell atc is well designed is making fun of the world.

As an impression of the transducer are thrown randomly in the boxes.

Regarding the dsp crossover, there are no reason that doesn't work, no reason that surpasses an analog crossover well designed.

Originally Posted by neph ➡️

This resolution mag step response measurement has been constantly used as an example of poor ATC design (generally from people disliking ATC) but i am not sure if the analysis is correct.

The graph in question is fig.4 in the following link:
https://www.resolutionmag.com/wp-con...SCM25A-Pro.pdf

The time window of the graph (15 ms) is quite higher in comparison to other similar measurement sources. The article states:
"The time domain response shows a considerable amount of time smearing with with the peak in mid frequency output occurring 1.5 ms after the high frequencies and the low frequencies about 8 ms later".

What i see is the output of tweeter impulse at 1.5 ms, the output of mid ~1.8 ms (~0.3 ms later) ms and the output of woofer at 3 ms (1.5 ms later). To my eyes this pretty normal. I am not sure what the peak at 10 ms is (effect of boundary?). If the speaker had an issue with time smearing due to low frequency group delay, i assume that it would be seen in the waterfall plot (fig. 7). However the ATC's waterfall is similar in comparison to the Amphion two18 waterfall graph from the same magazine (a speaker generally renowned for its lack of smearing and good image) as seen in the fig 7 of the following link.

https://www.resolutionmag.com/wp-con...hion-Two18.pdf

I think that the "famous" resolution mag measurement (which started from discussion in the Audjiovision legendary monitor thread)is a typical textbook measurement for a three-way speaker. There are many examples of similar three-way speaker step responses - such as the renowned revel salon 2in stereophile (figure 9 in the following graph).

Revel Ultima Salon2 loudspeaker Measurements | Stereophile.com.

Even the kii three in the minimum phase setting has nearly identical delays as seen in Fig. 2 of the following link.

Kii Audio Three loudspeaker Measurements | Stereophile.com

In order to achieve "perfect" step response (i.e. time align), to my understanding it would have to use either a minimum phase 1st order crossover philosophy, or digital delay correction. The 1st option is against the design principles of ATC of low distortion, wide dispersion. The digital correction option (which is already used by many DIYers and not technically difficult to implement) is not some kind of secret technique and i assume ATC would have already used, if they reckoned that it could improve their speaker performance without any drawbacks.

Originally Posted by Deleted 51259b4 ➡️

Regarding the dsp crossover, there are no reason that doesn't work, no reason that surpasses an analog crossover well designed.

Originally Posted by deedeeyeah ➡️

not true: with dsp you can compensate for phase distortion which inevitably happens with any analog design when feeding woofers of different diameters

Originally Posted by deedeeyeah ➡️

- also, minimum phase filters used as x-overs both sound and measure better than any analog design ever can

Originally Posted by Arksun ➡️

Hence why companies like PSI use all-pass filters, which work incredibly well in their case to make super transparent crossover points. Excellent results thus can be achieved via analog or digital crossover compensation.

Analog filters are by their nature minimum phase filters.

Originally Posted by Deleted 98f2a1b ➡️

not true: with dsp you can compensate for phase distortion which inevitably happens with any analog design when feeding woofers of different diameters - also, minimum phase filters used as x-overs both sound and measure better than any analog design ever can; having the option of doing asymmetrical x-overs (and change as needed) ain't bad either - in 2019, i wouldn't drive any speaker system without dsp; not much love for (fairly limited) built-in designs though but rather recommend using external hardware dsp...