Partnered with a suitably powerful amplifier, the SCM19 wow us with a dynamic, detailed and rhythmic sound
View online review whf.cm/ATCSCM19
ATC tends to work differently from most speaker manufacturers. It deals in carefully developed products that live very long lives with little or no fettling. The ATC SCM19 standmounter we have on test here is a prime example. We first reviewed the SCM 19 back in mid-2015 and they bowled us over. Fast forward to today and little has changed. The product is unchanged, yet they continue to impress despite the flood of new rivals introduced in the intervening years.
These are a sealed box design of a relatively generous 19 litres volume – ATC’s model numbers usually refer to the internal volume of the product. They are a two-way design that uses the company’s highly rated 15cm mid/bass unit. This driver has served in the brand’s premium standmounters for years.
Heavily engineered drivers
This mid/bass really is something unusual. It uses a cone made of doped polyester weave, onto which a 75mm dome is grafted in a bid to improve the unit’s performance at the integration point.
Take one of these drivers out of the 19s and you will find it is a heavily engineered unit with a huge magnet assembly. It weighs in at a hefty 9kg, and accounts for almost half the weight of the speaker.
The big news isn’t the mid/bass though; that honour belongs to the tweeter. The 25mm soft-dome took years to develop and is made in-house – quite an accomplishment for such a small company. Most rivals buy off-the-shelf options from OEM drive unit suppliers. The two drivers cross over at an entirely conventional 2.5kHz.
While the SCM19s aren’t hard speakers to drive, they really do excel with quality amplifiers that have a bit of poke. Sensitivity is below average at 85dB/W/m, which tends to reinforce this impression.
Given a day to settle, these standmounters turn in a great performance. We start off listening to a CD-rip of Clair De Lune from our reference Naim ND555/555 PS DR streamer and are impressed by what we hear.
There’s a clear sense of how large the recording venue is, the SCM19s picking up the subtle acoustic clues that allow us to perceive that size. Piano notes are delivered with solidity and finesse.
We are struck by the layers of harmonics the speakers resolve and the natural way these standmounters render the varying intensity of the keystrokes. The leading and trailing edges of notes are crisply defined without sounding artificially hyped. These speakers really
