Steve Guttenberg reviews an ATC active?

Interesting, or until he shared the price of the active and passive speaker.  While they are admirable, it's a reminder how some of us resort to DIY and do our best. 

I couldn't help wondering if his gushing review of the ATC speaker was atonement for his previous denigration of active speakers.

Steve made the nice review , i think he is most knowledgeable audio expert who can not only made  qualified  video  ,  also is very helpful 

Steve made the nice review , i think he is most knowledgeable audio expert who can not only made qualified video , also is very helpful 

Wow! 

@dbphd wrote:

I couldn’t help wondering if his gushing review of the ATC speaker was atonement for his previous denigration of active speakers.

Interesting suggestion. There may be an aspect to this, but with the ATC’s Steve has found something to hang his hat on, namely or in particular avoiding active speakers with a DSP to act as the active crossover and instead an all-analogue electronic ditto. Which is to say no conversion steps from analogue to digital and back (or with a digital input a D/A-conversion only). Steve apparently hates DSP’s, it seems mostly due to the conversion steps involved (with what I regard as unfounded deductions on their assumed detrimental sonic impact), but there’s also the more hardware related issues for being stuck with whatever DSP module and typically class D amp varieties that have been implemented in a given, bundled active speaker solution.

I’m not wholly unsympathetic with his views here, but simply labeling DSP’s as sonically undesirable in an active speaker system is not seeing the forest for the trees, and fails to take into consideration the opportunities offered with quality DSP’s and their more elaborate (and precise) filter settings compared to an all-analogue electronic XO - not least FIR-based iterations, although they also come with their potential issues. I’m not taking a swing at ATC for not using DSP-based active filters, but Steve’s blanket statement on DSP’s is just rubbish.

Finally Steve doesn’t appear to comprehend that active can be outboard as well as bundled, but here I’m also referring to previous videos of his with the regurgitative rants on active speakers. I get that outboard active isn’t representative of active speaker systems in general, but he has never even considered outboard active as a solution to the problem with bundled systems and the lack of component choice here. I mean, at some point in the process you’d wonder why he hasn’t questioned himself about it, and whether outboard active was at all possible.

Still, he posted a very positive and informative video review of the active ATC’s, so at least he acknowledges what reaches his ears from actual experience with a balanced approach to their qualities, and not the typical audiophile resentment of hearing what such active speakers can deliver as being "too revealing," "not musical" or whatever that doesn’t comply with their exposure to dynamically weak, low and upper octave tilted, sugary and overly laid-back "high-end" speakers. oh well, I digress..