ATC SCM150 Amp and Preamp recommendations

@dpac996 I was reading a post by someone who got the $3k streamer from PBD and also owned the more expensive PBD one. The person said they kept the cheaper one and sold the uber streamer.

BTW - Nagra licensees the streamer tech from the PBD USB-X4 and sells it for $5k. They do something similar with their $50k DAC which uses the 3rd-tier PBF FGPA  boards.

@ei001h 

Sounds like your journey ended up in the right place.  Ultimately the thing that makes ATC the MOST different is the low distortion drivers.  This is is something both passive ad active users can appreciate when it helps them hear things they otherwise wouldn't.   

Funny how distortion in drivers appears to our ears: not necessarily as a change in tone or audible distortion, but as masking, the veil obscurring information.  Remove that and a world opens up!

The only negative to low distortion is the recods you loved for the music can sometimes soumnd rather awful.  I remember the first time I heard Genesis "Selling England By the Pound" on a pair of ATCs and I was quite disappointed: NO bass at all, almost like it had been rolled off at 400 Hz!  This was likely caused by the mix monitors or mastering monitors having too much bass in the studio and therefore the engineers thought they had ait rght when they didn't.  This was common until they finally realized that a flat speaker or one with less bass was best to mix on.  Getting your monitors right is important to make sure that your fans get to ehar what they expect. 

Brad   

@onhwy61 

ATC actually did make an active crossover years ago, before they made the "amp packs" with everything built in.  I’ve asked about making another one over the years, but calibrating a system properly is not easy.  I use an Audio Precision here in our shop (10K piece of test equiipment) plus an expensive calibration microphone and a treated room; this is almost impossible at home.    This calibration is critical to the entire active idea.  Asking end users to do this at home sucessfully sounds like a lot of complaint phone calls coming in to me!  Its a complex process to correctly calibrate and check your work, especially when trying to stereo match a pair of speakers in different locations in the room.  A 1/2dB level difference across an entire band is quite audible.  Its nearly impossible to measure correctly in a living room with all the irregular surfaces and 1st reflections., windows, etc.  Using a DIRAC or REW or other such method makes it very diffeicult as all these systems look at a single point in space so it doesn apply to the entire room.  Trinnov is better, a lot of advantages in that mic they developed.     

Brad

Thank you for your response.

No disrespect to the OP, but I couldn't imagine not getting the powered ATCs.  It would be comparable to getting the big MBL Radials and not using matching MBL amps.  Both are designed as loudspeaker systems.  But others clearly disagree.  It's possible that the details of calibration might actually appeal to those looking to achieve their desired sound profile.  Probably a very niche market.

@lonemountain Many thanks for chiming in. As a latecomer to the ATC party, I’m super happy I finally arrived. As Doug MacLeod says, “there’s a difference between late and too late”. I have a pair of SCM40 passives which hooked me then got the SCM50 passives. I love them 😍. It is way too easy to raise the volume due to the super low distortion. There is zero, I mean zero sense of strain or compression. It’s really cool. The midrange openness and sheer sense of transparency is spine tinglingly good. I did audition for hours, the active versions and for me the passive with a Moon amp did the trick. ATC definitely knows how to design a proper crossover and speaker system, as these are the best passives I’ve ever heard and have had in my space. I do like the ability to have some flexibility with amps and cables, and so whatever real world trade offs there are b/t the active and passives melts away once I sit and listen. What I don’t understand is why everyone doesn’t own ATC speakers active or passive. The engineering of the drivers stands on its own. They really nail the whole package beyond the raw drivers too. I guess we are just a bunch of audio fools in the end and we like what we like. 
 

@yyzsantabarbara I wonder if the USB-X with Lumin U2 will match the MPS-X streamer. I have really gotten used to Lumin and have no issues with the performance but there is something nice about all PBD and one box solution