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ATC Monitor built in amps are Junk?

cooky1257

pfm Member
This may be a repeat of a previous thread I can't seem to find , if so please delete.

Hmm well they aren't particularly good according to GR-Research...cheap(!) small but better than a cheap receiver ,,,,,

 
Does that chap by any chance just happen to sell passive crossover ‘upgrades’?
Keith

Surely not?
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I don't think many, other than his fawning acolytes, take him seriously anymore.
 
I was really surprised watching that vid, I mean he's not going to have many ATC owners rushing to strip out their amps for some GR research passive networks now is he(he clearly hasn't seen ATC's humungous overbuilt passive networks!).
Guy's lost it.
 
Ah, another influencer is contentious to get more people watching his vids so he earns more ad revenue. I won't play the game and waste my time listening to him. Having heard active ATCs in domestic and studio settings, I think the amps do a pretty good job. I am sure if Naim weren't around and making amps that pair so well with ATCx I would have the active version of my 40s.
 
Wasn't there a German mag that compared active and passive ATC 100's? they preferred the sound of the passive with a fancy was amp driving the speakers as i remember.
ATC do the Anniversary amp pack for their speakers which has less noise and operates in Class A for a higher wattage.

I've bought so many amp packs/transformers for my Dynaudio actives... and now despite the speakers being 7 years old and the drivers in perfect condition the amps/parts are no longer available...Same goes for the Dynaudio XEO speakers they make too, proprietary amps are now no longer available for them five years down the line.
I wish boyo in the video would make a passive filter for them, otherwise they're just landfill.

I think ATC are great because the older active speakers can be repaired and upgraded.
 
I read and have spoken via forums to pretty much countless people who have really had/experienced both active and passive versions of ATCs with really good amplification (stuff like Bryston for example) and pretty much universally the experience has been - the active version trumps the passive even with top money amplification. Now, do those guys speak the truth or the guy who peddles "upgrades" of passive crossovers o_O
 
My ATC 150 wpc integrated amp is a related design to those in-speaker ATC amps I believe. It controls the flabby tendency of my Harbeth C7s at any volume very obviously.
 
Does Danny's comment re actives having a higher noise floor due to all drivers being exposed to the full-bandwidth noise floor of the amp pack hold water? I've often wondered why active speakers 'hiss' more than passive speakers and this seems a plausible explanation. However it also implies that if a fault were to occur within the amp pack that sent DC downstream then all drive units would fry, not just the woofer?!
 
My ATC 150 wpc integrated amp is a related design to those in-speaker ATC amps I believe. It controls the flabby tendency of my Harbeth C7s at any volume very obviously.

There's a guy on YT called Tarun (channel "A british audiophile" - pretty much the only YT hi-fi review channel i watch and respect) and he reviewed both passive and active versions of SCM19. He tested passive 19s with ATC P1 power amp (which is your amp, I believe), his Exposure monoblocks and some Hegel integrated.His conclusion was that neither of those amps came close to active 19s (which have an amp similar to P1 in them).
 
I think YouTube threw some of his videos into my feed once and he's just out to sell his "upgrades"

I'm getting really selective with my YouTube viewing, a lot of channels are purely aligned with generating engagement/revenue rather than here's some interesting content aligned with the theme of the channel. Once a channel start using CAPS, multiple exclamation marks !!!! or click-bate titles like "Don't buy a pair of active speakers until you watch THIS!!!" I simply tell YouTube not to show me anything from that channel.
 
Does Danny's comment re actives having a higher noise floor due to all drivers being exposed to the full-bandwidth noise floor of the amp pack hold water? I've often wondered why active speakers 'hiss' more than passive speakers and this seems a plausible explanation.

Yes, that is plausible, though it is a non-issue with decent actives. There was very little hiss from the MEG RL904s I owned.

However it also implies that if a fault were to occur within the amp pack that sent DC downstream then all drive units would fry, not just the woofer?!

Again plausible if a shared supply with no protection circuitry (which is unlikely). The drivers are directly coupled to the amp whereas in a passive speaker there tends to be a capacitor that can save the tweeter in case of a bad amp failure downstream, though that isn’t its job.

That said the video is 100% ‘crossover salesman sells crossovers’. No different to ‘active speaker salesman sells active speakers’. Just eminently ignorable sales pitch IMHO.

PS ATC, MEG, Neumann etc make industry-proven monitor kit that is designed for reliability in situations where real money is lost from any outage. If they didn’t bring long-term reliability they would get nowhere near a pro studio environment. These tend to be very conservative businesses that prioritise proven reliability and serviceability very highly. Monitors are work equipment.
 


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