ATC speakers do not even provide frequency response measurements on their website. You'd think they would give you plenty of measurements to look at given that they brag about how accurate their speakers are. The are just overpriced overrated speakers that have achieved success based on rave reviews by so called industry professionals that know nothing about speaker design.
ATC are a driver manufacturer that have no expertise in speaker design. You would think a high end speaker would be far more advanced than just a wooden box with drivers in 'em but thats exactly what ATC are.
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@lonemountain I could tell you were not a typical customer, now I get it. I checked your profile and you don't have a system posted. Would you mine sharing? Do you know how the virtual system page works? Thanks
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@lonemountain
Some people want it to sound like it’s supposed to, the way Fleetwood Mac decided or Tom Petty or Lenny Kravitz. ATC enables you to get that, and you cannot get that with passives.
I set up my home theater with the intention of replicating to the degree that is practical what the mixing engineer of a movie or album heard on the soundstage. I exchanged emails with the owner of the Dub Stage and Galaxy Studios. Both were very helpful in advising me on how to treat my room. Wilfred Van Balen from Galaxy Studios and founder of Auro 3D emphasized treating the ceiling and suggested bass traps. I am using a combo of absorption panels and Geofusers from Auralex which are diffusors that can be backfilled with rockwool or polyfil to double as bass traps. Both studios use active monitors and while I am sure they sound much better than my home theater, active speakers gave me the ability to bi-amp each speaker AND have that power go to the driver, not just excess heat. With 13 speakers that is roughly 26 channels of amplification. Even if I had that many amplifiers in a biamp configuration it still wouldn’t be as efficient. If you listen to acoustic music at low to medium levels, no worries. If you listen to concerts and action movies at reference level like I do, totally different animal. Look at these specs:
http://www.cain.cainslair.com/Paradigm%20Reference%20Active%20Series%20Specifications.htm
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Hey Kota1
Nice post on your system. Yes Galaxy has been one of the top players in "good sounding" studios in the EU for a long time. Check out the latest from MIraval, the revival of an old room. Also British Grove in the UK is spectacular.
Reference level, I'm not sure what that boils down to for you in SPL, but I know Dolby likes systems to have reference ATMOS rooms somewhere around 118dB capability. Not easy without distortion but we have several rooms that function at that level: Blackbird in Nashville and Ben Walfisch's Mix Lab room in Santa Monica. I cannot listen to anything that loud, it hurts!
We have quite a number of guys using our stuff in film composing/scoring world, such as Alan Meyerson at Remote Control for Hans Zimmer, or Shawn Murphy. They are both A level players in that community.
All the gear used by these guys is all active, typically ATC SCM100A for scoring or SCM150A or SC 300 A for Atmos mixing.
I wouldn't mind at all posting what I have at home, but i have not tried to figure out how to do that on Audiogon. To be fair, my system changes all the time as I bring samples home from my office or take samples back to sell off. I have a ATMOS rig at home and at work, both similar, based around ATC HTS 40s, and HTS 11 for sides (7.2.4) and HTS 7 for overheads. I use two ATC C1s for subs at work and 2 Subwoofer Pros 12s at home.
Brad
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@lonemountain , that would be awesome, you run in some high profile circles and I would appreciate checking it out. There is a "Virtual Systems" area here, you just go to the page and their is a link to Create System to start your system, you can list components, add comments and add pics. If you are able to upload measurements that would be a plus.
I notice you use 7 channel bed layer, have you tried adding wide channels at 60 degrees before for 9 channels? I find it much better for music in immersive audio.
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Fully active digital xover triamped/biamped speakers using pure digital input amps would simply kill any speaker alive.....he he......that statement will get you going.
The Peachtree GaN 1 is a 200 watt a channel stereo amp that has coax input only. It converts PCM directly to PWM.....there are no linear amplifier stages or feedback......this is the same as Tact, Lyndorf and Technics.....but according to the guy that makes these inexpensive modules.....he thinks they sound better than Technics.......check out the thread on the amp here on Audiogon.
The module in the GaN 1 is a 4 channel amp (50 watts each) that combines two pairs in differential mode to make 200 watts. If you bought two of these $2000 amps and rewired each one so you had a three channel amp.....two 50 watters and one 200 watter per channel......you could then tri-amp using a minidsp digital xover or other pure digital xover. You could then hardwire the outputs of the amps directly to the voice coil wire of drivers mounted on a super damped and braced open baffle....or box....if you like box sound. Now you have a triamped speaker that uses no DAC, no preamp, no linear amps, no passive xover. By using software in the digital domain you can time align the drivers, make the frequency flat as a board at your listening position and set the xover at any slope and frequency you want. This would simply blow your frickin mind. The volume would be controlled in the digital domain in the server/streamer using lossless digital volume control. What I suggest has never been done before but is available now. You could do it yourself......but most here are not DIYers. I am sure there are manufacturers of speakers that will be implementing exactly what I suggest inside a loudspeaker......The output board weighs less than 2 lbs......the revolution is now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Those fearing passive networks and driver integration issues seem to be a logical choice for a full-range driver system. Since it's active. 1 amp selected to best match transducers 1 driver no network. Maybe that's where you active lovers need to be in the end. And keep in mind many actives still use a passive part to keep drivers from blowing during amp turn-on or amp damage. And is the cabinet really the best place for an amp and an active crossover to reside? I have to fix so so many subwoofers that have an amp and active all-in-one box they don't have longevity. Is your costly active just a short-term friend that gets binned in a few years when amps fail?
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@ricevs , that is an interesting direction to go, DIY. I know GR Research and Crites have kits for speakers. Do you think you could take an off the shelf $ amp and and $ speaker, do a little DIY and make it sound $$$?
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@johnk , my Paradigm active spekaers have an LED light that makes the logo glow green. When you max it out they turn red so you know to turn it down.
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@johnk wrote:
Those fearing passive networks and driver integration issues seem to be a logical choice for a full-range driver system. Since it's active. 1 amp selected to best match transducers 1 driver no network. Maybe that's where you active lovers need to be in the end.
A wideband driver sans cross-over of any kind is a "pure" approach, also with regard to maintaining a single point source per channel, but driver integration actively is really the preferred route to go vs. passive, so it's the latter "camp" that would seek to benefit the most with a pair of full-range drivers, irrespective of the challenges (and limitations) such a solution brings with it. Calling a full-range driver sans cross-over an "active" approach btw. doesn't seem strictly correct, as by definition active involves an electronic/DSP XO prior to amplification to be named such.
And keep in mind many actives still use a passive part to keep drivers from blowing during amp turn-on or amp damage. And is the cabinet really the best place for an amp and an active crossover to reside?
Safety measures with active can be part of the amplifier section as well instead of necessitating of passive component, and even so a single capacitor as a safety means isn't what constitutes a load scenario comparable to that of typical passive cross-over with coils and all.
As I have outlined at numerous occasions active can be configured as a separate (/outward) solution as well, and so "component care" would apply as it pertains to any typical passive setup. Among the many bundled active speakers that are, incl. not least pro sector products, reliability seems pretty solid. Poster @lonemountain mentioned active ATC speakers being extremely reliable even following many years of extensive pro usage, while sounding great, not to mention cables being less of a variable here. Except..
I have to fix so so many subwoofers that have an amp and active all-in-one box they don't have longevity. Is your costly active just a short-term friend that gets binned in a few years when amps fail?
And this is the one exception - with actively configured, bundled subs - where amp durability can be rather dubious and many a (bad) capacitor in particular has blown up fairly early in its life cycle. Plate amps found in many subs may be high power, but component quality is often so-so to pretty shitty.
Again, this is where I would direct the attention towards the fact that an actively configured sub can be such with an outwardly positioned amp (of much better quality). This is what I do myself with my pair of tapped horn subs being driven by a Crown K2 - actively; the digital XO precedes the amp, and the rest of them for the remaining frequency span above sans any passive XO parts, which is to say fully actively.
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The synergy is built into the loudspeaker and the audiophile doesn’t have to search for some magical pairing of loudspeaker and amplifier. Active loudspeakers definitely have the potential for better sound compared to passive designs.
Whose synergy? The designers?
The reason audiophiles use separates is to create their personal synergy that works best with their tastes and the sound of their particular room. Audiophiles generally do not want Genelecs or Kii 3, despite their brilliant measured nearfield response in an anechoic chamber.
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Has anyone listened to the RBH active SVTR-active towers? They get glowing reviews at Audioholics. I am considering them myself at this time but I can't seem to find others that have heard them.
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@kac32
I have not heard them but keep in mind RBH is a sponsor of Audioholics.
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Ahha I did not realize that. Thank you for that tidbit.
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I don't know the size of your room but those RBH towers seem huge. If I were shopping at that size and price range I would compare with the JBL M2's and the Bryston Active Model T. I am sure all three measure and perform exemplary.
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I went through a few months of soul searching on going active after a midrange driver’s ferrofluid on an old beloved 25yo speaker turned to gooey molasses and started to seize. After running out of driver replacements (had a stock-pile being these were very delicate things) but these drivers were no longer replaceable or repairable, so time to reevaluate everything. I was fully committed (with cost efficient solutions) to the extra amplifiers, cables, and an electronic crossover - Danville Signal dspNexus (and requisite software to make it work), along w/ Orchard Audio BOSC/Starkrimson mono’s and Newform Research’s flagship Last Dance speaker.. which is just the perfect candidate for this given it can be spec’d with an external crossover and has a fundamentally great driver design, but needs electronic time alignment as the line source sits proud of the phalanx of Purifi mid-woofers by a good couple inches.. ie not physically time-aligned, quite the opposite.
Anyways.. only $13k for everything. You could spend far more by staying passive and not have the near the same power or potential.
No doubt, on paper.. active is more efficient, and theoretically you can be more surgical in creating an editable phase linear crossover. Non-destructive R&D. The softwares and devices to create these software networks has become good enough that with a long weekend, most audiophiles with some computer savvy can figure out how to go about it.. but the reality is, it may not sound good to your ears for weeks, months... or longer, if you want better than that. There is so much more to making a good sounding speaker (system actually) than just getting the math right. Our ears (& brain.. ear-interface) are far more sensitive to input than can be evaluated by looking at a plot on a computer screen.. as right as it may appear according to whatever audio-cookbook you may be reading . Our brains are so good at perceiving harmonic falsehoods (odd order distortions and clocking errors) that things which engineers decide are truths get thwarted by reviewers and potential buyers all the time. I’ve heard enough active systems over the years at shows, which sound dynamic.. wide bandwidth.. low distortion, etc, but they are almost always just missing a certain magic you don’t get from a well component-matched system.
I’m an all digital guy.. my entire library is 1’s and 0’s.. don’t own a turntable, but honestly I’ve yet to hear a DAC that sounds as good as a high end vinyl playback system when it comes to becoming emotional involved with the music. Its close in some cases.. but not yet.
It also occurred to me.. what if I had this digital Swiss Army knife? Theoretically I could create any house sound signature with these digital tools and prodigiously powerful array of GaNFET amplification ..driving epically-wide-bandwidth transducers. There wouldn’t be much a point to change any hardware for a long while.. my job description as a system builder/home audio alchemist would now be re-rewritten as ’crossover programmer.’ To some this might seem fun, and no doubt my ears would always be challenged to decipher the nodal changes made to a crossover diagram, however I already stare at a computer screen long enough for my day job, and also I’d be restraining myself from the joy of selecting, unboxing.. just the tactile satisfaction of configuring real objects into a real working collection of symphonic devices to produce a result.. an expectation, whether failed or achieved.. would be lost. The gamble is lost.. and there is no winning. Yes, I suppose you can win at the math.. at object-oriented-programming on a computer screen, but is this the same hobby?
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Not to beat a dead horse after my lengthy post, but read this active speaker review and you’ll have an idea if you want to go this route. This is a highly regarded all-in-one ’easy’ solution for going active. No doubt there are people who will want this, and the audio world is a better place for it, but it’s a different process. (Stereophile’s review of the also highly regarded Dutch & Dutch 8c is another you might want to read). Both are probably excellent choices for clean sounding minimalist systems.. but if you’re a traditional audiophile, in these cases you may very well start to wonder what other hardware is inside that box. Do you immediately trust someone when you meet them? Well, then you're a good soul.. and these speakers will be all you'll ever need. No right or wrong answer.. only choices.
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Just to tickle the dragon, believing this subject somewhat beaten to death, not only in this post but others, but are not nearly everyone's subwoofers active? I like many here have owned a plethora of everything, but I've never done the passive subwoofer with a dedicated separate amp. Would that not be the same argument?
I'm just wondering respectfully how that plays out with the zealot passive transducer crowd. Confident that confirmation bias will rage in and have a declaration of "that's not the same thing!" It makes me smile.
I know what works for me and do not wish to proselytize to others.
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@celtic66 , that is exactly the same thing, the benefits of an active sub apply to active speakers.
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Imo, subs are a different situation… 20-30ft LF wavelengths and room interaction.. so a sub needs dsp to deal with modal issues. A properly designed speaker has controlled dispersion above 80hz.
And sure.. you can have a sub as separates if you want. The company that made my sub actually does this in their standard home theatre installations.. everything is separate, but this is far above my pay grade.
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@jhw9 , all speakers have room interaction issues, need proper placement, and can often benefit from DSP. Many active speakers have controls in the back unlike passive speakers, similar to a subs controls only more appropriate for the type of speaker.
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Upper octave and lower octave room interactions seem quite different. One is a direct reflection that more or less preserves its waveform, so will be perceived as a smeared or reflected sound from the source (and not sure how you effectively dsp this because you're talking about reflections of detailed recognizable things.. vocals, instruments, etc), whereas with the latter the wave is often longer than the room, and are for the most part are truncated waveforms that manifest as unrecognizable resonances. These anomalies can be more imperceptibly fixed with dsp.
All that said.. even if you could effectively dsp upper octave room interactions.. who wants to listen in an anechoic chamber? That is a very dead.. boring listening space.
Dsp'ing transducers on the other hand makes some sense.. nullifying their unwanted resonances with the inside of the speaker cabinet and also leveling the direct output between drivers to give a flat output. Nonetheless, I am still suspicious of sticking sensitive DAC/DSP electronics into a noisy, vibrating space.. and also of speaker manufactures who also claim to be amp experts, and dsp experts. I don't think the company that makes the Holo DAC line wants to put their best work into a cauldron of strong magnetic fields.. a space that is literally shaking. I know it can be done, I'm just not sure if putting it inside, or attaching it to the speaker is a good idea.
I am still learning all this.. this is the way I understand it right now. I do own some small class AB active monitors designed by Simon Aston (Audiosmile/uk), btw. They serve a specific purpose, and I like them, but I don't nitpick their performance.
Some irony here is, the new (passive) speakers I chose (forgoing re-working my entire system and going the active route, but with separates) are designed by a music producer/studio engineer who primarily designs and manufacturers active speaker systems for his studios and clients.. this is how he makes his living. He's also designed very large line-array theatre installations for live performances. He's not a traditional audiophile speaker designer, however he still feels compelled to design and sell (albeit in very low volume) high-end passives. I'll have to ask him why next time. I still have this active digital crossover system in the back of my mind (but with separates), but just need some extra space to set up a second large system. I would like to see how good I can make it work.
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I have a question to "active in the hobby" audiophiles. Here's the background:
If you use a super low distortion [active] speaker system, it reveals more about everything upstream. I find that when I use an ATC active, what drives it ( preamp, CD player, streamer, turntable, etc) has a much greater impact on the resulting sound than the same exact speaker as a passive. Image is greatly affected by active vs passive. I can hear more "character" differences between these upstream devices, even cables become more obvious. For me, this increases the desire to play around with different things in the rig and see what the differences are.
So my question: How is active taking choice away or reducing the [audiophile] hobby? There is far more to a system than amplifiers. To my ear, it increases choice, as these choices are suddenly far more obvious.. Example: the difference between cartridges is FAR greater than the difference between two good to excellent amps. Note I did not say you cannot hear a difference in amps, I said that other transducers in the system are more evident than amplifiers alone in a passive system.
Brad
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@lonemountain , I haven't used an ATC active but agree that my Paradigm Active 20 is far more revealing than the Paradigm Studio 20 which is the passive version.
I found my choice reduced when it came to speaker cables, which saved me money (yay), so I focused on upgrading the power. All of my speakers are internally biamped so that is a power hungry system when you have as many active speakers as I do. MCH music is sublime in my system, so much that I use it 90% of the time. If my speakers were less revealing MCH wouldn't be as satisfying.
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@lonemountain wrote:
If you use a super low distortion [active] speaker system, it reveals more about everything upstream.
Agreed.
So my question: How is active taking choice away or reducing the [audiophile] hobby? There is far more to a system than amplifiers. To my ear, it increases choice, as these choices are suddenly far more obvious.. Example: the difference between cartridges is FAR greater than the difference between two good to excellent amps. Note I did not say you cannot hear a difference in amps, I said that other transducers in the system are more evident than amplifiers alone in a passive system.
Not to mention that an active approach can be taken with outboard amps and DSP/electronic XO, whereby the choice of these components exists to take the hobby element of active even further, not least with regard to setting filter values if a more radical DIY-path is chosen. Even though amps matter less imprinting-wise here there’s still a worthwhile process to be pursued in differentiating them, both in terms of quality and quantity of wattages, to their dedicated and respective driver segments.
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