| 'Power, resolution, refinement, neutrality, believability.' |  | Strengths:
Fabulous dynamics, both micro and macro.
Very powerful, capable of handling the grandest of orchestral crescendos and mightiest of power chords.
Totally even-handed, favouring no part of the frequency spectrum, giving them an incredible sense of realism and naturalness.
Treble is sweet and delicious, with incredible resolution and integrates perfectly with the lower frequencies.
Midrange is legendary, with wonderful palpability - violins rasp, brass blats, plucked guitar strings have an incredible 3-dimensional sense of presence, and drums are just stunning (no other speaker I've heard does drums more convincingly, by a long shot).
Bass is awesome - deep, dynamic, clean as a whistle (thanks to very low-distortion drivers), super tight and accurate, and with great texture and definition. And again, perfectly integrated with the higher frequencies.
Tonality is simply wonderful, especially with valves upstream - female vocals, violins, and pianos in particular just soar through the octaves.
Totally unflappable - can be driven to excruciating levels with next to no audible distortion at any frequency, or indeed any change in the overall character of the sound.
Totally honest - tells you exactly what you've got upstream, and will not be embarrassed even by VERY expensive, high quality electronics.
Very well-suited to the average British living room, as sealed-box loading means the bass starts rolling off quite high, but continues down to the low 30sHz, combining with boundary reinforcement to sound just right in most rooms. | | Weaknesses:
Don't sound at their best in large rooms - they benefit from the boundary reinforcement in the lower frequencies, and thus sound a little "small" in big rooms. (Try the Active 50s or larger!)
Though easy to get sounding good, they are very sensitive to even the smallest change of position, and benefit from fine-tuning (though the same can be said for most speakers).
Brutally honest - if your source equipment is flawed, you'll know about it! (But at the same time, feed them quality, and you'll be richly rewarded.) Also, I've been surprised at how some poorly recorded albums can sound very satisfying on the ATCs, simply because the recording flaws are so obviously "technical" in nature, they don't distract much from the music...
Imaging is not quite as razor-sharp and pinpoint accurate as I've heard from some other (very expensive) speakers.
Really heavy!! Lugging them up stairs, or shifting positions can be a major pain! | | Overall:
I've had ATC actives for 7 years now (first the 10s, then the 20s), and I'm not sure I'll ever change. I've heard some exorbitantly expensive speakers, and some of them were very good - even bettering the ATCs in certain areas - but I've yet to heard a speaker, even in the hifi stratosphere, that comprehensively trounced my ATCs. And I've yet to hear a speaker at any price that comes close in terms of naturalness, honesty, and believability (the qualities that really turn me on to hifi). The only speaker I've heard that made me seriously consider changing was the Quad 2805s, and these are considerably more expensive, much less room-friendly, and have their own sets of limitations and weaknesses...
While £3K is a lot for a standmount, there are very few rivals that even come close for the money, and most British living rooms are too small for bigger speakers anyway. Besides, in a mid-sized living room, you'd be very hard-pressed to want deeper bass or more powerful dynamics than these provide, so why bother with floorstanders! Also consider that you're getting 250 watts of top quality Class A amplification built in, and the price starts to seem more sensible. |
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