@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