The £3,295 ATC SCM40 is unusual in that it doesn’t look or feel like practically any other loudspeaker in its price range. It’s almost as if someone forgot to style it, as if three (albeit unusual-looking) drivers were thrown into a box supposed to do the job and then left. This stands in stark contrast […]
ATC is the loudspeaker firm with the most passion and soul in the professional audio market. Billy Woodman founded the company in 1974 to make drive units for broadcast and recording studios. Its first design was a strong twelve-inch woofer, which clearly indicated where his focus lay. By the mid-1980s, the firm was selling to
In 2006, a new name entered the British hi-fi sector with the introduction of a modest line of mid-priced hi-fi separates. The best of these was the tube-buffered CD player, which sounded very different from its price competitors. It didn’t take the Astin Trew AT3500 long to develop a cult following. With UK design overseen
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Despite not being a favorite of the British hi-fi press, Ariston Audio developed a great line of turntables for a decade and a half. The Prestwick company received consistently positive feedback, but it never quite managed to inspire hi-fi enthusiasts in the same way that Linn and Rega did. Regardless, its commodities were well-received and
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Ariston was previously one of the most prestigious hi-fi brands. It was the proud moniker on one of Scotland’s best turntables, and it was adored by many a well-heeled audiophile in the 1970s. The brand is now a shell of its former existence, long gone and nearly forgotten, and the RD11 tale is still mired
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Arcam began to redefine itself a few years after Linn’s Classik came by launching a line of sleeker, less specialized music-making equipment. The Solo was the first, and it was a sort of ‘next gen’ Classik, with cleaner and leaner lines than the Linn, a lovely finish, and a host of extra features. A year
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Arcam has a track record when it comes to digital-to-analogue converters. In reality, the Black Box was the first ‘offboard DAC’ (as they were known at the time) when it was released in 1989. The idea of removing the DAC from the CD transport was revolutionary at the time, but it’s now commonplace, so what
The Amplification and Recording Company of Cambridge (A&R Cambridge, later ARCAM) began work on a line of high-quality inexpensive moving magnet cartridges not long after introducing its award-winning A60 integrated amplifier. The P77, which cost £45 in 1977 and featured a (then) trendy parabolic (extended line contact) stylus, was the first to reach retailers. The
Simon Lee, the founder of April Music, is a hi-fi aficionado who left a solid profession to import obscure foreign brands into his native South Korea; he then decided to start developing his own designs as well. The DP200 you see here is one of the intriguing products that resulted. Although commonplace now, the concept
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Alex Nikitin is one of the best-kept secrets in hi-fi. Although few people are familiar with his name, he is well-known in the business as the talented audio engineer behind many of Creek Audio’s products during the 1990s and 2000s. Alex Nikitin Technology (ANT Audio) is his most recent endeavor, and in addition to a
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