Hi everyone,
well I had a very interesting and productive audition today at hifi corner in edinburgh. I came out and looked at my watch and two and a half hours had past, and I would have guessed i'd been in there no more than one and a half hours, so I must have enjoying the experience somewhat!
So I wanted to hear how the mentioned speakers faired against each other having read and heard many reviews regarding all three. I wasn't expecting the ATC's to be there but on arrival I was very pleased to see they had these in.
Myself and the shop assistant only listened to three tracks mainly, the new sinlge by the wu-tang clan, riders of the storm -the doors, and a song by deadmau5 which i currently dont know the name of. There were a couple of others but these were the main ones used. For the passive ATC's a Rotel amp of approx £1000 was used, I forget the model but it had an inbuilt dac and was rated at 80wpc I think.
First in were the Kef's which sounded fantastic. The obvious great clarity was there and punch and drive, and a nice warmth from the bass which was also tuneful. Listening at fairly close quearters (speakers were about 2m in front of me, and 2m to the side each, you can use your trigonometry skills to calculate the rough distance
) we got to listening to them at decent levels and they didnt sound boxy which I was half expecting having listened to the dynaudio xeo 2 or 4 a month ago which sounded a bit too enclosed.
Next off were the AVI's. These sounded very similar straight off as far as could tell as far as clarity and defintion were concerened, but they were obviously lacking the warmth of the Kefs and I knew pretty much immediately that I would require the sub to go with these, which I dont have room for, and so these were ruled out pretty quickly.
After listening to the three main tracks on these 2 speakers, we switched over to the ATC. I wasnt smacked in the face with anything in the immediate ten seconds and had to listen for about 30 seconds to start getting a feel for the differences. They did sound a little less punchy, which i was initially dissapointed with, but the clarity still seemed there. There was nothing I heard on the two active speakers which I couldnt hear on the ATC passives. As the listening went on into the first track (wu-tang) I suddenly noticed a vocal clarity that I hadnt on the other two speakers. (For your interest, it was the word "papaya" approx 1.5 mins in). I noticed the word was heard crystal clearly which I hadnt noticed before. Asking to switch speakers right then, we went back to the kefs and yep, the word was muffled and nowhere near as clear.
Listening to the doors back to back bewteen the Kefs and the ATC's , they sounded pretty similar, there wasnt anything glaringly different between what I noticed here.
After hearing the first two tracks the assistant fancied a listen to the deadmau5 track. This was the first time he had heard the ATC as they were new in, and he seemed keen to try them out out of sheer interest for himself as much as a sales technique! After ten seconds the complex bass rythmns kicked in and various squelchy noises and drums. (He wanted to hear this as he said the various bass tracks can be hard to reproduce). Immediately...WOW! "This sounds b*****y good!" I declared. The bass was extremely punchy here and the squelchy noises could be felt within. We switvhed back to the Kefs, which I was expecting to sound as good or maybe even better as it was what I was assuming, lower dynamic ranged music, but no, they didnt have the same guts about them. The bass wasnt as deep or hard hitting or tuneful, and the squelchy noises seemed dulled. They were simply not in the same league.
Listening to a Buddy Holly track after this, firstly on the ATC, I could tell that he was singing very closely to the microphone and the rest of the orchestra and instruments sounded great. Back to the Kef's, I couldnt hear how close he was to the mic, although as a whole, the song sounded as good, but I am sure with more listens to this one track, I would notice more and more in favour with the ATC's.
I have an untrained ear and so finding differences to what I might prefer longterm in a speaker is not perfect, and I will without doubt miss lots of important things.
So my final conclusion is that regarding an upgrade for my system, I would not be looking at going active within my price bracket, and instead I would prefer to own the ATC scm19 speakers to accompany my Ropksan amplifier. I feel the sound would far outshine what the other speakers can produce.
One other thing we found out was that bluetooth sounds a lot worse than streamed music and so I would also like to add a streamer (I'm guessing the much talked about here yamaha) to set up at some stage. The bluetooth streaming sounded noticeably muffled in comaprisson to the same tracks streamed through a network player.
well I had a very interesting and productive audition today at hifi corner in edinburgh. I came out and looked at my watch and two and a half hours had past, and I would have guessed i'd been in there no more than one and a half hours, so I must have enjoying the experience somewhat!
So I wanted to hear how the mentioned speakers faired against each other having read and heard many reviews regarding all three. I wasn't expecting the ATC's to be there but on arrival I was very pleased to see they had these in.
Myself and the shop assistant only listened to three tracks mainly, the new sinlge by the wu-tang clan, riders of the storm -the doors, and a song by deadmau5 which i currently dont know the name of. There were a couple of others but these were the main ones used. For the passive ATC's a Rotel amp of approx £1000 was used, I forget the model but it had an inbuilt dac and was rated at 80wpc I think.
First in were the Kef's which sounded fantastic. The obvious great clarity was there and punch and drive, and a nice warmth from the bass which was also tuneful. Listening at fairly close quearters (speakers were about 2m in front of me, and 2m to the side each, you can use your trigonometry skills to calculate the rough distance
) we got to listening to them at decent levels and they didnt sound boxy which I was half expecting having listened to the dynaudio xeo 2 or 4 a month ago which sounded a bit too enclosed.Next off were the AVI's. These sounded very similar straight off as far as could tell as far as clarity and defintion were concerened, but they were obviously lacking the warmth of the Kefs and I knew pretty much immediately that I would require the sub to go with these, which I dont have room for, and so these were ruled out pretty quickly.
After listening to the three main tracks on these 2 speakers, we switched over to the ATC. I wasnt smacked in the face with anything in the immediate ten seconds and had to listen for about 30 seconds to start getting a feel for the differences. They did sound a little less punchy, which i was initially dissapointed with, but the clarity still seemed there. There was nothing I heard on the two active speakers which I couldnt hear on the ATC passives. As the listening went on into the first track (wu-tang) I suddenly noticed a vocal clarity that I hadnt on the other two speakers. (For your interest, it was the word "papaya" approx 1.5 mins in). I noticed the word was heard crystal clearly which I hadnt noticed before. Asking to switch speakers right then, we went back to the kefs and yep, the word was muffled and nowhere near as clear.
Listening to the doors back to back bewteen the Kefs and the ATC's , they sounded pretty similar, there wasnt anything glaringly different between what I noticed here.
After hearing the first two tracks the assistant fancied a listen to the deadmau5 track. This was the first time he had heard the ATC as they were new in, and he seemed keen to try them out out of sheer interest for himself as much as a sales technique! After ten seconds the complex bass rythmns kicked in and various squelchy noises and drums. (He wanted to hear this as he said the various bass tracks can be hard to reproduce). Immediately...WOW! "This sounds b*****y good!" I declared. The bass was extremely punchy here and the squelchy noises could be felt within. We switvhed back to the Kefs, which I was expecting to sound as good or maybe even better as it was what I was assuming, lower dynamic ranged music, but no, they didnt have the same guts about them. The bass wasnt as deep or hard hitting or tuneful, and the squelchy noises seemed dulled. They were simply not in the same league.
Listening to a Buddy Holly track after this, firstly on the ATC, I could tell that he was singing very closely to the microphone and the rest of the orchestra and instruments sounded great. Back to the Kef's, I couldnt hear how close he was to the mic, although as a whole, the song sounded as good, but I am sure with more listens to this one track, I would notice more and more in favour with the ATC's.
I have an untrained ear and so finding differences to what I might prefer longterm in a speaker is not perfect, and I will without doubt miss lots of important things.
So my final conclusion is that regarding an upgrade for my system, I would not be looking at going active within my price bracket, and instead I would prefer to own the ATC scm19 speakers to accompany my Ropksan amplifier. I feel the sound would far outshine what the other speakers can produce.
One other thing we found out was that bluetooth sounds a lot worse than streamed music and so I would also like to add a streamer (I'm guessing the much talked about here yamaha) to set up at some stage. The bluetooth streaming sounded noticeably muffled in comaprisson to the same tracks streamed through a network player.
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