HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Lindsayt wrote:http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/can ... ega-elex-r

I don't get it. ATC 11's lost 2 What Hi-Fi Forum bake-offs in the last 5 months and yet two people are recommending them in this What Hi-fi Forum thread.

some people must like them as a good compact monitor and not everyone listens to bake offs

Arthur/Paul7777x wrote:Hi Martin. I'd have to agree with Mr Simples.

The 10s are a better speaker and by a fair margin.

Perhaps it's the extra power, the 8th order x-over or the extra box volume. Most likely all three presumably.

As for the extra spending, it's not a small amount, but it is likely to be the last.

Better speakers than the 10s will be outside just about everyone's budget other than possibly the 12 grand plus spenders.

As you can afford them, I'd buy them and relax knowing that's that in the 'selfish' hifi buying. No more need ever be spent.

Source: http://hddaudio.net/mb/thread-4842.html (My bold).
Arthur / Paul7777x is well aware of the September bake-off.

Does he think I was making up everything I wrote about the bake-off?

Does he think my EV Sentry III's cost me £12k instead of £500? They weren't anywhere remotely close to £12k when new - adjusted for inflation.

What's with this need for him to talk up speakers that he's bought - well beyond their actual capabilities?

Why do you expect truth from that place. New Speak again.

I don't expect any form of truth from the AVI gang.
I do find it mildly amusing to highlight some of the more ridiculous statements, from time to time.

The 12 grand statement is almost as much as saying that they sound better than every passive speaker ever made.

Lindsayt wrote:I don't expect any form of truth from the AVI gang.
I do find it mildly amusing to highlight some of the more ridiculous statements, from time to time.

The 12 grand statement is almost as much as saying that they sound better than every passive speaker ever made.

Looks like things have changed at AVI they have a new website and are moving to Dealer sales from Direct with large increases in price and a statement from the new owners why the felt direct sales were not the way forward. Also the Forum is a lot better now its run by Dberrif who seems an excellent chap.

So massive price increase is the way forward

Frasernash wrote:

Lindsayt wrote:http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/can ... ega-elex-r

I don't get it. ATC 11's lost 2 What Hi-Fi Forum bake-offs in the last 5 months and yet two people are recommending them in this What Hi-fi Forum thread.

some people must like them as a good compact monitor and not everyone listens to bake offs

The cheaper ATC passives are there to get people on the ladder. They need hundreds of watts to make them go (the extra 'push' to make the cones work rather than efficiency as such in my experience) and a typical domestic amp tuned for subtlety of reproduction never stood a chance I remember. The bigger active models used to sound wonderful at high almost realistic levels but could collapse at very low volume - that was their compromise.

Are they really going to increase sales through dealers? I think not. Opposition wise they will be moving up a league or two, and then you're relying on the dealer to push your product against another. Customers are certainly 'persuaded' by the sales person.

ATC have shrunk drastically since 'my days' selling them twenty plus years ago. Big studios no longer want wall-mounted (Soffit?) huge monitors - they're only there to impress visitors I'm told - and the UK market is in distress as documented in other threads here even today. Smaller acives are the place to be in pro circles and ATC do a small three way that can be placed sideways just behind a meter bridge, the 50A and 100A models fitting in with medium size mastering suites that haven't been flooded with B&W's - cough......

The thing is and going back to topic - the EV's were never to my knowledge intended for domestic use as they're almost too large and their utterly explicit manner would be like that 'car' once made with a Merlin engine from a Spitfire (I think it was)... My compromise was always for two cubic foot boxes with 8" main drivers (this seems to work well almost universally and seems to balance well in many UK rooms I remember) and anything smaller just sounds, well, small.. Getting a 6" main driver to work as hard as a larger driver in the bass can cause midrange distortion which I feel is audible and I personally don't like it, so you filter it away?

Really in my opinion, the DM10's should have been compared like for like, such as and bearing in mind I've homed in on this range, a Yamaha HS8, smaller ATC actives rather than their baby passive, Event Opals, Adam A7's and similar. Loads of other Chinese cheapies under a grand too and too many to list, let alone somewhere to hear them all.

DSJR, the DM10's were marketed as better than every passive speaker ever made. The bake-off was done in a very average sized UK living room. When used with the Creek amp, the EV Sentry system cost me £600. The AVI system cost lpv 3 times that amount - c£1800. And the ATC system cost andrewjvt about £4500!

For sure, for most people the Sentries would be too big and too ugly. For people like me, looks and size are far less important than the sound quality for the money.


I don't see any reason why the DM10's should have been compared to Event Opals etc at that bake-off. If any owner of DM10's wishes to do that sort of bake-off they're quite welcome to go ahead and do it.

September's bake-off was an exercise in re-testing the AVI marketing claims (I'd already listened to previous model AVI actives and found them woefully short of the marketing hype) and in seeing what sort of sound quality is possible in an average room for how little money. It was also a test of cherry picked vintage speakers with SET and ultra cheapo solid state amplification and ultra cheapo CD player and cables vs a modern dealer demo type WAF passive system and modern WAF active speakers.