Reviews
There is one thing more than words that a reviewer can do to persuade me to buy a product and thats to actually buy one for himself. Jason Kennedy the noted Hi-Fi+ reviewer actually bought a pair of these for himself. If your job is listening to hifi all day and every day, then you have heard it all and know the score. Jason bought these for his own system, therefore these are fantastic speakers.
"The ATC SCM-150 monitors used on the "Romeo and Juliet Suites" sessions travel to all of the field recordings that Michael Bishop tracks for Telarc. "The SCM-150s are extremely revealing and tonally transparent. They're also very easy to set up, which is important to us. We use these monitors in our main post-production room, and we also take them on location in our own truck. We need that consistency of monitoring from recording through post, and it's important that we be able to set up monitors quickly when we're out in the field. Many high-end speakers are extremely room dependent, and take hours to set up - just to find the perfect spot to place them. The SCM-150s are rugged, and their directional characteristics are not overly dependent on the room sound, which means we can align them quickly and get to work. I find it really hard to work well without our ATCs on-session now!""
From the avsforum archive posted 02-02-04 06:08 AM:click
here for link
"Watt
Puppy 7/ Krell VS. ATC SCM150ASL
Well this post isn't about asking its about telling:
I must say the the new Wilson WP7 is likely the best WP ever...I was
always partial to the WPIII. And under the pretenses of the new found
excellence of the WP7 I was given a unique opportunity to teach a local
dealer a lesson about doing there homework.
In a specially treated room and the Wilson's with home field advantage
( they were setup in ther dedicated dealer approved places. The ATC SCM150's
were wedged in between really without a great deal of care.
We used a BAT VK-51 and a Krell stereo amplifer (voiding the warranty)
on the Wilsons with the seemingly excellent Esoteric Universal player
as a source.
The Wilson's are very good speakers they have a sense of clarity that
the Aerial 20's couldn't rival and their bass extension is very commendable.
Listening to a few varied cuts on the Wilsons was for the most part very
enjoyable. The only complaint that I have about the Wilsons is a little
bit of glare in the highs (could be electronics). The WP7's are smaller
in size than the ATC 150's but I believe they required the large room
we were in more than the 150's did.
The Wilson's threw a very large soundstage and created a sense of depth
in the soundfield that was accentuated a little more than it really should
be. Timbre's seemed to be real and the dealer/sales person was enamored
with the WP sense of pace and timing. Had the SCM150's not been there
and I was forced to compare these attributes with the other speaker lines
sold there...I couldn't agree more.
Lest we forget that I brought SCM-150's to the party, which simply went
about unravelling and exposing every single defect in the sound of the
Wilson WP7. First the bass, the Watt puppy can plunder the depths but
only with its own ham fisted coloration. The WP thundered on bass notes
that the ATC's exposed the drum head timbres and revealed the material
of the kick tom. This was a very striking difference in presentation.
A difference that was actually to the Wilsons favor on a particular organ
peice, but when track after track revealed the Wilson inability to play
the bass that was unique to each recording it became tiresome and obvious.
Probably the most striking attribute the ATC has for this comparison
is the incredible integration of all three drivers. On a particularly
non audiophile track of Rick James "Superfreak" the ATC presented
this pop cut with greater detail and listenability than the wilsons.
If you judged the WP7 as a reference this cut seemed aggressive and lacking
in all areas desirable for a listenable cut. The ATC made the Wilson
presentation sound as if the music was seperated in three distinct bands
of sound, bass, mids, high. they were not integrated very well making
this cut nearly unlistenable on the Wilson system. Fine you say its a
bad recording, well not all of it is and the ATC's proved this out by
literally exposing the construction of the mix as choruses faded in and
out and fills were added to build the track up the ATC's exposed these
edits but never made the track unmusical, and my partners and myself
felt there was no limit to how loud we wanted to listen to this fun song
on the ATC's. What was striking was that some of this track is very rich
and full and then other fills are aggressive and forward, it was a very
interesting track on the ATC's.
Loudness is another quick note, the ATC's have probably a magnitude of
2-3 times less distortion than the WP7's, The ATC's never seemed as loud
as the 7's but when turned up to compensate never became compressed when
they were asked to play louder and louder. I wish I had measurements
to back this comment up, but Soundstage has not reviewed a large ATC
speaker system.
I would like to say that comparison was between two very good loudspeakers
but once the price is factored in, the value meter drops quite a bit
on the passive Wilson speakers. They were no match atleast the day I
was there for the ATC system. I'm not sure juggling electronics could
make up the gap, because the ATC's were also plagued by the BAT VK51se
IMO. Also the ATC's were never moved about the room for best placement
so there was likely more performance to be had from both speakers.
I enterred with a small amount of doubt that the ATC's would not clearly
best the Watt Puppy's, especially since I hadn't heard the 7's. But there
is no doubt in my mind if you would like to find value at this price
point in the market, the ATC's are clear champions.
So my point is make sure ATC is on your list, there is a good reason
every Telarc and Sony SACD is mastered on them"
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