ATC SCM-35

Pitdog75,

I would be interested in the results of your cable blind tests...as you may have gathered I respect that there must be small differences between different cables....my obsevation is simply that, at least for my ears, I have not found these small differences to amount to an audible difference.

On ATC speakers, I like your comments... here are my impressions and I will try to be as sanguine as possible to help others decide if they should even consider this gear.

I would describe ATC speakers as having a noticably excellent mid range but apart from that their sound is very simply neutral or accurate.

I suspect the base response has been carefully engineered with less harmonic distortion than many lower cost systems. Some people may describe the ATC base as understated, weak or absent compared to typical "boomy" base resonance of many consumer Hi-Fi speakers, or that they sound "un-musical"; this argument is a fair point, more harmonics do sound fuller and more resonant. My impression on ATC speakers is I am better able to hear that the base on various source material is as varied as the mid range....something that is noticably less evident with many consumer Hi-Fi speakers with a warm base and more harmonics. I suspect that the reason for the warm harmonics laden base in much consumer Hi-Fi audio is that it is a quite sensible and lower cost way to efficiently generate a fuller sounding base with smaller cones and cabinets, furthermore, add a tuned reflex port to reinforce the base and the manufacturer has a very efficent lower-cost design that unfortunately adds plenty of base harmonic distortion, especially as the volume is turned up. Conversely from consumer audio, ATC ports on large professional units are not tuned to reinforce base but to control cone extension and smaller ATC units simply do not have a port.

Another noticable difference is that ATC speakers can play extremely loud - and I mean extremely loud with low distortion levels.

The above characteristics of ATC speakers should be noticable to most anyone comparing ATC to a variety of other speakers.

There are some other less noticeble qualities: ATC speakers have a great dynamic range (softest to highest sound) and play at all sound levels quite consistently. Finally, at loud levels, ATC speakers suffer from relatively little distortion and compression due to the robust driver, cabinet and heavy magnet designs (relatively less thermal compression and other effects than lower cost designs).

In summary, I would charaterize the ATC speakers as engineered for consistent, solid and accurate sound from low to extremely high levels, which is probably why they are chosen by many professionals for studio applications; admittedly, not the sound or solution to fit everyone's need or taste and, like all speakers, still far short of being altogether devoid of distortion.

in other words we could say that ATC merely reproduces the musical event, while some other products try to fancy up what we eventually hear. some designs do everything to sound "impressive", "original" etc...

as far as the bass goes - i don't feel theres any shortages in this department. of course, just after i changed my previous speakers for atc, i was like: where the hell is all that bass. but it turns out the previous product had a lot of boomy, slow, puddingy kinda bass, while atc is much faster, to the point and much more varied. i hear active speakers are even faster - thats great. this is quality bass, that goes down as well, not quantity and unneeded volume. not to mention coloration.

ATC seems to be a very transparent speaker, with phenomenal midrange and the bass performance to suit, not flashy highs. it differentiates good and bad records, but its not a poor recorded cd killer, i find i can listen to most of my cds without getting tired. thats a great combination of transparency and... musicality or sth?

and the ability to play high spl is just excellent, no matter how loud i go the sound remains the same, pure, only louder. it lets you have at least an impression of hearing a live performance.

as far as the cables go, how about this:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html :)

just after i changed my previous speakers for atc, i was like: where the hell is all that bass. but it turns out the previous product had a lot of boomy, slow, puddingy kinda bass, while atc is much faster, to the point and much more varied

Pitdog75,
That matches my experience exactly, and to be fair, the smaller bookshelf ATC models, like other speakers, do not apppear to escape from the small woofer and small cabinetry limitations/physics that leads to a less refined base with increased harmonic distortion at the low end. I can attest that I notice a significant difference in base response between my long time SCM 20's and when my SCM 100A's arrived and I directly compared them. It was actually quite disconcerting, at least initially, for here were these relatively massive SCM 100's with 12" woofers (expectation was bigger base sound) and along side them, the small bookshelf SCM 20 with combined mid and 6" woofer, and yet, the base that I heard was noticably less resonant or "boomy" on the 100's, giving an initial surprising, counter-intuitive impression of less base response from a significantly bigger more powerful speaker!

After this startling discovery, I pulled out a few CD's with a few disco tracks to further test the base of the SCM 100's against the SCM 20's. No problem here, of course the bigger drivers in the 100's completely blew away the 20's on this kind of material and with no lack of base...

My impression is that the 100's make differences from recording to recording and between instruments at the low end markedly more apparent to the listener. For example, on music with extreme base such as disco, the 100's give you a kind of punch in the stomach impression that differs significantly from disco track to track whereas the 20's had more of a tendency to make the room vibrate and with less accentuated or apparent differences between the base from track to track. Although I would not characterize the SCM 20's as a particularly "boomy" speaker (they have no reflex port), I was nevertheless surprised at the difference the larger drive cones and cabinetry actually make in the base response of the SCM 100's.

your SCM20s are passive and SCM100s are active.
so theres some reasons for differences in performance in addition to their different sizes i think.
as far as i gather, we can easily talk about two worlds or sides of ATC designs. passive and active.
passive designs tend to be warmer, their bass is rounder, not quite as fast as from active, but still quite lively and not sloppy at all. on the other hand - active speakers tend to be less forgiving for the source material, they are much faster (especially as far as bass goes), someone once told me that his active scm50s, when first arrived, fired away like a machine gun (describing the speed of their bass).
and the small monitors - well, the're meant to play in small rooms, the bass response is not artificially extended to give impression (cheat if you will) of a bigger speaker. im fine with that approach.

i wish in a year or two i myself will be able to enjoy my own active scm50s or even scm100s :). in the meantime, scm35s will do just fine. great speakers considering their price.

btw how does a double bass or bass guitar sound on the active 100? i suppose quite nicely. not to mention percussion...