Question: Does ATC have the best midrange driver?

accuracy is not subjective.

"Accuracy is not subjective"

Yes it is - plotting is one thing and listening is another

One person's garbage is another person's treasure-

you can't account for personal taste, emotion, and how trained (or not) a person's ears are, through statistics, or voting, or logic, or anything else in hopes of arriving at an absolute fact.

And one thing I am learning here on these threads is that consensous is impossible and that is because, to quote a scholar, "You can't account for personal taste, emotion, and how trained (or not) a person's ears are..."

cd

"Ponders The Thought" Of how many of the members that have posted the feedback on this topic have had a chance to hear, I mean really hear what they have been missing by not checking out the ATC's
Just to clear another area the ATC drivers have been used in home audio since the mid 80's, and as for the real question here, "Does ATC have the best midrange driver?" A person would have to spend 3x's as much to get better.. If I had the time, I would post ATC's user's list. The name's of the user's and company's that use ATC's, would maybe shed a little more light on how good these speakers are to some of the big boys out there..

I don't have a problem finding good woofers tweets and ribbons. Seems i've encountered a problem in finding a "good" ("best") midrange, THE critical fq's. Most orchestral and jazz instruments fall in the midrange. As well i'm looking for a midrange that delivers vocals with accuracy. Lets see for midrange we've got Scan-Speak, Skaaning, Focal, Accuton, Morel, and there is a german lab called Visaton. Sorry if i left out anyone's favorite. Then we come to the ATC. They are the most expensive of the bunch, (Skaaning's about same price) and maybe in this case you get what you pay for, ie. the superior. It's nice to know that you can buy the single mid-driver. Their entry model is like 15K, very interesting speaker, each driver has its own amp. Hey Laz you've got the SC-50's , can you give us some insight into the +'s and -'s of ATC's entry level speaker. The 100 and 150 has larger woofers but the same tweet and their famous SM75-150S midrange.

actually, they're not the entry-level. there are the scm 7's, the scm 10's, the scm 20's, then the scm 50's. the only real minus of the 50's is that they roll off at about 32hz, and don't drop all the way to 20. everything else is truly the best i've ever heard. the highs aren't quite as sweet as really good electrostat panels, but very, very close. i wouldn't have laid down the money if i didn't truly believe that.

but, the passive and active scm 10's are great little speakers, though limited in bass response due to their size.

and, while we're on the subject of atc stuff, their electronics are also really, really good. i use their amps (obviously - built into the speaker) and their preamp, which is the most sonically transparent preamp i've ever heard. (granted, i haven't heard all that many, though) and the phono stage is also incredible. expensive but, again, at $8500, i wouldn't have bought if i didn't believe. and when i took the top off to set the phono stage portion, i saw why exactly is cost so much. having long built and repaired computers and electronics, i couldn't believe the quality of the assembly and quality of the parts. think of it as a top-shelf martini made by an experienced bartender. good stuff.

and, as for the 150's, 200's and 300's, they're really meant for studio use. if you had them in a normal sized house, they'd blow the windows. and i mean that literally. they won't sound any better, i wouldn't think, than a pair of 50's or 100's with an atc sub.

and, just fyi, the number (ie 7, 10, 50, 100, 150, etc . . .) refers to the enclosure space in liters. the 200 and 300 have identical drivers, but different enclosure spaces.