A peril of actual "Hifi"...

I feel your pain about third of my record collection doesn't sound great through my current set up but sounded fine through 'cheaper' gear. You've probably heard this and I dont know what amp you have but those ATC's love a bit of power the more the better.

Alternatively, get yourself a turntable and hear those ancient gems in their native format  and all their glory. 

"You've probably heard this and I dont know what amp you have but those ATC's love a bit of power the more the better."

NAC202/NAP200

Which Proac and which ATC? Thanks. 

D15. SCM19.

Mike, if you can bother to, read my opening post in this thread:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...-goodbye-post?page=1

it's long and I apologize for that, but it could somehow comment on yours.

Best

Max

Couldn't "find the page"? Copy and paste it here, Max?

Mike, are the ATC's placed in same position than was the Proacs ?  You may experiment a little and push back the SCM19 closer to the wall just to see if that could help.

Analytical equipment sucks the joy out of music. It’s not good enough that Gilmour sounds great and Close to the Edge no longer does. Close to the Edge being the way better album too, IMO!

Get the ProAcs back in...lol

I went down similar roads like this and now won’t condsider a High end amp without tone controls to counter this sort of equipment compatibility issue. I hope you get it sorted as I don’t think Close to the Edge is a badly produced album at all....Wakemans organ thunders through my room with wonderful depth and resonant bloom...

Be interested to see if you sort it.

I've certainly found that older albums (be they CD or Vinyl) sound less full than more recently-recorded music.  I partially suspected that this might be due to improvement in recording technology and techniques - but then some earlier albums sound great on modern systems; The Shadows, for instance, sound surprisingly rich (I guess that means good bass).  Much of the music recorded in the 60s and 70s sounds thinner - including the Beatles.  I don't think that it is the fault of the current setup that I have, it's because the information just isn't there in the older recordings.  Or more recent recordings put more bass in.  I can understand the difference in some regards - with vinyl you can't get the dynamic range that you can with digital, and very often the bass would be reduced so that the excursions of one part of the track wouldn't impinge on adjacent parts.  I remember many vinyl recordings where a quite passage would 'play' some of the bass from a slightly earlier or later bit because of this.  I don't think that the old recordings sound worse when played on 'revealing' equipment - rather that such equipment lets you hear what is on modern recordings rather better than lesser equipment would.  So I accept that - in comparison - older recordings sound less good than newer ones do, and enjoy the newer music with appreciation, but  I don't think that the older ones sound less good because they are played on more capable kit.

Also I have found that music I recorded to tape many years ago, and in many cases re-recorded to other tapes, possibly a few times, including cassette as opposed to reel to reel, I often 'prefer' these really poor quality recordings to the originals.  That is, I'm sure, entirely because these are the versions that I got used to and loved.  Their quality is often appalling, but that was what I 'learned' to like.  

Close To The Edge was evidently a good enough production back in the day for vinyl repro on the equipment available (which Joexnaim seems to have tried to reproduce with "tone controls"), but played on what he calls "analytical" equipment which simply delivers exactly what's there,  it just can't cut the mustard. Compressed filtered and lifeless. Headphones it is.

Interestingly, "Foxtrot" by Genesis - artistically similar, recorded and released at exactly the same time - sounds perfectly acceptable, sonically...

Also, Miles Davis "So What" sounds beautiful and that was recorded two whole decades earlier!

Sounds like a badly mastered CD to me.

I think part what you are picking up is speaker/room matching plus the fact that all speaker designs have compromises/strengths and weaknesses and these show up differently in different music.

I had a pair of speakers that I loved in my room with stripped down acoustic music but weren't pleasant with some of my favourite records (e.g., OK Computer was very wearing). A friend of mine who is a musician and has some sound engineering experience said that he felt that the problem was that there wasn't enough bass response to balance the very insightful treble when the top end was raucous. He was right.

Do the ATCs go as deep as the Proacs?  

"Sounds like a badly mastered CD to me."

Tidal lossless. Another "deluxe" remastered version available is different, but not better. 

Bass response is not the problem. 

In this case, I think the problem was Eddie "Cloth-ears" Offord.

Mike1951 posted:

"Sounds like a badly mastered CD to me."

Tidal lossless. Another "deluxe" remastered version available is different, but not better. 

Bass response is not the problem. 

In this case, I think the problem was Eddie "Cloth-ears" Offord.

I do sometimes feel I was wasting 30 years trying to improve on my dads radiogram replaying Close to the Edge.

There is one issue, in the abbreviation SCM, I believe the 'S' stands for 'Studio' and the 'M' stands for 'Monitor' (I can't remenber the 'C').  ATC's core business is derived from highly revealing monitor speakers for studio use.  In other words the SCM19s are living up to their name and ruthlessly revealing the quality of the studio work!

The BBC monitors are also quite revealing (not as much as the ATCs however), but they don't highlight problems in quite such an irritating way.  They are more optimised to highlight problems in vocal presentation in recordings and transmissions rather than reveal flaws in music production.

The consumer ATCs are cosmetically modified for home use; but sonically, they're barely domesticated at all.  Feed them a poor diet and they'll pee and cr*p all over your carpets, feed them  good stuff and they'll reward you and love you forever!

I've very recently bought the slightly smaller ATC SCM11 and are driven by a NAP 200. I absolutely love them and most of the recordings I have fed them with sound superb. Yes they are ruthlessly revealing and any recording that's is way below par will be highlighted significantly. Having said that the speakers I had previously (Rega R5) also sounded ropey with poor recordings. And the R5's weren't that revealing in comparison to the ATC. I have found that an average recording sounds much better on my ATC than they did on my R5s. 

Ian.

Does it stillhappen if you remove the fluff and run direct off the 200? I suspect it won’t help but it would be easy to try.

I managed to make my system sound analytical but simply putting a loose loop in the cable from preamp ps to power amp to try and get it off the floor. I think its a sign the timing has gone slightly off.

Mike1951 posted:

D15. SCM19.

Thanks. So it's the Proac D15. The Proac Tablette 10 and SM100 have been getting a lot of praises on every forum and I was thinking if you had been using one of these. 

Beachcomber posted:

I've certainly found that older albums (be they CD or Vinyl) sound less full than more recently-recorded music.  I partially suspected that this might be due to improvement in recording technology and techniques - but then some earlier albums sound great on modern systems; The Shadows, for instance, sound surprisingly rich (I guess that means good bass).  Much of the music recorded in the 60s and 70s sounds thinner - including the Beatles.  I don't think that it is the fault of the current setup that I have, it's because the information just isn't there in the older recordings.  Or more recent recordings put more bass in.  I can understand the difference in some regards - with vinyl you can't get the dynamic range that you can with digital, and very often the bass would be reduced so that the excursions of one part of the track wouldn't impinge on adjacent parts.  I remember many vinyl recordings where a quite passage would 'play' some of the bass from a slightly earlier or later bit because of this.  I don't think that the old recordings sound worse when played on 'revealing' equipment - rather that such equipment lets you hear what is on modern recordings rather better than lesser equipment would.  So I accept that - in comparison - older recordings sound less good than newer ones do, and enjoy the newer music with appreciation, but  I don't think that the older ones sound less good because they are played on more capable kit.

As a generalisation, I haven’t felt that older recordings (e.g mid 60s -70s) sound less ‘full’ than more modern recordings: some, yes - and some modern recordings likewise. And some recent recordings seem more compressed even than vinyl from 60s/70s. 

And as for music sounding worse with better gear, I wonder to what extent it may be not so much that bad albums actually sound worse, as opposed to good albums sounding better, and bad ones don’t, simply making them seem worse in comparison.

I will have to listen to my copy of Close to the Edge - I do recall one of my Yes albums sounding rather ‘off’ after I replaced the worn vinyl with a downloaded CD version, and think it may be that one: but I thought it was just a bad CD.

Hi Mike, congrats on your new ATCs. The good news, hopefully, is the newer designs such as the 11 with new crossover and ATC tweeter are not as ruthless and analytical as the older models. However they are sensitive to the electronics and will show up short comings there. So with ATCs I would drive for the best NAC you can get, and although the 200 is fine, I always found the weight and drive of the 250 worked better on the ATCs to give better scale.

So when you have the electronics right you can listen to and enjoy the masters for what they are, and hear what has been done by the engineer. Often the mix master is part of the creative process to give a particular feel to the sound... sometimes lesser electronics can make the overall track harder to listen to by falsely over accentuating parts of the sound to give an impression of detail, and you might find older recordings don’t negatively interact as much.  ATCs heritage and main business of course is making speakers to create  masters in the first place.... BTW I do agree some masters are simply shocking, the ATCs with quality electronics will expose that, but it’s clipping and distortion as well as other processing artefacts you will hear

Thanks for that. I will have to consider the more gutsy 250 perhaps. That will be after I've corrected the schoolboy error of my layout and speaker cable length! 

Just discovered that the worst siting for the rack is in between the speakers,  which is where I've placed it. Also that NAIM cable needs 3.5m minimum and mine is much shorter. ..

Hey-ho.  Upward and onward...

A typical setup to go with the 19 would be a 282/250, or better, with a source to match. Neither the ND5, nor the 202/200 are really up to it. Bear in mind that the 250 is not a good match for the 202, and that adding one will only open the window wider. Unless you are in a position to seriously upgrade the electronics to give the speakers the diet they need, I’d think about swapping them for the smaller 11, or maybe something else that’s a good match for the rest of the system. 

Mike1951 posted:

Thanks for that. I will have to consider the more gutsy 250 perhaps. That will be after I've corrected the schoolboy error of my layout and speaker cable length! 

Just discovered that the worst siting for the rack is in between the speakers,  which is where I've placed it. Also that NAIM cable needs 3.5m minimum and mine is much shorter. ..

Hey-ho.  Upward and onward...

Oh!   Yes sort out the speaker cables, the 3.5m minimum really is very strongly advised to help the electronics (and even 5m to 7m is actually slightly to be preferred) as this is needed to make the power amp more stable.  Less than that can cause a hardness to the sound and the ATCs will reveal that.

I'd also strongly support the recommendation from others here of an upgrade from the 202 to the 282 before going to a 250.

To my mind moving the rack is less significant unless you have suspended floors or a very poor rack (or you are using a piece of domestic furniture like a cupboard instead of a rack).  If you do have suspended floors the best position for the rack is actually in the corner of the room as that's where the floor has most support.