I thought you chaps might appreciate an update on the decision I came to regarding the ATC’s and of course some photos!
After the ATC went back and I plugged the SBL back in both my wife and I felt the system took a huge step backwards in terms of bandwidth, resolution, clarity and scale - so much so we resolved to purchase the ATC’s. We opted for white in the end and the passive model for several reasons:
- Cost - I’ve just added an NDX and upgraded from NAC102-very late NAC82 with POTS 8 and the difference between active and passive SCM40 amounts to around £3000.
- I have used Naim amps since 1988 and love their sound and have a huge amount of faith in Naim gear so I wasn’t particularly keen to ditch my allegiance just yet.
- I may at some point wish to make a return to hifi-reviewing and active speakers would add complexity to switching gear in and out of my system.
The ATC SCM40 and C3C center channel turned up around a week ago courtesy of TNT - all 109Kg of them!!
They are beautifully packed and wrapped and well protected for transit! The ATC logo on the cloth covers is a nice touch too.
The SBL’s are heavy but the SCM40 are another level again and so I left the spikes off to enable me to move them around more easily in pursuit of the optimum position.
The finish is flawless and my fears about the white being a bit much in the room were unfounded.
It’s hard not to be somewhat in awe of that legendary midrange dome driver and their engineering and studio pedigree.
The metallic grilles are wonderfully engineered and magnetically attach to the cabinet which is a very neat engineering solution and avoids the need for unsightly mounting hardware.
The initial positioning was with hindsight too close (10 inches) from the rear wall with around 15 degrees toe in. The center channel has temporarily been placed on top of my Marshall guitar cabinet while I wait to take delivery of the new white center channel stand from ‘Custom Design’ the UK based stand manufacturer. The plan then is to get rid of the Laney keyboard amp and put the center channel on its stand centrally with the Marshall 2x12 and amp on one side and the Vox AC15 on the other.
I have spent the first few days with the speakers pulling them out into the room around 12 inches and adjusting toe in. This has eliminated the subtle bass bloom I was getting before. Having spent a few days moving them subtly around I have now fitted the spikes and levelled them using a gyro stabilised laser level.
Since acquiring them I have been listening to so much music - just exploring recordings I thought I knew well and hearing them with more fidelity than I have experienced before. The transparency and detail resolution of the SCM40 is jaw dropping! I just played ‘The verb to do’ by Del Amitri and the heavily accented playing on acoustic guitar was laid bare and highlighted to a far greater degree than I have ever experienced before on any other speaker. It’s the way the ATC reveal nuances of performance like this that is so addictive. They reveal the architecture of music and communicate it incredibly effectively so you really feel how artists perform their music and how the engineers have recorded it. They do all this though without upsetting the cohesiveness of the performance or disrupting the emotional feel of the piece. Put simply you just feel a step nearer to the performance than you ever thought possible.
I mentioned earlier that the ATC seem to offer a far more lifelike scale to instruments than the SBL, the cello underpinning to my favourite Four Seasons recording by the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (and indeed the whole orchestra) is rendered with near lifelike scale. The feeling of being in a large acoustic space with life-sized instruments is beautifully recreated.
The nice thing is that while the SCM40 seem unerringly accurate and true to life they don’t render poor recordings unlistenable - indeed their more pronounced bass helps to fill out thin sounding recordings like for example much of U2’s output or tracks by REO Speedwagon. Feed the system well recorded stuff though and the quality of the reproduction is the stuff of dreams! The system (aided by the new NAC82) is now sounding vastly better than it did before. I certainly haven’t listened to this much music since my student days and it’s certainly a system which never ever disappints and frequently astonishes the listener.
One thing I have observed is that these speakers like a bit of power, they can do background music of course, but they really open up and fill the room with beautiful music when given just a little more volume. They don’t need to be played loud, but solo piano for example certainly sounds best when it approximates the SPL that a live piano would create in the room.
So that’s my update for now. I have a plumber coming later in the week to remove the radiator behind the right hand speaker and there will be some re-jigging once the center speaker stand arrives. I also need to work on the sound balance of the system when used as a 7.1 setup for cinema, but that’s a work in progress!
Jonathan