John
Panasonic’s Technics brand is best known in audiophiles circles for its range of high-end direct-drive turntables. A few weeks ago we visited Max Kultur Technik in Berlin for a quick taste of the SL-1000R – the €15,999 flagship ‘table. Their SL-1200G is this reviewer’s daily drive.
The Japanese manufacturer is also hip to a high-end turntable’s uber-niche appeal. Last year at IFA, also in Berlin, we caught the launch of Technics’ SC-C70 all-in-one network/CD player. Some call it ‘lifestyle’. Others call it mass-market. Whatever the terminology, sating mainstreamers thirst for better-engineered affordable hardware is where the big money sits.
As such, at Munich High-End 2018, Technics launched the OTTAVA™ S SC-C50 – a stylish single-box loudspeaker whose glass-fibre chassis hosts a trio of coaxially-aligned 1.6cm tweeters (left, right, centre) and 6.5cm midrange drivers. A 12cm long throw subwoofer does the rest.
There’s no CD player here. The SC-C50’s emphasis is very much on streaming, wired or wireless. Bluetooth and Google Chromecast talk to a range of smartphone and desktop apps. This unit is also multi-room capable. A TOSLINK socket ’round back says hello to TVs and games consoles.
For the clever stuff, four DSP modules – JENO Engines – optimise driver output according to the SC-C50’s position in the room and its acoustic make-up. Technics call this Space Tune™ where a smartphone measures the room and feeds its readings back into the SC-C50’s DSP.
On SC-C50’s amplification, Technics draw on their in-house developed LAPC which “measures the amp’s frequency amplitude phase characteristics with speakers connected to the unit and performs digital signal processing to achieve the ideal impulse response. Parameters optimised for the low-frequency and high-frequency speaker load characteristics are pre-set in the LAPC computation circuit of the unit to realise ideal frequency and phase characteristics over the entire frequency range.”
Technics’ European Product Manager Frank Balzuweit has more:
Pricing on the SC-C50 is expected to come at ~€700 with in-store availability slated for Q3 2018.
Further information: Technics
