ATC 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System Review

ATC is a well-established Hi-Fi brand out of the UK that has been serving both the professional and consumer markets for many years. Being more familiar with their large active loudspeaker models that are always fun to listen to at audio shows, I was intrigued when their US distributor, Lone Mountain Audio, contacted me with an offer to review a far more reasonable, but no less interesting home theater setup. The system consisted of ATC’s SCM19 stand-mounted speakers for the main channels, the C3C center channel speaker, the HTS7 wall-mounted surround speakers, and the C1 Sub Mk2 subwoofer.

Based in Gloucestershire in the UK, ATC (Acoustic Transducer Company) was founded in 1974 and got its start by building speaker drivers for the professional market. ATC’s speaker drivers quickly found their way into the touring rigs of major bands of the time, followed by recording studios soon after that. Early on in the company’s history, they developed an interesting soft dome midrange driver design. This style of driver would become a hallmark of ATC speakers, becoming further refined and seeing widespread use throughout its lines. By the mid-seventies, ATC is well into designing and installing active loudspeakers in recording studios and broadcast stations. Before too long ATC, not unlike competing UK brand PMC, was adapting its professional technology (both active and passive) for use in the consumer market. I have encountered the venerable ATC SCM50SE active tower speakers on a few occasions at shows and have been impressed by their dynamics, clarity, and power each time I’ve listened. I am less familiar with the company’s lower-key offerings, so I was very intrigued when this more modest system came my way for review. All the speakers were sporting derivatives of that unusual soft dome midrange/bass driver design that ATC is known for. The system is not cheap, almost $12,000.00 for the complete 5.1 setup. Will it live up to what I’ve come to expect from ATC in the past? Read on to find out!

The ATC 5.1 speaker system that was provided to me by the U.S. Distributor Lone Mountain Audio consists of a pair of SCM19 stand mount speakers for the front left and right channels, a C3C center channel speaker, a pair of HT7 on-wall speakers for the surrounds, and a C1 Sub Mk2 subwoofer for low-frequency duty. The front and center channel speakers are from what ATC terms their Entry Series line and arrived in a lovely and tasteful cherry wood veneer. The subwoofer and on-wall speakers were in the available satin black finish. The shipment arrived well packaged with each speaker enclosed in a soft drawstring bag and with fitted foam insulation within their respective boxes. I particularly liked the grilles that came with the center and main speakers. They are a curved metal mesh that was painted grey and they magnetically attached to the speaker’s faces. It’s one of the few times that I found myself keeping the grilles on the review speakers because they accentuated the general good looks of the system.

All of the speakers feature incredibly sturdy and heavy sealed cabinets. One of the first things that I noticed was how dense and solid all the speakers felt when I initially unpacked them for set up. The benefit of having all the speakers be of sealed cabinet construction is that the more gradual low-end roll-off (while beginning sooner compared to a ported speaker) should help with achieving a smooth integration between speakers and subwoofer at the crossover point.

It should be noted that ATC prides itself on designing and building all its own speaker drivers and electronics in-house where they can control all the levels of engineering, manufacture, and validation. These days, that sort of thing is expensive and rare to see in an audio company big or small. I have a feeling that in a post-COVID-19 world we may be seeing more of a desire for audio companies to, if not completely bring manufacturing in-house, at least source componentry more locally to keep better control of the overall manufacturing process. It’ll certainly mean more expensive prices from audio manufacturers that do this, but I think the concept of “faster, cheaper, better” is experiencing a serious re-think right now and will only continue in the coming months.

All the speakers in the review system use the same 1-inch soft-dome tweeter which features a Neodymium magnet and a dual suspension that is said to ensure more linear diaphragm travel and lower overall distortion.

The C3C center channel speaker incorporates a pair of different “CLD” 6-inch mid-bass drivers with smaller soft dome centers and equally large magnet and motor structures. It is another solidly built and pretty looking sealed box that weighs almost 40 pounds and made no hollow sounds anywhere that I knocked on it.

The ATC C1 Sub Mk2 subwoofer is a sealed down-firing design that was recently updated with a new in-house made 12-inch driver, updated controls, and amplification. It uses a 200-watt Class A/B MOSFET amplifier to help the sub reach a rated -6 dB point of 25 Hz. The satin black finish with satin metal legs looked understated and elegant and at its modest size would easily disappear in the room. All the controls are on the rear panel and are pretty complete. The only other thing I might have wished for at this price was an XLR input but the RCAs worked just fine for my purposes.

All the speakers featured in this review come with a 6-year manufacturer warranty.

The ATC 5.1 system was set up in my basement home theater space in my typical 5.1 surround layout. The SCM19 speakers were placed on 28-inch black Monoprice Monolith stands that were filled with sand. In my standard HT setup, I also have four GoldenEar SuperSat 3 speakers mounted high (where the wall meets the ceiling) and aimed at the listening area for use as Dolby ATMOS height speakers. The speakers were all controlled and powered by an Anthem MRX 1120 HT receiver with an OPPO BDP-103 Universal Player and Microsoft Xbox One as the main sources. All the speakers were acoustically dialed in using Anthem’s ARC room correction system and were crossed over to the sub at 80 Hz with the height channels crossed at 160 Hz.

I also had the McIntosh MX123 preamp/processor and MC 255 multi-channel power amplifier in the house for review so you may see that equipment hooked up in some of my photos as well.

Below in the frequency response graphs, the Red trace shows the measured response, the Black trace is the target response, and the Green trace is the final response post Anthem ARC room correction EQ.

I found that while Anthem ARC’s default upper EQ limit of 5 kHz worked well with all the ATC speakers if I reduced those limits to 500 Hz for the mains and center channel and 3 kHz for the surrounds, it helped in correcting the most egregious room anomalies that I had while still preserving the speaker voicing. ARC found the subwoofer’s -3 dB point to be at 24 Hz in my room, picking up a nice bit of room gain through the corner placement. My general philosophy on room EQ is to try to avoid a full 20 Hz – 20 kHz correction if possible. If a processor will allow me to set limits, then I like to try and target everything below 5 kHz at the most (in a multi-channel scenario) as that is where the biggest room issues tend to be. This approach also allows the processor to apply its finite resources more efficiently with usually better results.

I have had all manner of speaker systems take up residence in my home theater over the past few years. Assortments ranging from simple black boxes to bold-colored behemoths and everything in between. Each has left their various visual impressions on family and guests, but none have elicited such universal-style approval from everyone who has seen them as this ATC system has. It looks like a decidedly “grown-up” sort of system. An arrangement that someone who knows what they are doing (apparently not me!) would likely put together. “Nicely dressed” and “possessing of an understated sex-appeal” would also be accurate descriptors. My wife was visually relieved and rather impressed when the system was fully in place in our room. “Now THIS is something I could live with!” were her exact words, followed up with “It’s very pretty and it’s got style.” Score one for the speaker-boffins in Gloucestershire!

The 8-ohm impedance of all the speakers made them an easy load for the Anthem receiver to drive effectively. Seeing as to how ATC is a company steeped in the Pro-audio world, I was expecting the sound quality to be revealing, possibly even ruthless. After some time with both movies and music on this system, I concluded that I definitely got the revealing part of the equation but not so much the ruthless. The ATC system was a very easy to listen to ensemble that was seamlessly integrated to make a properly enveloping experience. With movies, I didn’t experience any harshness that you’ll sometimes get in the lower part of the high-frequency range, but they were resolving enough for me to notice the small details in the sound of rain or blowing leaves for example. The system also had dynamics to spare as explosions and gunshots were rendered convincingly and effectively. The ATC C1 Sub Mk2 proved to be a little champ in my listening sessions, dishing out tight, punchy, and solid feeling bass when called upon.

If there was one of the ATC speakers in this system that came close to being ruthless it was the C3C center speaker. When I played the odd movie from a DVD source (yes, I still have a few of those), the C3C seemed to take delight in showing just how lousy and boxy sounding some of those center channel dialog tracks from DVDs actually were. I confirmed that it wasn’t the speaker because playing those same movies from a Blu-Ray or streaming source revealed no such weakness in the center channel mix.

Listening to multi-channel music through the ATC system was an especially engaging and refined experience. Again, the sense of envelopment was completely convincing and no one speaker made itself known over the others. Instruments and vocals all sounded natural and properly placed in space. I did not feel that anything was missing tonally from what I was listening to. Everything sounded clear and properly detailed, but the speakers all had that sense of ease about them that I eventually stopped trying to analyze their sound and I just enjoyed what I was listening to.

The impression of being surrounded by the 12 singers, including from behind me, was completely convincing. The HTS7 does very well particularly with the male bass voices in those channels. The depth and power of those voices came through successfully showing the HTS7 has the range and depth to keep up with the front channels. “Now Is the Month of Maying” have the singers all doing a “fa-la-la-la-lah” style bridge between the song verses. The bridge happens simultaneously all around me with the vocals all intertwining yet all the ATC speakers, from the center through to the surrounds, render each voice distinctly and clearly making the individual bridges easy to follow no matter where they came from. “It Was A Lover and His Lass” has a little bit more of individual singers performing the verses solo and the singers move from different channels while the accompaniment is in the opposing channel. If nothing else this track shows off how each speaker can reproduce a natural sounding voice going from a very whisper to intense volumes without strain or compression. The clarity of the ATC system with this type of music is impressive.

The aural goodness continues in “H Gang” where we get more detail plumbed from Fagan’s nasally voice out of the center speaker and the HTS7 surrounds are busy faithfully managing horns, rhythm guitar, and keyboards to complete a fully circular picture. The SCM19 is an exceptional anchorman to this system. They handle the mass of the drum kit with great dynamics and detail and cymbal hits have an excellent metallic shimmer to their sound. They also handle the lion’s share of the closing guitar solo and its an incredibly tasty dish to listen to. The smooth, sophisticated sound of “What I Do” melds perfectly with the character of the ATC speakers. The kick drum from the center channel combined with the sub sounds sufficiently impactful with the correct detail to its sound. The harmonica solo, also from the center channel, sounds crisp and dances around deftly in space in front of me. The female background singer’s voices come from the surround channels and effectively wrap around behind me. I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed this album a few times with this speaker system.

Carlton plays an acoustic guitar with a pickup installed that has a deeper more resonant tone while Ford is playing an electric guitar that has a ringing bite to its sound. On the track “Monty” Ford plays lead, channeling his inner Wes Montgomery, and he sounds fantastic doing it. The standup bass just rumbles through the subwoofer dishing out a great thick groove to anchor the sound of the crisp guitars. The surround channels are handling the crowd applause and general club ambiance, filling in the picture nicely. On “Cold Gold” the drums sound especially good through the SCM19 having a great attack to the sticks on the skins while the C1 Sub Mk 2 lends the kick drum great authority. When either guitar player takes a solo on this track the main speakers just extract so much rich tone and string detail from each player’s style. I could especially feel the more aggressive string picks and bends from both players on the SCM19s. It really felt like I was in that club watching these Gods perform. Any vocals came squarely through C3C center speaker and when Robben Ford took his turn at singing on “Hand In Hand With The Blues”, the center ATC speaker just knocked it out of the park with it’s handling of his voice. Ford’s voice isn’t very deep, but it is melodic and the C3C got the clarity and tonality just right in my book. Watching and hearing Carlton and Ford play is like experiencing a master class in style, technique, and good taste, much like this ATC speaker set it seemed.

The C3C center channel seemed to be doing an excellent job handling the bulk of the vocals and whatever effects were directed to it. Volumes got pretty high with this movie and the C3C didn’t put up any sort of complaints that I could discern. Everything coming from it was clear and intelligible. The destruction of the Antarctica base scene that heralds the release of Monster Zero sounded positively epic! Explosions, lightning breath, gunfire from all directions, and then Godzilla showing up for his first confrontation with Monster Zero. Our home theater was shaking while immersed in all sorts of background mayhem and then Godzilla’s trademark roar came ringing through the center channel. It was fantastic! The rest of the movie is full of the same sort of fun stuff and the ATC system just ate it up and provided a truly amazing experience. It has dynamics to spare.

The ATC 5.1 HOME THEATER SPEAKER SYSTEM is what brand-savvy people call “aspirational product”. The thing is, this aspirational product delivers!

The ATC 5.1 Home Theater System is an impeccably good sounding ensemble of speakers, superbly matched to deliver truly memorable movie or music enjoyment. ATC’s pro audio heritage and know-how have been put to good use in these smartly designed and well put together speakers and subwoofer. The system provided excellent clarity and detail with all manner of material yet remained easy to listen to and musical in its character and delivery. There was no sense of dynamic compression at any volume I dared try, and the subwoofer filled my room with tight, impactful bass that left me quite satisfied with everything I listened to. With its attractive yet understated looks, ATC has given us the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove for medium-sized home theater spaces. And even though my time with this system was temporary, I would inevitably feel a level of satisfaction whenever I walked into my home theater and I looked at this system. It was Iike I experienced the pride of ownership, a certain sense that I had arrived at something special. I (and my wife) could happily live with this system in our HT and not want anything more. That says something. I would expect those sets of intangibles to be of added significance as the value of this system tops $12,000.00 as tested. That is a lot of coin to be dropping on a 5.1 channel surround system. But for that expenditure, you get exceptional European quality, superb performance, and attractive looking gear that makes a statement. Not everyone is going to care about each one of these traits but if you do, and the funds are in your piggy bank, I strongly encourage you to check out this ATC system if it suits your needs. I do not think you will be disappointed.