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.