advertisement


Puzzling results with ATC SCM50ASLT loudspeakers vs. previous system

AndyU said:
What on earth does that mean? These are hifi nonsense terms. Have you ever sat within ten metres of Steinway, or a string quartet, or an orchestra, or a rock band, or a jazz group and heard “air” or “sound staging”?. Real music, real musicians, sound solid, real, enormous, they make your soul shake, they arouse you, they make you feel more. You don’t buy ATCs for “air”, you buy them for musical credibility, for a visceral connectedness to the music that transports you. If you don’t feel that, sell them, they are wasted on you. Buy some stupid hifi rubbish, spend lots of money on cables, and listen to “air”.
Click to expand...
Yes to all of those live music performances and yes to being able to follow one instrument among all the other instruments and also identify its position on the stage, unless the performance is non-acoustic and amplified badly.

Where I live I am fortunate to be able to attend live music of all genres, by both local and internationally renound musicians (sometimes they're both!). There's not a week that goes by when I have not attended a live music event of some sort. That reminds me that it's the Cheltenham Jazz Festival soon...
 
Matthew J said:
Yes to all of those live music performances and yes to being able to follow one instrument among all the other instruments and also identify its position on the stage, unless the performance is non-acoustic and amplified badly.

Where I live I am fortunate to be able to attend live music of all genres, by both local and internationally renound musicians (sometimes they're both!). There's not a week that goes by when I have not attended a live music event of some sort. That reminds me that it's the Cheltenham Jazz Festival soon...
Click to expand...
So at which of these gigs did you ever hear “air”.? What does “air” sound like?
 
AndyU said:
So at which of these gigs did you ever hear “air”.? What on earth does that mean? These are hifi nonsense terms. Have you ever sat within ten metres of a Steinway, or a string quartet, or an orchestra, or a rock band, or a jazz group and heard “air” or “sound staging”?. Real music, real musicians, sound solid, real, enormous, they make your soul shake, they arouse you, they make you feel more. You don’t buy ATCs for “air”, you buy them for musical credibility, for a visceral connectedness to the music that transports you. If you don’t feel that, sell them, they are wasted on you. Buy some stupid hifi rubbish, spend lots of money on cables, and listen to “air”.
Click to expand...

AndyU said:
So at which of these gigs did you ever hear “air”.? What does “air” sound like?
Click to expand...

Did you perhaps get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning? Lighten up!
 
AndyU said:
So at which of these gigs did you ever hear “air”.? What does “air” sound like?
Click to expand...
A string quartet for example, when each instrument can be identified and followed separately, if one wishes.

My point is that the sound of a live performance does not collapse when the music gets busy and neither should the reproduction of that music from a hifi.

I am fully aware of all the hifi industry and media BS and this is not that.
 
Matthew J said:
A string quartet for example, when each instrument can be identified and followed separately, if one wishes.

My point is that the sound of a live performance does not collapse when the music gets busy and neither should the reproduction of that music from a hifi.

I am fully aware of all the hifi industry and media BS and this is not that.
Click to expand...
I don’t think we speak thr same language. I can’t intuit any conceivable meaning of “air” that is to do with identifiying or following any instrument in a string quartet. I suggest you put your speakers and you in a 1.8m - 2m equilateral triangle as far away from walls as possible, point them in so you are on axis of the midrange unit, or possibly slightly below that, junk the voodoo cables, drive the them straight from your DAC, preferably the Chord, and listen to some music at a decent level. If they don’t blow you away, sell them, they are not for you.
 
Matthew J said:
A string quartet for example, when each instrument can be identified and followed separately, if one wishes.

My point is that the sound of a live performance does not collapse when the music gets busy and neither should the reproduction of that music from a hifi.

I am fully aware of all the hifi industry and media BS and this is not that.
Click to expand...
@Matthew J I'm not sure why some people are giving you such a hard time. Unfortunately PFM lacks civility at times. And some of the 'advice' you've been offered is all over the place. Incidentally, I understand what you mean by 'air' perfectly well, and I'm sure plenty of others do too.

Your issue is a conundrum. I don't have much to suggest, I'm afraid, other than maybe trying moving the speakers around, even firing them down the room perhaps - but I appreciate wholesale rearrangement of the room might not be practical. (And I do agree that getting them away from walls and toed in is worth trying.)

At the end of the day, we don't all have the same tastes in music reproduction. I've heard some very expensive, highly rated gear that didn't appeal to me at all. But others loved it. Maybe the ATC sound just isn't for you.
 
AndyU said:
What on earth does that mean? These are hifi nonsense terms. Have you ever sat within ten metres of a Steinway, or a string quartet, or an orchestra, or a rock band, or a jazz group and heard “air” or “sound staging”?. Real music, real musicians, sound solid, real, enormous, they make your soul shake, they arouse you, they make you feel more. You don’t buy ATCs for “air”, you buy them for musical credibility, for a visceral connectedness to the music that transports you. If you don’t feel that, sell them, they are wasted on you. Buy some stupid hifi rubbish, spend lots of money on cables, and listen to “air”.
Click to expand...

See there you go Matthew J - Its YOU that's all wrong! Couldn't possibly be the speakers 🤣🤣🤣
 
Matthew J said:
A string quartet for example, when each instrument can be identified and followed separately, if one wishes.

My point is that the sound of a live performance does not collapse when the music gets busy and neither should the reproduction of that music from a hifi.

I am fully aware of all the hifi industry and media BS and this is not that.
Click to expand...
With a live performance you do have the visual clue of where the musician is sitting. Most music is recorded in a studio, air is not really a factor.

Ultimately it’s a lot of money if you don’t like them.
 
The two aspects of any hifi system that effect sound quality are the speakers and their interaction with the room. The OP has had a dramatic change of speakers. This change seems not to be producing the expected SQ improvement. This will be mostly down to the ATC's presentation; quite some way from the Cambridge, imo. It may well be that thry just don't suit.

There certainly is some justification to the comments about sources and pres. Many do not fully appreciate the contribution they make to overall SQ. I would certainly be using a 'better' front enc with these very revealing ATCs. However, the fundemental here is that these ATCs just do not suit the OP and do not gel in the system
 
Rug Doc said:
I think you’re underestimating the Cambridge audios in your room!
Click to expand...
Yes. I looked up the R50 since they are unfamiliar to me. They are serious loudspeakers. Kef B139, B110 & T27 plus Coles 4001 drivers in a TL enclosure.

I think the Kef 104AB had the same drivers minus the Coles in a different cabinet and sounded good to me many years ago (if my memory serves me well). My broader experience is that Kef have consistently made excellent drivers. Loudspeakers using them are not to be underestimated.

IMHO the R50 has great ingredients. If integrated well that leads me to expect the difference between them and ATC SCM50As (which I have) could be more towards the subtle end of the spectrum than the startling end. Perhaps the ATCs may have better power handling (louder) a little less distortion (more detail) but maybe not a lot more.
 
Do you still have your old speakers and amps? Might be worth trying them back in the room to see if you still like them, if the old stuff now doesn’t sound as good as it used to, it might not be the ATCs fault.

However your description of the issues experienced sounds to me like perhaps the presentation of the ATCs may not be to your taste. They are very much from a studio monitor heritage and highly resolving and linear, and hence can be better at showing what’s wrong with a recording than what’s right. I had a similar experience. I love my Genelec 8331s, but in the end their ruthlessly revealing nature drove me nuts and I’m building a more forgiving system to go alongside them. Also the Genelecs clearly displayed the rooms shortcomings, I now have lots of treatment, but the ATCs may also require a benign acoustic space to sound good.
 
Matthew J said:
My point is that the sound of a live performance does not collapse when the music gets busy and neither should the reproduction of that music from a hifi.
Click to expand...
Agree with you on this. I was not long ago playing Mars from Holsts Planets Suite and during the crescendo passages the soundstage and instrument separation could collapse into an unintelligible ‘wall of sound’. But this was not due to my ATC 150 actives. It was a Holo dac that I was trying out compared to my Dave and which was the problem.

It is not impossible that your ATC 50s are a cause of the problem but my experience is that maybe there is something else at play?
 
How long exactly have you spent with the new speakers? From my experience, it takes something like a month or two to really get to understand what stuff is doing differently. I'd certainly not worry too much until this sort of period has elapsed.

In your head, consider it to be 'running in', something that the speakers need to do, or the electrons in the cable need to adjust or whatever foo nonsense you want to believe, but the reality is that it is you and your brain that need to adjust to understand how energy meets your ears. Remember, the whole stereo music reproduction thing is an illusion, there is no centre image, there is no depth information beyond what your brain interprets, so you have to be attuned to how to interpret the confusing message your ears receive to extract the impression you want from the reality (that you are sat in your front room, not a concert hall etc).

New equipment tends to make you concentrate and 'try too hard'. I think a better approach is to avoid critical listening, just enjoy the sound and live with the equipment for a while till the newness wears off. You want the sound to wash over you, and I think this is when your brain learns to interpret the sound, at that point you stand more of a chance to actually get into the zone where you believe the illusion, and then you can decide whether the new equipment is doing a better job of convincing you. It's one of the reasons that listening in subdued lighting helps, since you can't see the new shiny speakers in front of you.

Of course, you may know all this, and have done this, and the ATCs don't work for you. That's fine, and i'm not going to rule that out, but you have to make sure you give them a chance, you have to believe before you can hope to hear what's really possible.
 
Back to the opening post:
Matthew J said:
However, with busy tracks the sound collapses, sound staging and instrument separation could be way better...
Click to expand...
This is the very un-ATC bit I don't get. With my SCM40A's, busy tracks sound amazing; I can sit back and listen to the whole musical presentation or when I'm in test/comparison mode (of other components) I can zoom in on a cowbell or a piano or a double bass pluck and everything is there. Absolutely no collapsing of anything.

Matthew J said:
... and bad recordings do sound terrible
Click to expand...
And this is classic transparent active ATC which most of us love. Anything which made a bad recording sound great would need to mask so much of the sound-as-recorded that one's music collection would all sound much if a muchness. It's like putting ketchup on everything you eat; it might be a taste you like but ultimately you're not experiencing the rich variety of flavours and textures on your plate.

If you don't like this accuracy or representation then ATCs might not be for you and that's fair enough of course, but I'm not convinced you're hearing anything like what they're capable of. I'm out of ideas on why though!
 
Btw, there’s no such thing as ‘bad recordings’ (ok, maybe 1%). Who even invented this I wonder. If you experience a significant number of a bad things, that’s an indication your system has problems in the power supply domain. You should be able to enjoy all music and ATC for sure helps in this regard not prevents it.
 
John Phillips said:
Yes. I looked up the R50 since they are unfamiliar to me. They are serious loudspeakers. Kef B139, B110 & T27 plus Coles 4001 drivers in a TL enclosure.

I think the Kef 104AB had the same drivers minus the Coles in a different cabinet and sounded good to me many years ago (if my memory serves me well). My broader experience is that Kef have consistently made excellent drivers. Loudspeakers using them are not to be underestimated.

IMHO the R50 has great ingredients. If integrated well that leads me to expect the difference between them and ATC SCM50As (which I have) could be more towards the subtle end of the spectrum than the startling end. Perhaps the ATCs may have better power handling (louder) a little less distortion (more detail) but maybe not a lot more.
Click to expand...
Review of R50 here: https://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=16993.0
the HiFi Choice 'short report' was less than complementary about the midrange colouration- B110 quack.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top