Active speaker comparison

[Alpha Audio]

10 hours ago, FredM said:

Hi Frank, based on your reply, perhaps interesting: just recently Alpha Audio released a Sample Database.

 

https://alpha-audio.net/2020/10/alpha-audio-launches-hifi-sample-database/

 

My guess is that the recordings of the active speakers will be added.

 

Thank you all for listening to this test and commenting. 

We will add these speakers to the database for sure. We have the lossless recording and will extract the music and level it. 

We use a dB-meter to level during the test, but it's hard. We have to find a method that is more accurate. 

[Alpha Audio]

7 hours ago, FredM said:

Yes, the recordings give an impression for playback at home. With the local (your/our) system and room in the chain it’s certainly not ideal, but better then no sonic impression at all. Luckily the panel is there to share their thoughts.

 

As I understand the analogue output is used for all speakers (as the ATC don’t have a digital input). In wonder if there would be differences when a digital signal would have been used for the D&D’s and Grimms. 

 

 

 

 

 

We did use the analog output of the dCS Rossini. The ATC's don't have digital in, otherwise we would have kept it digital. We used Qobuz and WAV. 

I always advise to use headphones for these kind of tests. Otherwise you get 'double acoustics'. 

[Alpha Audio]

19 hours ago, FredM said:

What happens when you put a couple enthousiastic audio guys, a mastering engineer and a producer in a recording studio with some impressive active speakers, using the dCS Rossini & clock as the source?

 

Please enjoy this 2+ hour live comparison of:

1. Dutch & Dutch 8C (@11m35)

2. ATC SCM100A (@56m30)

3. Grimm LS1be (@1h44m30)

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting it. In the description I added an index to make it more easy to find the relevant parts. 

[Alpha Audio]

7 minutes ago, FredM said:

Many thanks for setting up the session and sharing your recordings and your actual listening experience in the room! I can image it did ask for quite some preparation, using the recording studio and collaboration with two professionals. Much appreciated 👍

 

You are welcome! It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun! 

[Alpha Audio]

8 hours ago, Rexp said:

If the aim was to show these speakers at their best, I think using the digital in would have been preferable. Or even better comparing them to a live performance since you were in a recording studio. Many thanks for the video.

We wanted to compare apples to apples... the ATC doesn't have a digital input. 

[Alpha Audio]

The lossless samples are online. You can check them on cloud2.alpha-it.nl. You need an account to get full access (it's free).

 

You can create a Single Sign On account on https://alpha-audio.net/register/ after logging in, you can login to cloud2.alpha-it.nl with one click. 

[Alpha Audio]

10 minutes ago, mevdinc said:

I watched the entire video and agree with the majorıty of the comments expressed by the participants.
The main strength of both Grimm and D&D is the DPS processing to get rid of major room modes and they can be placed/positioned much easier in rooms. And I could see that the positioning was very close to the back wall, preferred method for D&D and most digital actives.
For me ATCs were much too close to the back wall and it adversely effected the clarity of the vocals and some of the details in the mids. In fact, ATCs are well known for their mid dome clarity and detail, that's the reason many engineers use them for mixing and mastering.
I would go for D&D over Grimm though.

 

We explicitly asked the distributer for ATC how to place the speakers. They asked us to get close to the wall to get rid of boundart effect. So we did... 

[Alpha Audio]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

As a further exercise, downloaded an Opus compressed sample of the Fugue track from YT, and aligned that with the two captures just mentioned, in Audacity - the source file, IOW. Switching between the source version, and the two captures while playing, it was clear that the D&D was more true to the source, in tonality. This was particularly noticeable in the treble notes of the piano, and the drum work on the cymbals.

 

That is some nice thinking :-). 

[Alpha Audio]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

You're going to have to be careful, using that particular track in the capture - here are the waveforms,

 

 

For whatever reason, big variation in the volume envelopes over the length of the clips; almost looks like different music ... now, which version is going to be more impressive at the start, looking at the levels at that point?

 

I noticed this in Audition as well. Seems like a different way of handling dynamics... We are investigating this at the moment. 

[Alpha Audio]

18 hours ago, mevdinc said:

Please don't misunderstand my comment. Noway I am implying that you did anything wrong.
I just wanted to highlight a well known factor about the ATC mid range dome and the possible problems with the close to wall placement. I am surprised that the distributor made that suggestion, you have a very well treated room and with adequate toe-in and experiment with placement you should be fine.

Like I said, I really enjoyed your video and also agreed with most of the comments and findings.
Keep up the good work.
 

 

Thanks for the feedback!

[Alpha Audio]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

I'm very interested in using the software tool, DeltaWave, which is being developed by a member here, @pkane2001, to investigate what's going on in a track when things sound different. And started looking at the Meraki Fiber Test - FLAC files. Before I get into things too deeply, I would like to point out that there are glitches in the captured waveforms, for some reason - specifically, the Jaques Loussier - Meraki Fiber, and Jaques Loussier - Meraki SFTP CAT7 tracks; as if a sample or two was dropped. Meaning, when you compare two files, that there is a sudden jump in the difference between the two, at a specific point - they are no longer in alignment.

 

Would you be aware of some reason why this happened?

 

That is really odd! That shouldn't be possible. Back then we recorded in lossless AVI (now we record in Pro-res) and extracted the WAV's from the avi. The wav's are now converted to FLAC for better tagging and efficient hosting. 

If there were glitches, I should have noticed it in the recording. I'm curious what happened. 

[Alpha Audio]

6 hours ago, Rexp said:

I'm an ex ATC dealer, the other thing the panel said was the ATC were more coloured when in fact ATC's are the least coloured speakers I've ever heard. They get out of the way and let your hear whats on the recording. 

 

I get the feeling viewers think we didn't like the ATC. We did like the ATC. I - Jaap Veenstra - just think the Grimm (and in some ways the D&D) is less colored. The ATC had a glow in the bass / mid-low for my feeling. 

[Alpha Audio]

15 hours ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

There must be something lost here in translation.  As an ATC distributor, we are mostly in pro but also home, I would never say "get them close to the wall" unless i wanted you to pick something else.  "Close to the wall" would  increase boundary reflections, playing havoc with the image and mid/HF tone.  Maybe they said rear boundary?  Which wall did they suggest? 

 

Getting speakers AWAY from boundaries is normally the best plan in almost all cases.   Want to hear a good demo?  Go into a large room with boundaries far away.   Want to hear a bad demo?  Get speakers near boundaries, especially on the sides.  

 

Too bad, I would have suggested calling ATC and asking the engineers there about what is best.  After all, the guys at the factory are acoustics guys, with a lot of experience with their speakers in lots of environments.

 

Brad

 

Well: I just asked... "How should I place them in the room". Hey was very clear about placement. I'm not familiar with all speakers. Some need to be very close to the wall, others should be placed completely free from boundaries. In the control room they have build in PMC... so... I just asked the distributor about his view on placement. 

 

You learn every test. Also this test was very educational. Had a lot of fun, feedback, insights... 

[Alpha Audio]

11 minutes ago, mevdinc said:

I thought you all loved the ATC, especially all your reactions and facial expressions were great during the first test track. And your comments regarding the effortless big sound, dynamics, clean and accurate bass etc were all spot on.
My problem was with the comments about the mid range/vocals. In fact, mid range detail, accuracy and clarity are amongst ATC's main strengths. This is what surprised me the most and the reason I thought what you experienced was probably caused by the placement.
All the best.

 

OK! Good to know! 
Have a great weekend!  

[Alpha Audio]

22 minutes ago, Jan van der Meij said:

This interesting article led me to this forum.

https://pura-audio.nl/en/2020/11/09/comparative-loudspeaker-tests-how-do-you-get-the-most-out-of-them/ 

As D&D 8c owner I was very curious about the comparison by Alpha-Audio and therefor I spent the whole 2,5 hours following the livestream. I was the one mentioning the volume differences during the session.

 

Cheers, Jan

 

That is a very good article. And he is completely right!

 

- You should ALWAYS listen for yourself

- Blind testing is best... but not possible in a live stream review ;-). Putting speakers side by side could be a solution. 

    - We did a blind test with network-switches. With readers / folowers of Alpha Audio. That was a lot of fun! 

- Short pieces. I don't really agree on that one. Listening a complete track gives some other insights. But short pieces are definately useful. That's why we create 'Pure Music' video's. We compare some products and edit the video in a certain way: we cut audio every 30 seconds. That way differences become very clear. 

- The volume part is definately true. We are working on a better solution than the dB meter. So...yes... that is VERY important and we are aware of this. All samples are always leveled. So in the database every track is normalized. 

 

About measurements; we actually measure a lot of speakers we review. You can check alpha-audio.net for that. And yes: it does give a lot of insight. But you need to learn how to read them. For example: frequency respons is not all that important (it is for studio's of course). Distortion ís really important. And I noticed that the 3rd harmonic is crucial in terms of coloration. 

 

Anyway... Thanks for posting this link. Very good feedback. 

[Alpha Audio]

2 hours ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

Plus digital in is listening to another DAC permanently overlayed on the sound of the speaker.  As every DAC has a sound of its own and grows obsolete with nearly every [annual or semi annual] chip development cycle, this limits a speakers's life [we can have a 10-20 year life.  ATC is of the mind the DAC is better left to owner to choose to keep his speakers current across time.  One of the foundations of ATC Engineering is the speakers must stay current (be upgradeable) over time if at all possible.  

 

Brad

That's a good philosophy!