Apologies. Shouldn’t have revealed the W, in case you were catchin up on League Pass (like I mostly do)…
I hate when people do that 
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Haha, thanks but watched it real time. I’m laughing because my buddy goes to bed early and records the game. I can’t count the number of times I’ve ruined it for him. Funny…
Haha I know, happens to me all the time.
Will do that!
I used to have metal grilles on my previous ATC SCM 11s, that were the typical metal types latching magnetically onto the wooden frame. They seem to be sonically neutral, as you say. The thing with the 11s was that they had ATC‘s in-house made Neodynium tweeters. To me, those sounded too bright, and I couldn‘t listen to some Miles Davis albums any more as his muted trumpet sounded piercingly bright.
I talked to the local ATC dealer and he happened to have a version 1 ATC SCM 19 that I could audition for a few days. Those 19s have older tweeters built in, that sound smooth and extremely pleasant. It was a matter of seconds to decide that I buy them. Extremely good, revealing and pleasant speakers, that lack the extremely bright sound of the version 2 speakers.
They do come with a fabric grille that I removed immediately. So I shall give it a try to listen with the grilles off, even though the sound without grilles is already wonderful. Thanks for the tip!
The port is not important.
The issue is quarter wave cancellation from rear wall.
Experts at Genelec recommend a position with the front baffle no more than 0.6 meters from the back wall as best.
If you are further from the wall than 0.6 meters then it is best to be quite far out (2 meters).
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Not much difference grills on or off on the 19s if any at all. It is quite a small speaker so baffle edge effects are not as noticeable. They have rounded corners already - so unlike the older 20’s there is no corner rounding or smoothing from the grills.
Larger models (1 to 2 feet width) will sound different.
Very large models (larger than 2 feet) again will have minimal effect with grills on or off.
Edge diffraction smoothness is a funny thing - It can affect imaging (as secondary reflections occur at the discontinuity caused by the baffle edge). Overall a rounded or sharp edge won’t much affect the frequency response but the size of the baffle and position of the driver within the baffle have significant effects.
My guess is ATC grills are designed to reduce the sharpness of the edge.
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Very interesting! Thanks so much for the drawing. Never heard of it, must read about it. I now placed my speakers about 10 cm from the wall and the front baffle is 40 cm from the wall.
As I wasn‘t quite familiar with quarter wave cancellation, I found the picture below on the internet. Now when Genelec sees a dip at 50 Hz, this is intersting: a 50 Hz tone has a wavelength of 6.86 meters (assuming the velocity of sound of 343 meters per second), a quarter wave would be 1.72 metres, so this phenomenon should occur when the baffle is exactly this distance from the wall. Or do I misunderstand something?
Yes correct. The worst position is to be between 0.6 meters and 2 meters as it gives you cancellation nulls in the 50 to 150 Hz range. Further than 2 meters and your problems are low enough that room modal issues dominate and natural speaker roll off will help.
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Mmm, I think this will depend on the distance to the back wall. It’s honestly best to just move the speakers around a bit until you find a (wife friendly) spot that sounds best for your preferred music genre. WAF may be the limiting factor anyway.
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Yes. The specific cancellation frequencies depend on distance and often there are several nulls. They only affect bass because only the bass is omnidirectional.
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Just found a review of the ATC SCM 19 v1 that states ‘Unusually for ATC, the speaker is balanced for use without a grille in place; one is supplied but for best results, leave it off’ (https://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio-visual/hi-fi-and-audio/hi-fi-and-av-speakers/atc-scm19-hi-fi-98230/review). Whatever that means 
Haven’t had the time yet to see if grilles on make a difference.
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It’s always good to have a second opinion. And if you like the sound as it is (I think you do) you can now just leave it as it is and enjoy the music.
Just out of curiosity: What amp do you use with them?
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It wasn’t meant as criticism I simply don’t like the looks of those grilles, they protrude too much from the speaker baffle. I do like the SCM 19s very much, had the 11s v2 and those were definitely too bright and fatiguing. The SCM 19s (again, version 1), are very smooth, yet detailed and I can listen totally immersed for hours!
The SCM 19s are connected to a Devialet Expert 120. I am thinking of upgrading to the Expert Pro 220, but I haven’t decided yet. The combo is very smooth and resolving! I developed into a true ATC/Devialet fan
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Darn nice Meridian headphone amp. I use another LPS…Works great on my HD800/HD700.
I just bought the set up used for AUD1500, it hadn’t been used much and even though it has the blue LED for MQA and has MQA written above the LED it was running pre-MQA firmware. I am very happy with it.
I’m sleeping in the spare bedroom/study at the moment as my wife and I have a 6 week old newborn son, he is in a crib in our bedroom with my wife, he’s feeding every two hours max.
The Prime is getting a fair bit of use every night 
I also had some cables made up by Ghent Audio to tidy up the mass of wires at the back.
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Ghent makes good stuff. Own a couple of their cables. The Meridian Prime Headphone amp DAC works great except for with low sensitivity headphones. It wouldn’t come close to powering my HE-6Se set. Had to buy some new Schiit for that. My main use is via the USB port. I run my Bryston BDP-1 direct to the Meridian, as well as having analog hookups from the preamp. Your MQA light is probably white. A blue sharpie works wonders.