Criterion Audio visits the ATC loudspeaker factory in The Cotswold’s

Following a recent house move, a long-standing customer of ours and former owner of ATC’s SCM150A Anniversary loudspeakers was looking to upgrade, but having heard a number of alternatives, finding a worthy replacement was proving difficult.

Enter the rather stunning EL150A.

Despite there being no demonstrators available, ATC kindly arranged to build a new pair for us and the customer to audition. Due to their size and shape, handling these handsome beasts isn’t particularly easy, so we took up their generous offer of a demonstration at their facilities in The Cotswolds last week: a six-and-a-half hour round trip, but certainly not an offer we were going to turn down!

To give the customer a known reference point, we took along one of his Aurender streamers and Weiss DAC501 as source and volume attenuation.  From the outset we were greeted by a sound that was certainly ATC but now even moreso: in particular, the leading edges and acoustic of plucked strings on the opening track of Anouar Brahems’ album ‘The Astounding Eyes of Rita’ (a wonderfully hypnotic work and excellent for illustrating the subtleties between components) were so well defined that the memory of this from systems that had impressed before, now seemed blurred and ill-defined by comparison.

We continued further, and to evaluate bass realism and extension we turned to ‘Rim Shot’ from Erykah Badu’s ‘Baduism’.  We initially found absolute extension to be less than expected, only to discover it was the room’s influence, as moving away from the sweet spot towards the sides uncovered another octave!

The next step will be to try the EL150As in the room they would end up in, but this is likely to be some time away due to the time required and commitments on all sides, so we’ll follow this up when it happens!

See the ATC range here: https://www.criterionaudio.com/brands/atc/