This is a 75mm midrange driver that takes the form of a large fabric dome – almost like a greatly enlarged tweeter. The driver that sits between them on the front baffle is the one that is of greatest interest though. This is partnered with an exactingly specific 164mm bass driver which is also bespoke. Like the other members of the range, the SCM40 mounts a soft dome tweeter that is built in house by ATC. Their best does offer some tantalising possibilities though. Like the rest of its family, you are going to need a reasonable amount of power to see the ATCs deliver their best. The SCM40 is a fairly insensitive 85dB/w but it presents 8 ohms throughout the frequency response. Sealed cabinets are generally a little less sensitive than their ported equivalents although the calculation is made more complex when you balance impedance against this (sealed cabinets tend to maintain their impedance more consistently than ported ones). In comparison to a ported speaker of equivalent size, the SCM40 will lack the bass extension that some rivals will manage – ATC claims a figure of 48kHz at +/- 6dB which is something that a speaker like the similarly priced Sonus faber Venere S can better by roughly 10Hz. Doing this comes with some side effects though. The idea is that the SCM40 will deliver its posted design figures pretty much regardless of where it happens to be placed at the time. The reason for this decision to use a sealed cabinet (and it is a true sealed design with no recourse to a passive radiator or similar) is down to trying to ensure a truly even frequency response. Critically, if you wanted to use the ATC as a drinking vessel, you technically could as the cabinet is sealed – something that is key to the design philosophy of the entire range of speakers. And yes, I have briefly considered the arresting notion of pouting eighty cans of Becks into the ATC like a sort of deranged goblet. The SCM40 is so named because SCM is the prefix of every stereo speaker that the company makes and denotes ‘Studio Control Monitor.’ The number? That’s the internal volume in litres. Is the best tool for those no budget punk recordings of the seventies, bedroom mastered electronica and loudness war victims of the last few years really a speaker that is designed to show up the problems in the mix when it was still in the studio? The devoted following that ATC seems to have suggests that for many people it is, so it’s time to dig out some recordings good and bad and see where we sit at the end of it.ĪTC is nothing if not logical when it comes to the naming of their equipment. It has suffered greater indignities in terms of quality than film soundtracks have. Two channel listening is a different beast though. When the dust settled on that system it was clear that whilst unquestionably a very accurate take on the material it was playing, it was also a very entertaining one. The construct of whether a £3,750 speaker can truly be defined as ‘entry level’ is one for another time but this is the ultimate expression of the ideas that we have already had a look at from the other end of the range in the SCM7 that acted as the front and rear speakers of the ATC multichannel system we reviewed. The SCM40 is the largest member of the Entry series of speakers from ATC.
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