The sound is amazing. As is stated in a previous review, it impossible to make it sound bad. It's sweet spot is everywhere. Deep juicy basses, harsh screams, mellow leads, extremely punchy bass kicks, other percussive electro sounds, etc., the ATC does it all and does it well.

I edit the ATC through Sounddiver which is very convenient. Sounddiver allows to easily bind the knobs and sliders of my midi controller to the ATC's functions, so it is as if I have a synth with hands-on controls. I never need to touch the instrument to edit it. And editing is fun. You get the impression that you are realy playing with elektricity, which is of course exactly what you are doing. Try making sounds with only the filter, turn down both VCOs and have the waveforms of VCO 2 modulate the filter. Lots of unexpected, but very usable sounds come up. Needless to say I hardly ever use the stock sounds.

As to the filters: I think the Moog filter is best for your bread and butter basses. Reasonably controlled and very punchy deep sounds can be had. Of course, all the usuall squelshing too. In short, it makes the ATC sound like a Moog. The SEM filter is crazy. It screams and howls and, as its slope is only 18 Db, leaves a bit more high tones than the Moog. Relative to the SEM the 303 also gives controlled sounds. It can sound like a 303, but also very differently, I would say "wood-like", if that means anything. As I said, I don't have the ARP 2600 filter... yet.

The only downside: it looks like a toy. But perhaps it is a toy. Great fun to play with.

I haven't done a great deal of editing - just the odd filter tweak - but what I have done was very easy. There's 512 factory patches with just about every hue and nuance synth sound catered for. The majority of them are very usable and skillfully programed.

I wish I hadn't bought it though, cos I'm going to have to get an SE Omega, now that I know how good SE stuff is.

10 times 10 times 10 out of 5.

THIS IS THE REAL DEAL! OK - so it's one of the ugliest synths ever made, but who cares?? Close your eyes and play. It's absolutely brilliant. I set it up with a Behringer BCR2000 controller and only touch the membranes for some esoteric functions that's not included in the MIDI-spec. This beautiful synth deserves a controller with lots of knobs.

The ATC-1 got a plenthora of modulating routes, and functions - at some point I got the feeling that it's actually a big analogue modular synth... and not the little polkadot box in my rack. Ofcourse it helps that it's built like a tank.

If you get one make sure you buy an EPROM from SE containing the latest OS-upgrades. When I got it - it had the 2.2 upgrade inside - which doesn't support saving edits from external MIDI-controllers. A bit of a shock really. Somehow I was extremely lucky - because the same day I bought my second hand ATC-1 - Studio Electronics announced OS 2.3 which supports saving patches made with a MIDI-controller.

The ATC-1 is no longer in production, but the newer ATC-X is. SE however continue developing upgrades for it. A new VCA and sinewave convertor (PCB) is recently announced.

So - stay clear of leaking electrolytic capacitors and old IC's that are about to die - get yourself a new analgoue synth that sounds exactly like an analogue synth is supposed to. There are still people out there who knows how to make them.