What's unique about the brand
What reviewers are saying
We read all the reviews. Here's what reviewers feel most strongly about:
- ATC's commitment to in-house driver design and manufacturing allows for tight control over performance characteristics and seamless integration across their entire product line.
- They primarily use active designs with electronic crossovers and dedicated amplifiers for each driver, optimizing power delivery and minimizing distortion compared to passive crossovers.
- ATC speakers prioritize accuracy, neutrality, and wide dynamic range, resulting in a sound signature that may expose flaws in recordings or upstream components.
Our favorite reviewer quotes:
- "Low-frequency musicality is stunning—a combination of pitch control and effortless slam that are hallmarks of ATC's active products. The SCM50's woofer has an enviable ability to resolve textures and timbral colors, capably rendering the skins of bass drums, or the flutter of tom-toms, or the dark voicing of orchestral bass viols as bows are dragged across their strings." (https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/atc-scm50-aslt-loudspeaker)
- "The SCM50 has an almost eerie immediacy that seems to glean the intent of the musician before his bow touches the string or a note escapes his lips. And piano reproduction is, in a word, breathtaking with an extended range of soundboard weight and resolution that reaches all the way back to the touch of the player's fingertips." (https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/atc-scm50-aslt-loudspeaker)
- "Its resolution is unstoppable, as if it is on a mission to exploit every single aspect of an amplifier's output. Tonally faithful to the source, the 19 is brimming with midrange power and a single-driver like coherence, challenging if not surpassing its compact predecessors." (https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/atc-scm19-loudspeaker-1)
- "Vocal reproduction—always a point of pride for this brand—has never before been as direct, live, and in-the-room as it is through the SCM19. As I cued up a cavalcade of singers—from the grit and gravel of Tom Waits to the cut-crystal clarity of soprano Anna Netrebko—my notepad silently fell to the floor, along with my jaw." (https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/atc-scm19-loudspeaker-1)
- "As you might imagine it's the bass that first grabs you with this system, but it doesn't do so in an overpowering or excessive way like a subwoofer turned up to 11. Instead you can hear all the timbres of bass instruments and all the nuances of the way they are played; it's almost the opposite of bass created by smaller speakers where definition is exchanged for thick, heavy, and unnatural lows." (https://hifiplus.com/articles/primare-pre60-atc-scm150-asl-system)
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Products
Lineup comparison
We think it's helpful to understand how their products compare. To learn more about each, scroll to the section above to click through to individual product pages.
SCM7 MK3
- Positioning: The entry-level model in ATC's loudspeaker lineup.
- Description: Features a compact design and precise sound, with a 25mm soft dome tweeter and a 125mm mid-bass driver. Compared to the SCM19, it offers a smaller footprint, making it ideal for small rooms or desktop setups, but it lacks the larger bass driver and higher sensitivity found in the SCM19.
SCM19
- Positioning: A mid-range model in the Entry Series, offering a balance between performance and size.
- Description: Features an "SL" spec bass driver and 75mm integral soft dome, providing excellent phase coherence and bass response. It offers a more robust soundstage than the SCM7 MK3.
SCM19A
- Positioning: An active version of the SCM19, positioned as a higher-end option within the Entry Series.
- Description: Includes an on-board 182-watt Class A/B bi-amplifier, delivering enhanced sound clarity and power. It uses active crossover filters, unlike the passive SCM19, which requires external amplification.
SCM40A
- Positioning: The groundbreaking flagship model of the Entry Series, offering the most advanced features and performance.
- Description: Equipped with a tri-amplifier system and a 164mm bass driver, providing exceptional sound quality and dynamic range. It surpasses the SCM19A with its additional mid-range driver and higher power output.
Used
ATC
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Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
Air Motion Transformers
ADAM Audio has been refining Air Motion Transformer technology for more than 25 years, and we employ it in every tweeter we manufacture. This sustained focus has led to a series of innovations which trickle down to every series in our portfolio. We have an expert team in Berlin that hand-folds these tweeters, and they are subject to rigorous QA before they are fitted to the loudspeakers.
Industrial Design
ADAM Audio loudspeakers have a strong and unique design language that stems from Berlin and the design team here. Every choice centers around acoustic performance, but the beveled edges, bespoke waveguides, and rounded ports combine to form striking products. For decades, the loudspeakers have been the focal point of studios worldwide, and in recent years they have been catching eyes in home audio systems.
What's your approach to customer support?
Our Berlin-based customer support team handles hundreds of queries each month, ranging from pre-sales questions, troubleshooting and best practices, to repairs. They pride themselves on their response and success rate, and our customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive. ADAM Audio offers an industry-leading warranty of up to 5 years, and beyond that, our service team is always happy to repair products when possible. We have a wonderful dealer and distributor network who will always be happy to help if they can.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
Max Cooper – Inanimate to Animate (highly recommended to listen in Dolby Atmos where possible!)
Gui Boratto – Mr. Decay (bass extension)
Pixies – Hey (dynamic range)
What other products pair best with yours?
The resolution and conversion offered by Focusrite interfaces is second to none!
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
Unlike the vast majority of our competitors, who simply use others' active components, we have, from inception, March 2001, designed and manufactured our very own bespoke, proprietary drive units. The resultant filter networks are ridiculously simple. By controlling the whole process, we are able to derive the exact response from each in it's system. A little appreciated advange too, is we are able to provide spare parts for an extended period.
Any vibrating device will impart that vibration to the substrate to which it is fixed. At Vivid Audio at no time do we couple drive units to the cabinet directly, each is decoupled by a carefully selected soft, 30 shore silicone, memory free O ring. In the case of bass units, we go one step futher - in addition to the decoupling O ring, each driver is apposed by another identical bass unit in a reaction cancelling configuration. Expensive, resulting in an inert cabinet. Note the lack of visible fixing harware.
A perfect acoustic solution.
(No matter how heavy you make a loudspeaker cabinet, all one is doing is shifting the damped resonances in band. Place your ear against any loudspeaker to appreciate this. The worst case example is the ubiquitous eccentricly loaded sub woofer.)
We strive for as lower mass as possible in an extremely stiff configuration. The lower the mass, the lower the energy strorage. The same requirement as aircraft, race cars etc. There are many other unique technologies we employ, jointly presenting the cleanest window into the music. Our web page details these.
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
It would be foolhardy of me to send you a short list - by definition would exclude many excellent brands of which we have no knowledge. Suffice to say: Unusually, we expend an exorbitant effort in perfecting the loudspeaker / room interface, no sharp perturbations, corners, discontinuities, etc., and the loudspeaker / amplifier interface, ensuring at the minimum impedance, the current and voltage waveforms are close to being in phase - an ideal situation. Our loudspeakers present an easy load to the amplifier. Quality rather than quantity is emphasized.
