Price: £1999
Website: 'http://www.atc.gb.net'
Size: HxWxD 87.5x23x30cm
Weight: 29kg
Terminals: Tri-wire/amp terminals
Sensitivity/Impedance: 85dB/8 ohms
Drive units: treble - 25mm, midrange - 75mm, bass - 200mm
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Surprisingly this is the first passive floorstander from Gloucester-based ATC. While the speaker world at large has been turning to floorstanders for their aesthetic advantages Stroud's finest have stuck with standmounts, often very big standmounts admittedly, but speakers that require some kind of raising off the ground. There are some active amplified models at several times this price that don't do this but they are behemoths.
ATC's SCM35 derives its name from the 35 litre cabinet that it uses to house three drive units, it's built in the old school style with real wood veneer and an inset grille cloth, that's held by friction alone and fits superbly. Underneath you'll find a purposeful three way array of drive units, a soft domed, neodymium magnet driven tweeter takes care of high frequencies up to and beyond 20kHz and hands over to a classic ATC 75mm soft dome for the vital midrange. Taking care of the bass is that rarity an eight inch drive unit, something that other brands think is more appropriate to a subwoofer in these days of increasingly slim speaker baffles.
The SCM35 has another surprise up its sleeve in the hefty braced cabinet; for once this is not a reflex loaded design, in other words it has no port. While reflex loading is popular because it increases sensitivity and fills out the bass there are distinct pros to the infinite baffle or sealed cabinet. Specifically bass goes down lower and in a more linear fashion.
Another unusual feature on this real cherry veneered cabinet is the presence of three sets of terminals, offering the option to tri-wire or even tri-amp. At the base of each speaker is a plinth which extends the speaker's compact footprint and introduces greater stability.
ATCs confidence in this as with all its speakers is backed up by a six year warranty, in other words if your amplifier is up to the job the speaker is bombproof. But a recommendation of amps with between 50 and 300 watts might be a little optimistic as few 50 watters have what it takes to control this sort of load at high levels.
ATC has been hand building drive units and loudspeakers for thirty years, most of them at its factory in Stroud, Gloucestershire. It's background is very much in the pro audio world, you can find ATCs in many of the most prestigious studios in the world, all Chandos Records are monitored on ATC loudspeakers and they were chosen to launch multichannel SACD at CES Las Vegas in 2002.
Sound quality
ATCs are extremely neutral, self effacing loudspeakers that put the music first whatever that music might sound like and the SCM35 is no different. I played a good range of material to get a feel for them and found some discs surprisingly lacking. This was partly because the SCM35s need plenty of run-in, they start out quite stark but become more forgiving with time, but also because they are ruthlessly revealing. Some classic albums can sound surprisingly compressed but if you put on a good recent recording the result is magnificent - full scale, rich and dynamic. I've noticed in the past that the newer a recording the better it tends to sound through ATCs. You'd think that assuming progress on the professional scene that this should be the case and that most speakers would reveal as much. But while you can usually tell the approximate vintage of a recording with any decent speaker ATCs do it better than most. Some speakers actually lean the other way and make older recordings sound better. This has a lot to do with the effects of compression from both speakers and recordings. ATCs are less compressive than most and therefore the degree and type of compression used in a studio is more apparent.
This ATC is as dynamically transparent as its stablemates, you hear the limiting on a bad recording and likewise you hear the lack of it on better one. But that's not all you hear, this is a highly transparent loudspeaker that lets an awful lot through in a clean, undistorted fashion. Voices are better served than usual, you can hear the full depth of expression and richness of tone whether the voice in question be high or low. Female voice is as faithfully served as the drone of male choir, whose sonority resonates long and low.
The SCM35s give the impression that what you are are hearing is the unadulterated truth, nothing more, nothing less. That truth being the sound of your software and hardware, so if what you are putting into these speakers has shortcomings these won't be disguised. Likewise if you are after a sweet sound or an aggressive sound you will have to select source and amplification components to achieve that effect. The ATCs are not completely devoid of character, no speaker is, but they have a lot less of it than most.
Then there's the bass. Tight, deep, though not floor bending, and controlled this is bass for connoisseurs. It seems to have the speed and coherence that you get from the all-revealing midrange, you don't think wow, great bass you just hear more of both the low and the higher stuff. It doesn't muddy the mid but reinforces it, seamlessly enhancing voices and revealing the fundamentals from instruments such as the double bass, kick drum and synthesizer. It also remains consistent whatever level you play back at. Except everything sounds better if you play it at a higher level because the scale and pressure increases but distortion does not.
Some find ATCs a hint on the dry and colourless side, but this is probably because they lack the colorations we have come to expect from most loudspeakers, some of which can be quite beguiling. So if you are after character in your speakers look elsewhere.
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If you want to hear the uncoloured truth about your music collection in all its glory and have decent amplification this is a bit of a bargain.
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