NEWS: ATC's ultimate desktop speakers

"The ultimate MP3 PA system" - that's one of the applications British speaker company ATC has in mind for its new SCM-16A active speakers, which are designed for desktop use, as well as in multichannel systems.

Mind you, you'd better get yourself a pretty substantial desk to use them on: the new speakers weigh 17.5kg a pop. Oh, and a healthy wallet won't go amiss, given that they're just over £2200 a pair!

The speakers, which have a solid cast-aluminium enclosure - that'll account for some of the weight, then - use a 15cm bass driver incorporating a 4.5cm soft-dome midrange unit.

This employs ATC's Constrained Layer Damping, which combines two layers sandwiching a damping material. As the cone flexes, this design damps out unwanted vibrations.

The tweeter is a newly-designed 25mm soft-dome design with a neodymium magnet and an aluminium faceplate to optimise dispersion. The onboard amplification delivers 200W to the mid/bass unit and 50W to the tweeter.

Inputs are on XLR connectors, the speakers are voice-matched with the company's Active 10 and 20 designs, and while the standard finish for the acoustically inert enclosure is silver grey, other colours are available to order.

Technorati Tags: active, loudspeaker, ATC

Andrew has written about audio and video products for the past 20+ years, and been a consumer journalist for more than 30 years, starting his career on camera magazines. Andrew has contributed to titles including What Hi-Fi?, GramophoneJazzwise and Hi-Fi CriticHi-Fi News & Record Review and Hi-Fi Choice. I’ve also written for a number of non-specialist and overseas magazines.