Nyal - while I don't think I made any claims as to how the ATC measures, I can see why how I worded things could be construed that way. I bolded a few things and changed a couple of words:
A/Bing them to the ATCs it was apparent that ATC rules the mid range.
So, we have a speaker we know is accurate - the LSR708i - and a speaker that the poster
is claiming has a richer midrange. The answer
could be right there -
from what he / she is reporting, the ATC has a warmer midrange and a rolled off treble. No surprise that someone mixing on ATCs would produce recordings with a pronounced top end, that would sound shrill and sibilant on a neutral monitor. Of course, part of this is conjecture, as we have no measurements of the ATC to look at...
_____________
Better?
Still, if you read my original post with my original wording, I said very clearly:
Without any measurements on the ATCs we have no idea if they are accurate or not.
That's hardly me "making assumptions about how ATC measures with no data." Per the longer quote above, I was going only by the claims in the "review," and drawing tentative conclusions from there. Agreed that my wording here was not as clear, so made the changes you see above.
Still - I think the original review is full of fallacies and "Circle of Confusion" issues. The ATC speakers could be made by God himself, I don't know. My issue was with how the conclusions were reached, and how they were stated:
The Bad:
Filtered sounding,
What does this mean...?
The mids are not open and the highs are very harsh.
How does the poster know this is not a problem inherent in the recording? (For what it's worth, I have also found speakers like the 708 and M2 a touch more "harsh" on instruments like violins, which you pointed out in a different post, which I will get to later.)
They are sibilant. I wanted to extensively test this on VO recordings I have done for TV. All different VOs. Ones that I've listened to on many different systems. And the JBLs are not accurate in this frequency area.The horn compression tweeter is really intense and will not let up.
So now I just throw my own two cents in here, from experience. I have the following monitor speakers on hand: JBL LSR708i, JBL LSR305, and Mackie HR824Mkiis. I have mixed eight independent feature films, the last two (The Creep Behind the Camera and Halcyon) in surround. I have
extensive experience with dialogue editing, and know
exactly what sibilance sounds like. There are all kinds of tools for reducing it or removing during mixing and mastering. Almost always, it simply means an emphasis on frequencies between 5 and 8 khz. As anyone can see by looking at the Spinorama, the 708 is exceptionally flat in this area. If there is obvious sibilance, my strong bet is that it is in the recording, NOT the speaker.
FWIW, I had the privilege of my mix for The Creep Behind the Camera premiered at the TCL Chinese in Hollywood, which had just received a makeover. Happy to say my mix translated very well

One can also Google reviews of the Blu-ray to see what others thought of my mix (and score, for that matter).
I actually called JBL to see if the tweeter would soften over time. Nope.
Silliness...
I messed with the parametric EQ but couldn't get the speaker to sit more evenly like the ATC just does straight up
Again, Circle of Confusion issue big time. How does the "reviewer"
know that the ATC is more "straight up" than the JBL? It might be, but without measurements, who knows? The big fallacy here is evaluating a recording mastered on one set of speakers against the same recording on another set from a different manufacturer, then being surprised when it sounds more natural on the speaker it was mastered on. Once again, how does the reviewer know that the problem was not in the recording?
A/Bing them to the ATCs it was apparent that ATC rules the mid range. Nothing can beat them. The 20s with a sub are just a dream.The JBLs don't really need a sub but for post their low end is not tight enough. I cannot recommend them for post. Maybe electronic or dance music. But don't put them next to ATCS!!
"Nothing can beat them." "Don't put them next to ATCs!!" I certainly make room for the possibility that the ATCs could be better than the JBLs - but of course in a sighted comparison - when someone has a stake in the outcome - I am extremely skeptical. As someone has every right to be of me.
FWIW, I still have the acoustically transparent barrier my operations manager Joel created for the M2 / Salon2 speaker shootout - we can always trot it out any time for a double blind comparison. Let's not forget that 86% correlation between the Spins and listener preference, which is almost 100% for bookshelf speakers.
One of the things I'd love to do is bring that to a high end show, and let anyone bring their speaker of choice in to shoot out against a pair of Revel F208s.