Studio is getting close to the point where I need to decide on the mains and I have it narrowed down to the above two. I will definitely get a demo of each before I purchase, however I was wondering if anyone has experience on both and could compare the two. Currently I have a pair of Barefoot MM27s and KRK 8000Bs, which I will be using as well. I was advised to go with the Ocean Way monitors over the ATC because they are free standing and I really don't want to soffit mount the mains, but would consider it if it's an absolute must with the ATC. Any input by those who have heard both sets of monitors would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

VERY different. Your in-person audition will tell you everything you need to know.
What do you do? The ATC speakers are (along with the big B&Ws) the best orchestral monitors I've heard and the OW speakers are superb for more pop/rock stuff. Having said that, the best pop session I ever did was on ATC and I can easily imagine doing score work on the OW speakers.
Your ears will answer your questions. There's no way to lose here with either choice.

The 300's will work well freestanding or soffit mounted. They are designed to have a flat response freestanding and soffit mount will result in some gain in the 80Hz to 250Hz region (typically).

All loudspeakers with a flat freestanding response will be subject to gain in the low frequency when soffit mounted.

My choice is obvious and I'm not in the business of slagging off rival products but, please consider the following technical issues:

A horn increases efficiency but, at the expense of bandwidth and directivity. The Ocean Way monitors boast a 120x40 horn which, will have a +/-60 deg horizontal coverage at in the lower part of it's operating band. At the top end of it band the directivity is likely to be half this which , will result in a lack of upper mids in the reverberant field. As our hearing systems use direct and reverberant energy to judge the quality of sounds, this lack of energy can lead to over use of EQ in the upper mids and bright, hard sounding mixes.

This is why we use a single small diameter (3"/75mm) mid range part in ALL our three way systems as it offers broad dispersion right up to the crossover point and the result is a balanced frequency response on AND off axis.

Another problem with horns is that as the wavefront travels up the horn, edge of wavefront, closest to the horn surface travels more slowly that that in the centre due to frictional losses. This distorts the wavefront and produces a errors in phase (time) at the listening position.

The third issue I'd like to raise is to do with SPL. A horn has a narrow throat and wide mouth in order to increase acoustic radiation impedance and therefore increase efficiency. The problem is that for a high SPL at the listening position, say 110dB+, in the narrow throat the SPL is going to be much much higher - 120dB+! Air starts to become non-linear at SPL's over 120dB and the result is more distortion.

I was going to finish there but I have thought of something else. As the horns are large, locating them very close together is difficult. This will lead to much more variation in frequency response as you move around the control room.

There are no freebies with acoustic transducers. For a given diameter, they can either be optimised for efficiency or sound quality or a compromise of the two, somewhere in between. The transducers used in the Ocean Way systems are all very similar to those used in PA systems, whose goal is high efficiency.

Hope there is some helpful information there.

Ben

If you´re serious about monitoring then you´d better forget about freestanding monitors. That always includes compromises because of combfiltering. Soffit mount your monitors and you will have one problem less. Get monitors with two bassdrivers and you have another combfiltering problem lowered (not solved, though).

Depends on the style of music you do.
The ATC is an amazing...full bandwidth monitor....Ocean Way a bit PA like.

Thanks so much for all the input. I should have mentioned, but the style of music will be rock/pop for the most part. The room is fairly large as well, around 650 sq. ft. I'm hesitant to soffit mount the speakers b/c of all the horror stories I've heard in not getting them mounted right and they ended up sounding awful. We don't have a studio designer on our project so it would be up to us to get it done right. Scary!

Soffit mounting isn't an impossibly daunting task. Make sure the speakers fit flush, supply enough ventilation to active speakers or remote the power amps, aim them right and make sure they have a REALLY STABLE pedestal to sit on and things pretty much work. One issue that often seems to arise with soffit mount speakers doesn't have much to do with the speakers - the SPL levels that people use can overpower the acoustical design and treatment of a room and things get grim really fast. The gas pedal seems to get pressed a little harder when they're in the wall. Resist that temptation and your room should work properly.

We can advise you on the correct installation and low frequency treatment for a soffit mounted pair of loudspeakers to perform at their best. Some key points being:
Speakers should not rigidly attach to any part of the front wall only their stand
If isolation of the speaker from the rest of the room is a target, isolate the stand & speaker not the speaker from the stand
Rear wall will need excellent bass trapping as the soffit install will lead to all the room modes down the length of the room being excited to a maximum level

PMC makes some pretty nice free standing monitor.

I tried using my set of LCR 300 ASL as speakers freestanding, and was disappointed to find that there was absolutely no bass, despite their claims. They sounded, and measured, very thin. These must be soffit mounted to be of any use in stock configuration.

But I was committed to using them as free-standing speakers.

What I did to solve the problem was to build new cabinets, keeping the original air volume and speaker alignment of the original cabinets. Keep in mind that a single ATC cabinet is actually 2, divided internally; as a single woofer cabinet and a single 3-way cabinet, in one. By building separate cabinets (using thicker MDF than stock), and placing one on top of the other as separates, I was able to couple the cabinets to the floor and get a nice, fat, flat frequency response down to 24Hz. And, a nice bonus is that they are slimmer, which is nice for the center channel, and easier to move.

The ATC soundstage is truly awesome. Those midrange drivers are incredible, and are really the heart-and-soul of the system.

They are highly regarded, along with PMC, in the TV/Film-scoring community. So having them in-house makes everyone feel comfortable.

I also really like the OWR speakers. A lot. But, they are quite different, and not as well known in my specific field of recording, which tends to be very conservative and resistant to new things. So it was good business, for me, to stick with the ATCs.

But the OWRs really do kick-ass, so I'd have a listen, first.

Completely subjective but fwiw I went with the ATCs too.

We went for ATC mains, they are right for our room design. What does your architect recomend?

We have PMC IB2s mids which are so accurate in the mids its scary!

Focal twin and avantone nearfields will sit on the meterbridge.

I dont rate the ocean way's they remind me of the Mayer studio monitors.

Greg...nice repackaging of the ATC's.
I have always thought pedestal subs were the answer in many situations...your implementation confirms it.

Guys,

Thanks so much for the added input. Greg, amazing studio, I've been following the construction thread for a while. You've got some balls to modify $50k worth of speakers!

This is what i call REAL DIY monitors!! Well Done!thumbsup
p.s. what the xower you used, crossover points and order?

Good info!

and I'd say that horns are so..... 70's.

I've spent a lot of time with both ATC and Ocean Way Monitors... and I'd go ATC, for sure. No question.

I have no comment on ATC vs Ocean Way specifically, but do have a few comments on Ben Lilly's post:

The Ocean Way horns look to me like they are constant-directivity types in the horizontal plane, in which case they would be superior to most direct radiators in radiation pattern uniformity in that plane. I agree with Ben's comments about the desirability of getting the reverberant field right; just not his assessment of the Ocean Way's performance in that area. Specifically, I would not expect any pattern narrowing at the upper end of the midhorn's passband.

You can think of the front baffle of a flat-baffle direct radiator speaker as a 180 degree horn, so the maximum pattern width above the baffle-step region will be 180 degrees, and the minimum is determined by driver beaming. I would estimate that the big ATCs probably vary between about 120 and 180 degrees in the horizontal plane up until tweeter beaming sets in, and would expect the Ocean Ways to have less pattern variation than that in the horizontal plane.

In my opinion this is perceptually a minor issue.

I don't know about the specifics but the principle described is correct, however high quality horns are still more linear at high SPL than most direct radiators. Whether that would include the ATCs or not, I can't say.

In some cases this is true in the vertical plane, but in the horizontal plane a good system using constant-directivity horns will almost always have better frequency response uniformity than a direct-radiator system.

I disagree with Ben's claim of a tradeoff relationship between sound quality and efficiency; rather, I would claim that good efficiency contributes to dynamic contrast (by minimizing thermal compression) which in turn contributes to sound quality. I will concede that steps to eliminate or minimize frequency response peaks are essential for good sound quality, but this doesn't exclude high efficiency designs if they are of high quality.

In my opinion the arguments made earlier by Ben in favor of getting the reverberant field right are precisely the reason why high-quality constant-directivity horns can be competitive in a demanding application; minimizing the spectral discrepancy between the direct and reverberant energy is imho generally desirable.

I haven't used the Ocean Way monitors, but I can vouch for the ATCs. They are great mains. Accurate, detailed, very low distortion. I did a lot of pop, rap, and rock stuff with them an was always happy.

To the original poster - where are you based?