![]() But you know also that in redesigning the driver you’ll learn a little bit more about driver performance generally and that will add to your in-house bank of knowledge. You don’t really have any spare in-house DSP resources so to go down that road you would have to out-source the skills, and that’s both expensive and fraught with difficulties. Now put yourself in charge of R&D at a small ‘artisan’ monitor company and imagine the same conundrum. So, do you redesign the driver so that it works properly in the new monitor or do you brief the DSP engineers to write some equalisation code that can be embedded in the monitor’s electronics? There’s a good chance you will do the latter - not because it’s the cheaper or easier option (although it may well be both), but because it better suits your organisation and its resources. On your desk, and needing a decision, is an existing bass/mid driver that almost, but not quite, suits a new DSP-equipped active monitor. To illustrate the kind of thing I’m getting at, put yourself in the position of the R&D director at a major, well-financed monitor company blessed with an in-house DSP department in which you know a couple of engineers have a bit of time on their hands. The term ‘artisan’, unfortunately these days devalued by countless coffee shops, breweries and bakeries, would be perfect to describe the ATC kind of company. And that, to me, feels a bit more like art than science. However, I think smaller companies like ATC, which don’t quite have the significant financial or personnel resources of large-scale, more ‘corporate’ manufacturers, perhaps have to be smarter and more targeted in their approach to finding technological solutions to the challenges that monitor design throws up. That’s not to suggest that there is any lack of expertise or engineering skill within the ATC SCM12 Pro, or that it incorporates no technology, because there is huge expertise at ATC and the monitor drips engineering from every pore. Kicking off with the SCM12 Pro, my first thought was that while I’ve reviewed a couple of monitors during the last year or so that embody a manifestly hi-tech approach to monitor engineering (the Kii Three and Genelec SAM monitors, in particular), the ATC is perhaps inspired by a subtly different philosophy. So accompanying the review pair of SCM12 Pro monitors, ATC provided an example of their entry-level P1 Pro power amplifier. Along with their commitment to passive monitors, there’s a parallel in the way Amphion and ATC approach marketing passive in a mostly active world: they can be purchased as a package with a power amplifier. But even so, there still remain examples of very high-quality passive nearfield monitors on the market, and we’ve covered some of them in recent times: the Amphion range, for example.ĪTC SCM12 Pro.And now, here’s another example: the newly introduced, entry-level ATC SCM12 Pro. Even without the inherent technical benefits of active filters, in studio installations where most of the time the monitor input signal is likely to come from only one source, it’s logical to think of putting the amplification in the speakers. The rise of the active format in nearfield monitoring has its roots to some extent in common sense. ![]() ATC’s ‘artisanal’ approach to monitor design pays off handsomely with this classy new speaker and amplifier combo. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |