ATC VS WILSON SASHA

Brad Lunde · Sep 18, 2020

Hear Here said:
I bought my ATC Active 50s in about 2000 directly from ATC. They were a special price so may have been a demo pair thought perfect and current spec.

Yes I described them as in you face as I just wanted them pushed back a further 20 ft. I can't compare with the Wilsons as I've not heard those. However it came as a blessed relief when I changed the ATCs for Avantgarde Unos in 2002. Totally different but a breath of fresh air with huge excitement factor. The detail and finesse of the Unos were in huge contrast to the dead accurate but "dead" sound from ATC. Pity as I'd been after ATCs for the previous 10 years. Changed Unos for 2006 Duos last year and waiting for latest Duo XDs to arrive.

Peter

HI Peter:

ATC 50As 2000 era was a much different speaker that what is currently available- that was 20 years ago! With that 2000 era combo of parts I agree they were much more mid forward than all current designs. They may look the same but are not the same sonically. What ships today is a different woofer, tweeter, mid waveguide, three channel amp pack from then.

ATC manufacturers all their own drivers and amplifiers so there has been steady progress over the years. What is shipping now has been well reviewed by most of the hi fi press so I don't think the 20 yr old descriptions work anymore. Absolute Sound, Stereophile, What Hi Fi etc. I am not saying everyone should love them, as everyone has a different room altering any speaker's response. But it is true that many of the people who make the music choose to listen to playback on ATC's at home or the studio.

BTW< I am new to this forum, I am the ATC importer to the USA so I am obviously a vested party.

Brad Lunde
President Lone Mountain Audio/TransAudio Group
Las Vegas

Hear Here · Sep 19, 2020

Brad Lunde said:
HI Peter:

ATC 50As 2000 era was a much different speaker that what is currently available- that was 20 years ago! With that 2000 era combo of parts I agree they were much more mid forward than all current designs. They may look the same but are not the same sonically. What ships today is a different woofer, tweeter, mid waveguide, three channel amp pack from then.

ATC manufacturers all their own drivers and amplifiers so there has been steady progress over the years. What is shipping now has been well reviewed by most of the hi fi press so I don't think the 20 yr old descriptions work anymore. Absolute Sound, Stereophile, What Hi Fi etc. I am not saying everyone should love them, as everyone has a different room altering any speaker's response. But it is true that many of the people who make the music choose to listen to playback on ATC's at home or the studio.

BTW< I am new to this forum, I am the ATC importer to the USA so I am obviously a vested party.

Brad Lunde
President Lone Mountain Audio/TransAudio Group
Las Vegas

Hi Brad and thanks for replying.

Yes, I agree that considerable improvement has been made to the ATC50 Active since I bought mine (a friend in London has spent a fortune updating his old ATC50As to keep them up to current spec), but these older speakers still included 3 power amps for the 3 drivers. As you say, 2 of the drivers and the XO have been upgraded - more than once maybe. However the comment about the current model being very favourably reviewed applied equally in 2000 to the old model - that's largely why I bought them!

I admit that I've not heard ATC50s since I sold mine but I suspect they are still in the category of speakers designed for professional studio use rather than for use in consumers' living rooms. Inclidentally, my experience with amps designed primarily for studio use is much the same - best left in studios - there are far more enjoyable and exciting offerings (though probably not quite so "accurate") in the consumer market.

In 2000 ATC only offered one range of speakers, but since then have introduced their consumer range. I suspect and hope that these are tuned more for use in the home rather than just prettier enclosures with the same innards and same sound as the studio range. Peter

Brad Lunde · Sep 19, 2020

I am curious, for most participants here, what makes a speaker appropriate for a studio but not at home? I am not talking about small speakers, like NS10s or Auratone 5Cs, both of those are low fidelity but have an uncanny ability to help a mixer fix the “balance” and the midrange of his mix. But the larger mid fields and mains, I’m not sure I understand how these two uses are so different. Seems like a proper speaker should be good at anything you give it and reveal details that are deliberately put there by the artist or engineer. Yes or no?

Is making bad records sound better a part of the desired feature of a home speaker? Is making a Led Zeppelin record that has no bass sound like it has bass the goal of a good speaker?

Brad

Hear Here · Sep 19, 2020

Ah, now you're asking! This is what I found on the net today and it makes some sort of crude stab at the fundamental differences between studio speaker design and hifi speaker design:

"Studio monitors often look deceptively similar to home cinema and hi-fi speakers. But don’t be fooled by their likeness – studio monitors are built to behave differently. If we could sum it up in the simplest layman terms, hi-fi speakers are meant to sound good with any sound and in any space, while studio monitors are meant to sound bad (for want of a better word). This is because they’re designed for critical listening – you want to be able to pick out sonic imperfections so you can fix them."

I believe there's more than an element in truth in this. Studio speakers are not designed primarily to delight their listeners but to shout out the shortcomings in a recording so these can be corrected by the engineer.

As a music lover, I don't want my attention to be drawn to recording failures, but to be offered the most rewarding rendition of the recording, whatever its shortcomings. After all, I have no influence over the recording, unlike the engineer whose job it is to spot imperfections and manipulate the sound to the best of his abilities before it hits the consumer market.

What do others make of my amateurish take on the basic difference between these types of speaker? Peter

Muser · Sep 20, 2020

Hear Here wrote: “Studio speakers are not designed primarily to delight their listeners but to shout out the shortcomings in a recording so these can be corrected by the engineer.”

How about, swapping out “shout out” for “show?” I could go for that, personally. Yamaha NS10s (smallish bookshelf speakers) were used in recording studios but I think they were intended “to show” how a recording could sound in a sub-optimal system. I don't think they were used to obtain the last word in a recording.

I’m generally not a fan of horn speakers. I have, however, heard Horning and Odeon speakers sound very good and your Avantgarde speakers sound amazing. Part of my disrelish for horn speakers, however, is that I've heard Avantgarde speakers sound unpleasant more often than enjoyable. Factors beyond the speakers themselves play a significant role in how they sound.

I’ve listened to and owned quite a number of ATC speakers, both active (my preference) and passive played in a number of different rooms over many years. As with Avantgarde it’s possible to make them sound good and bad - matching a preamp to the ATCs is key. I’ve heard the active speakers sound unpleasant - amusingly, in ways somewhat similar to the Avantgarde speakers. I’ve also been able to create a sound with ATC speakers that I’ve found fantastic - to my taste. Whether an ATC based system sings for a given set of listeners is a different question. It begs the question what efforts were made to get what they want.

BTW, off topic, I am curious to hear your NAD Ncore amplifiers. I recently listened to a pair of VTV’s Purifi - Eigentakt mono blocks driving Gamut L5 speakers. It was remarkably close to the sound of Pass Labs’ XA30.8 driving the same speakers; my wife and I preferred the Pass, but I was surprised at how good the VTV amps were. I wonder how close NAD’s designers can get Ncore and Eigentakt amp designs to Pass’ work.

Hear Here · Sep 21, 2020

It would be nice to have a Delete option, rather than have to explain the duplicate posting that is so easy to create accidentally!

Hear Here · Sep 21, 2020

Muser - You quote my re-wording of a quote from an article in a recoding industry magazine. His quote I found pretty well coincided with my own experiences with "studio" speakers and amps. Neither delighted me, both were disappointingly bland, but I'm sure both were far more accurate than my "consumer" speakers and amps.

It's good to hear that you like your ATCs. Are they from ATC's "Professional" range or their "Consumer Hi-Fi" range? In reply to the posting by the new US ATC distribulor, I asked whether he knew if there was a difference in their respective performance, or was it just a fancy enclosure in the consumer range.

I agree with you that Avantgardes are tricky to get performing at their best and they are likely to be coloured rather than 100% accurate. The same applies of course to SET amplifiers that are so liked by horn users. I have no desire to listen to 100% accurate sound if a little colour adds excitement to the listening experience.

My new Duo XDs are still not outshining my old 2002 vintage Duos - 3 generations older. I truly hope that I'll get the new ones singing soon. Whether the new NAD M33 with its Purifi-based amp will do the trick I don't know, but I live in hope! Its Dirac feature may offer pointers as to how I should adjust the rather baffling XD elements of the Duos! XD offers no less than 10 different crossover designs (Butterworth, Bessel, etc) to choose from, plus infinitely adjustable XO frequency - at each end of the bass speakers' range - and that's just the start! That's surely bonkers, but at least the differences can be heard instantly at one's listening position using a software-loaded PC.

This new M33 is not Ncore, although NAD has used this module in other designs. I currently use their DirectDigital-based M32. This is described as a "DAC with gain" rather than an amplifier. It's very good but I'm hoping the M33 will be better still. Peter

sbo6 · Sep 21, 2020

ATCs will portray music as ruler flat, Wilsons will not and will vary per model (all things being equal). It depends what sound you are looking for. I know for some it can be addictive (warm, robust, syrupy, overly punchy mid bass, etc.) but IME once you hear a truly balanced speaker (as balanced as can be down to ~30Hz) you realize how unnatural and unrealistic many speakers are. For DIY hot rodders it's analogous to glass packs on a Hyundai. That's why when I looked a year or so back I ended up with Vivids. YMMV.

dcathro · Sep 21, 2020

I used to work with ATC monitors 20 years ago. I always thought that they were the best (most neutral/natural) sounding of all the pro monitors I heard.

The differences between the pro and consumer ATCs were always cosmetic - doubt that has changed.

Hear Here · Sep 21, 2020

dcathro said:
I used to work with ATC monitors 20 years ago. I always thought that they were the best (most neutral/natural) sounding of all the pro monitors I heard.

The differences between the pro and consumer ATCs were always cosmetic - doubt that has changed.

I think you're probably right, although I don't think that they should be. Regarding the opinion I quoted earlier about the difference between studio and home speakers, another way of looking at it is that studio speakers are required to be (as sbo6 describes) "ruler flat", so the use of measuring equipment in an anechoic chamber is the way to achieve this. The home speakers are best tuned by expert listeners sitting in front of them and playing music. They should be tuned to the point where they all get up and start dancing. Listener enjoyment over 'scope display any day! Peter

Muser · Sep 22, 2020

dcathro
RE: ATC
The entry level ("consumer" as you call them) speakers employ a constrained layer material in the mid-woofers of their 7/11/19 & 40 models. The upper range models, consumer or professional, use their "super linear" model. I'll leave that to Brad to correct. I preferred the sound of the SL drivers to the CLD, just more resolving.

SB06: Whether a brand/sound is for you or not . . . very personal. No speaker (system) I've heard has sounded "real" to me. Thus, I choose the sound(s) that provide enough illusion to turn off my annoyance meter and enjoy rendering(s) that let me forget I'm listening to a facsimile.

Hear Here, yes the M33 uses Purifi's Eigentakt, not the NCore technology. Still makes me curious about Ncore, more so than before.

Larry

dcathro · Sep 22, 2020

Muser said:
dcathro
RE: ATC
The entry level ("consumer" as you call them) speakers employ a constrained layer material in the mid-woofers of their 7/11/19 & 40 models. The upper range models, consumer or professional, use their "super linear" model. I'll leave that to Brad to correct. I preferred the sound of the SL drivers to the CLD, just more resolving.

SB06: Whether a brand/sound is for you or not . . . very personal. No speaker (system) I've heard has sounded "real" to me. Thus, I choose the sound(s) that provide enough illusion to turn off my annoyance meter and enjoy rendering(s) that let me forget I'm listening to a facsimile.

Hear Here, yes the M33 uses Purifi's Eigentakt, not the NCore technology. Still makes me curious about Ncore, more so than before.

Larry

Hi Larry,

I only have experience of the 100 and the 50 and 20, both passive and active. These were available to the pro and consumer markets. The pro version had a different finish with a rounded baffle and no grill. If memory serves me right, the pro price was cheaper . I personally preferred the passive with a good amp to their active, but the price of the actives at the time were hard to argue with.

Cheers

David

Muser · Sep 22, 2020

David:

I'm similarly acquainted with ATC. I've heard/owned all of their speakers, passive or active from the 50s down ( all 10s, but no 11's) and the active 100s.

Their active speakers require, for my taste, a matching preamplifier. While I can appreciate ATC's preamps, in the right system, they were a bit too hot for my taste and room. Initially I preferred their passive speakers, but once I learned to match the actives with the right preamp, I preferred the active.

I'm less interested in a "perfect" rendering of specific recordings, than interested in enjoying a variety of music. Dialing in a system is a little bit like balancing aperture and speed of a camera. Certain settings are best for one objective and not as good for another. Doesn't mean they're not (very?) good for many things.

Larry

Brad Lunde · Sep 24, 2020

Some well informed people here! Nice to see.

The question of studio or home does raise a question or two. For home, the argument is that hearing flaws is not desirable while in the studio it is. It must be tuning, or some other value that causes this. If I asked Billy Woodman (Engineer and Founder) this same studio vs home question, what would he say? Well I know that answer, he'd say he's not interested in making a speaker that highlights flaws or makes them go away. He's interested in making a low distortion speaker.

So to ATC's way of thinking, if they make a low distortion speaker, it should reveal everything there is. A low distortion speaker would reveal the hidden good stuff that is covered up with distortion, acting like a veil over the music. The bad news is when the veil goes away, it will also reveal the bad things played on the system. Billy would tell me "you cannot have one without the other!" "Distortion is bad in both home and studio, isn't it? Or is it okay at home? Or even desirable?" Of course not I'd say.

Making a speaker the highest performance you can with the best drivers you can is ATC's goal. A company that invests primarily in marketing or cosmetics (something people can see), does not make a speaker better than its drivers. You cannot fix drivers with EQ or DSP. And Billy would add "why would you not want a piano to sound like a piano?
Brad

Hear Here · Sep 25, 2020

Brad Lunde said:
Some well informed people here! Nice to see.

The question of studio or home does raise a question or two. For home, the argument is that hearing flaws is not desirable while in the studio it is. It must be tuning, or some other value that causes this. If I asked Billy Woodman (Engineer and Founder) this same studio vs home question, what would he say? Well I know that answer, he'd say he's not interested in making a speaker that highlights flaws or makes them go away. He's interested in making a low distortion speaker.

So to ATC's way of thinking, if they make a low distortion speaker, it should reveal everything there is. A low distortion speaker would reveal the hidden good stuff that is covered up with distortion, acting like a veil over the music. The bad news is when the veil goes away, it will also reveal the bad things played on the system. Billy would tell me "you cannot have one without the other!" "Distortion is bad in both home and studio, isn't it? Or is it okay at home? Or even desirable?" Of course not I'd say.

Making a speaker the highest performance you can with the best drivers you can is ATC's goal. A company that invests primarily in marketing or cosmetics (something people can see), does not make a speaker better than its drivers. You cannot fix drivers with EQ or DSP. And Billy would add "why would you not want a piano to sound like a piano?
Brad

Eliminating distortion alone will not a good speaker make! There's lots more to it and there's little doubt that the best speaker designed for the studio is not the same as the best speaker designed for home listening and vice versa.

You're comments about how Woodman would answer these questions are your assumptions - I'm pleased to see you say "he would reply" rather than "he replied".

I'm not trying to deny that ATC make excellent speakers, as they surely do. All I'm saying is that speakers that are designed and developed over dacades primarily for studio use may be disappointing when used at home, but they may be great in some rooms for some audiophiles. Conversely there are lots of excellent "consumer" speakers with very low distortion levels, but these are not likely to be on the recording engineer's shopping list.

Brad Lunde · Sep 25, 2020

Hear Here said:
Eliminating distortion alone will not a good speaker make! There's lots more to it and there's little doubt that the best speaker designed for the studio is not the same as the best speaker designed for home listening and vice versa.

You're comments about how Woodman would answer these questions are your assumptions - I'm pleased to see you say "he would reply" rather than "he replied".

I'm not trying to deny that ATC make excellent speakers, as they surely do. All I'm saying is that speakers that are designed and developed over decades primarily for studio use may be disappointing when used at home, but they may be great in some rooms for some audiophiles. Conversely there are lots of excellent "consumer" speakers with very low distortion levels, but these are not likely to be on the recording engineer's shopping list.

HI Here here

Interesting comment but I am definitely not on board. Your statement that "the best speaker designed for the studio is not the same as the best speaker designed for home listening" sounds like you are making a statement of fact when it that is not true. A studio monitor should be flat? This is also a myth that died long ago when nearly everyone agrees that flat is WAY too bright. The real difference is studio monitors cannot have power compression issues (affecting dynamics and max levels), cannot have changing EQ, must have linear phase (making the speaker better in translation to other speakers) and must be bullet proof reliable (studios charge by the hour so anything that stops work costs money). It should have very consistent dispersion across its bandwidth (especially in scoring work where there are multiple people in the control room working) and be packaged to fit one of the 3 room formats: nearfield (close distance to the speakers to reduce room effects), midfield (larger speakers on stands) or far field (big high power speakers built into a wall). There are more differences but most are not sound quality related (issues like how easy to get parts and repair).

Studio speakers are by design different sounding? This was maybe true in the 1980s but science has shown a better way. Better sound is a shared goal with some education and experience. Studio people share more with audiophiles than you'd guess, endlessly fussing over the system trying to make them better with a better DAC, a better mic pre (equal to a phono preamp), better mics, better clocking etc. I know the guy who does most of the recording at Capitol for Diana Krall; he's known to spend an entire day on where the mic(s) should be placed to get the sound he wants for just drums!

Brad
Lone Mountain Audio
TransAudio Group

HenryD · Sep 25, 2020

Brad,

Can you please point to ATC distortion measurements, I couldn't find any reference on-line to these.

Brad Lunde · Sep 25, 2020

HI Henry D

Here is the white paper that discusses the driver design in detail and explains the approach to distortion.

https://www.transaudiogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ATCWhitepaper.pdf

Brad

HenryD · Sep 25, 2020

This white paper is 26 years old and has very rudimentary measurements. There must be some independent data on the subject? For such an iconic brand, with such explicit claims, I am surprised I can't find any.

mr-particle · Sep 26, 2020

HenryD said:
This white paper is 26 years old and has very rudimentary measurements. There must be some independent data on the subject? For such an iconic brand, with such explicit claims, I am surprised I can't find any.

The only review showing distortion measurements is a review some years ago in the German Stereoplay magazine.

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