ATC SCM 40 active speakers

[drummerman]

I demo'd them alongside Linn Akudoriks (Exakt) about 4 months ago. If you whizz over to post #1334 on page 89 of this thread:

https://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/active-speakers-club?page=88

you'll see I did a pretty detailed review of what I thought.  All I can add to that sometime later is that I am still saving up for a set....am sure you'll draw your own conclusions from that  .

 

I went back to read your impressions of the ATC's. Fantastic write-up.

Did you buy the AE1a's before or after?

HI Drummerman,

Have you got the AE1a on order or have your plans changed? 

Hi Pedro2

I am waiting to buy an amplifier. The AE1a will follow immediately.

DM

 

[Paulq]

Hi Paulq,

Glad to hear that you kept the AE1a. I thought you were going to stick with the Linn Aktiv/Exakt route and it's interesting that you've decided not to. It's probably going to work out cheaper and far less complicated in the long run. Don't blame you aiming for those active ATCs. I bet they're tremendous performers!

Can't knock the AE1a for their size/price:sound ratio though; I still think they're amazing for the money. I'm still pretty stuck for any kind of negative remarks to write about them. They just seem to reproduce anything you feed into them without effort or strain (but without sounding laid back!). Tremendous.

As for interconnects for the OP, I'm sure that RCA to XLR will do the job (although fully balanced may have a slight edge - who knows?) As others have posted, a preamp would also be needed I believe.

Hey Pedro2

Long time!

The AE1a's took me a while to get used to them. As I think I mentioned to you I didn't initially feel that they quite matched the absolute level of detail I managed to attain from the traditional Linn Aktiv setup but, to be fair, I hadn't really given them enough time. Once I did I realised that the differences were minimal if there at all so I decided to stick with them and offload all the Linn kit. I am very happy with them and also, as an aside, the set of Dynaudio Emit M10's I am running passively off the MDSM at the moment - they are something else I can tell you and absolutely thunder along with bags of detail. Actually not far away from the AE1a's when push comes to shove.

I do still miss my active Katans but as you rightly pointed out, the active speaker route is far simpler and equally as compelling SQ wise.

The ATC's are definitely still top of the list and I yearn to own them one day.

Hope all is well with you and keep in touch.

 

[Pedro2]

So if one wanted to keep box count to a minimum with the 40a should one be looking at

Linn day Aurelic Audiolab mdac ??

I assume the above have a pre amp (with DAC)

Can vouch for Linn pre/streamers. Like one or two others on this forum, I rate Linn streamers very highly. I use one to feed directly into a pair of active speakers. The volume is handled in the digital domain (I believe that Linn have now stopped making analogue pre-amps) so the box count is low. Despite the 'digital' feed, however, the sound is far from clinical and is highly engagaing and musical. Bought mine second hand off Flea Bay and no regrets!

 

[lpv]

curious to know if anyone heard them.

I've owned them.

these are very well build, nice to look at and to own. I've had them together with atc ca2 preamp, auralic aries streamer and/ or arcam dac. bass is good however they missed the trick, when releasing speaker with dedicated bass driver they should add some degree of control as found on many studio monitors. In my room the bass was overdone and there was no way to reduce it. the stereo image is ok but nothing spectacular, voices got this nasal character I don't like and can be a sign of a distortion as this is not present while listening on sennheisers hd650/ hd800 or better quality monitors, top end is generally anemic/ lifeless.

I understand this is quite different view to what most think about atc.. these are much better than the majority of speakers out there.. terribly overpriced if you ask me, £3000 more over passive version is simply too much..