Accuphase demonstrations and sales have been a little quiet over the past few months. Our focus on ATC products has been fairly solidly centred on their active products and, more particularly, the larger (but still resolutely sensible) 50 litre models.
With a pair of passive SCM40’s now up for sale, we have someone coming along tomorrow to hear them. We know he has some sort of pre/power combo and a pretty high end Wadia CD player, but his actual amplification is apparently sufficiently esoteric to not be known to us.
One issue that we have run into with the SCM40’s is that they can sound a little ‘dried out’ at low listening levels. This became evident when an apartment dwelling customer partnered them with Naim’s NSC 222 / NAP 250 pairing. To a degree, this issue persists with some other sensibly priced electronics too. Great when you wind it up, less so at low levels. By virtue of us playing most systems at ‘realistic’ levels, we had rather missed this foible.
Given that tomorrow’s potential customer has a pre-power combo, why not employ the pretty much entry level Accuphase C-2300 / A-48S pairing for the dem? Despite always favouring the high end DP-570 and DP-770 CD + SACD players, we’ve fronted this with their fairly modest ‘starter’ DP-450 CD player.
We know Accuphase and ATC work well together but it was nevertheless a surprise to sit down in front of it and have our ears refreshed. Colourful, engaging and dynamic. An enormous soundstage with width and depth extending well beyond the room. If you believe the VU metres, it was playing quite close to its limits but it certainly didn’t sound remotely stretched. It’s a lovely system but, really, we already knew this.
Backing off to a very very low listening level was, however, a complete revelation:
Full colour, widescreen, 4k. Every bit as engaging as when at our more animated listening levels. I really must have a chat with our thoughtful flat dweller!!
Alastair