PMC vs. ATC

Hey brizon,

Well I don't doubt we could swap systems and go on enjoying ourselves, I'm glad we (I) had a holiday weekend to sort this out.

All do respect to what you were saying, I get it now but you were talking like two people, and I appreciate you dumbing it down but to me it was deceptive (not intentional I know) I wanted to have a discussion not a fishing expedition :). Look if you studied speech intelegibility then let me know, part of my film degree (25%) of my classes were devoted to speech intellegibility and "noise" in communication. I still study it today, independently. I was just fishing to see who you were and I must say, the combination of semi-promotional speak (fastest growing speakers...on the back of domestic sales) SOLD!!!!, words like sharp and etc, with an obvious clear understanding of how things work, I'm like "who is this guy can I go here, lets poke him and call him a tourist if he's educated I'll get a response!" I knew you were playing me, So I kept poking you with those crazy SUP's and traps so you'd tell me to clarify my petulant ways. :)

Hey check these out, these kind of support my argument but they were the only ones I could find if you can direct me to others I want to see because the speaker is what it is and I can't change what the ATC is and You can't change what the PMC is....so i'd like to know what I can.

http://lib1.store.vip.sc5.yahoo.com/lib/transaudiodirect/65
eratc.pdf, "this is kind of sketchy I know."

http://www.guidetohometheater.com/speakersystems/5/index5.html

I have a new mic preamp coming in and when I get it if you're interested I'll take some measurements of my 150's and I'll run them through the psychoacoustic filter and compare the straight in room response, take a quasi-anechoic then with the psycho-acoustic filter see what we get.

I must admit that I took sharp as more of an adverb and an adjective, or a dynamic problem. So that's why I jumped to impulse response or IMD because I assumed if it drove you from the room it had to appear by surprise not as a consistent character or you wouldn't have played it that loud. LOL! But maybe I'm taking you too literally.

Fact is after all this we still disagree on magnitude and I still percieve your hearing like the Princess and the Pea :)....still, I guess it is what it is. Thanks for the kind words on my sub design and since I work typically in 8X12X3 meter rooms max, you understand my philosophy.

I sold the Bryston St series the SST's seem a bit softer, that's probably because so many speakers are sharp...I guess that's the best way to go to catch a few more flies if you're building amplifiers these days.

Have a good week. look forward to chatting again hopefully more constructively now that we know each other a little better.

I had MB2's, Those are the only big three way PMC's I have heard.

Doug

PS: "The PMC midrange driver spec is not in the public doman so far as I know as it is an in-house design. contrary to your beliefs I don't have inside access at PMC."

Actually it was wishful thinking. I'm a curious dude when it comes to these things ;(

Haha thats ok, doubtless having a treated room makes the top end quite a bit more palatable. However this is something usually only studios or very dedicated individuals can commit to. I rent so it's not an option for me. Most rooms are very reverberent in the Uk due to wooden floors and even with carpets the treble just gets too strident especially with small rooms.

My first research job was working in speech recognition systems of which testing things like hearing and speaker systems is a very important part. One of the things I looked at was computer speech recognition in high noise and distortion environments like fighter cockpits. I then moved into RF engineering which also involved listening tests for radio intelligibility. I then went into nonlinear signals processing and analysis before jacking it all in to work in finance 5 years ago. My interest in diy just comes out of the fact I am interested in everything technical.

I have also rountinely had to have my hearing tested up to 20 KHz. My hearing extends flat past 16 kHz which is extremely unusual in a person of my age. I often find I can hear high pitched sounds that others can't and this is partially way high frequency treble boosts annoy me so much. To others they probably dont care. The person who complained the most when I took them to atc dems were female. They usually have better high frequency hearing too. She actually liked hifi (especially if it was big, bulky and black!) so she wasn't just petulant about being dragged in. ;-). She liekd the pmc best and I managed to convert her from cd to vynil in that dem (she thought there was soemthing wrong with the cd player initially!).

Are you using active crossovers with the atcs?

Nick.

Im impressed!

"The person who complained the most when I took them to atc dems were female."

If I get ever get past my Masters, my doctorate thesis is on why women do not participate in audio the physiological and psychological factors. Audiophiles? give me woman anytime to judge the sound of a system.

My ATC's are active, infact the speakers I build have room correction and response shaping built in with their amplification and Blue Sky, Meyer and ATC are all active speaker lines (ATC has a mix as you know), Most passive speakers simply cannot get to the level of performance active speakers can without using very expensive amplification, which makes them more expensive for the same performance. The reason I don't have PMC is they are more expensive and not a strong a line at more modest price points as ATC and DALI, so they had to slide on the priority scale a little but their time will come.

Have a good one.

PS: Checkout the lake technology crossover @ www.lake.com

Ah well active and room eq makes all the difference - of course it can be as sharp or dull as you like then ;-)