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Your thoughts about ATC loudspeakers

I’m interested in the ATC SCM-40 from their HiFi series and would like to hear from people who have owned or spent a lot of time with ATC speakers. This is a fairly new model and may be a bit of a departure from their classic sound.

At the show in Newport last weekend, I was quite taken by these speakers. I went back the next day and heard the same things that I liked about them, but a couple of red flags also went up:

Microdynamics – not sure these speakers do them well and microdynamics are critical to communicating inflection and nuance and to making music sound alive

Imaging, specifically wrt depth. Nothing much outside of the plane of the speakers, so recording venue info is not there and even instrument and vocal body may suffer a bit.

Were these shortcomings of setup or associated gear, or is this what ATC does?
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Showing 1 response by 1graber2

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1graber2
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Our SF Bay Area audio club had a tour recently at the Dolby HQ offices and sound and theater rooms.

Dolby was running yuge studio monitor ATCs, powered by Bryston. So that matches what all are saying about the speakers needing lots of power to sound best. 

The dedicated critical listening room had the listening chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by a circle of 6 or 8 huge ATCs. 
It's nickname is "speakerhenge"! 

(Amazing equipment as you can imagine. very tightly controlled security and locked door entries throughout building. The big theater has active Meyer speakers doing surround sound, including from the ceiling)
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