Hi-Fi Choice - May

AUDIOFILE
ATC Signature edition
The SCM10SE celebrates a life in sound
PRICE: £3,491 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01285
760561 WEB: ATCLOUDSPEAKERS.CO.UK
WHAT BETTER WAY to mark the 70th birthday of
your company’s founder than to launch a luxury edition
of a timeless favourite loudspeaker? That’s precisely
what ATC has done in honour of founder and managing
director Billy Woodman. Taking the classic design of
the SCM10 mini monitor from the nineties, the new
SCM10SE comes with a lustrous blue piano finish, with
silver detailing and a fine-grain blue leather baffle. The
original SCM10’s soft dome tweeter has been updated
with the recently developed SH25-76S ‘S-spec’ 25mm
dual-suspension design alongside the SB45-1255C
125mm mid/bass unit with integral soft dome. In turn
the crossover has been reworked for the new units
using ATC’s hand-wound air-cored inductors and
polypropylene capacitors throughout. The result is
a crossover frequency at 2.5kHz and sensitivity of
82dB/1W/1m. Around the back the SCM10SE have
4mm plugs/binding posts for bi-wiring and the mini
monitors also come with a six-year warranty.
IN BRIEF
BLUE AURA
BLACKLINE V40
M6 Encore 225
PRICE: £3,999 AVAILABLE: END OF MAY
CONTACT: 0208 9002866 WEB: MUSICALFIDELITY.COM
● With JJ Electronics Europeanproduced
valves, the Blackline V40
is claimed to provide the warm,
luxurious sound that’s so commonly
associated with tube amplifiers.
Output is quoted as 30W with an
impedance of 4 or 8ohm, and the
V40 is the first product in the
Blackline range to offer Bluetooth
4.0 connectivity – aptX no less.
Additional socketry includes RCA
phono inputs and a micro USB port.
With a piano black finish, the
Blackline V40 is available to buy now
for £449. Meanwhile Blue Aura
founder, Nick Holland, tells us that
the company will be launching
sonically matching loudspeakers to
accompany the V40 amplifier
“towards the end of April”.
BLUEAURA.CO.UK
Described by Musical Fidelity as a
complete solution allowing you to
keep all of your music in one place,
the M6 Encore 225 is essentially
a streaming audio player with
an impressive selection of
connectivity options.
At its heart is a dual-core 64-bit
Intel CPU with 2GB of RAM to
ensure that operation is fast and to
allow for upgrades as time goes by
in an effort to ensure that it remains
futureproof. The internal 1TB
storage is claimed to be able to
hold as many as 2,500 CDs (using
the built-in CD drive’s bit-perfect
ripping), but is also upgradeable
should you need to add more
as time goes by. Power output,
meanwhile is quoted at 225W per
channel into 8ohm and the M6
Encore 225 has the same power
amplifiers under the hood as the
Recommended badge-winning
M6si (HFC 400), while a
32-bit/384kHz chipset is onhand
for digital-to-analogue conversion.
Connections include three
line-level RCA analogue inputs, two
optical and two coaxial S/PDIF
inputs (both capable of handling
signals up to 24-bit/192kHz), a USB
3.0 A port, USB 3.0 B and three USB
2.0 A ports alongside an Ethernet
for network hook up. Outputs
include a line-level analogue out,
optical and coaxial S/PDIF (again
capable of handling 24/192 signals),
a line-level preamp out, headphone
out (for headsets with an
impedance of 8ohm) and speaker
terminals. The M6 Encore 225 is
also compatible with network
speakers – such as those
popularised by Sonos, while
operation can be handled by the
bundled remote control or an app
for either Android or Apple devices.
It is available in a choice of silver or
black finishes and comes with a
large, hi-res full-colour display.
10 MAY 2016