I believe that many audiophiles will complain that the price of imported audio equipment is getting more and more expensive, indeed now a decent system of fifty or sixty thousand is a common thing, and hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of systems are also everywhere, so that the general consumer seems to have a high sense of climbing. So everyone misses the time more than twenty years ago, when there were many thousands of dollars of British affordable equipment to choose from, but unfortunately, most of the brands withdrew from the market, and the remaining small part is no longer the same as before, no longer has a high-cost halo. At this point, you may be asking, "Is it really difficult to find imported audio equipment that most people can afford right now?" My answer was—"Difficult, but not impossible." "ATOLL (Coral Reef) from France is one of these rare and cost-effective import brands.
ATOLL is committed to spending all the money on improving the performance of the product, so there is little advertising, and its popularity is not as big as its French compatriots FOCAL, Triangle, YBA, but ATOLL has a rare trait of the general fever brand - "very high cost performance". ATOLL was founded in September 1997 by two brothers, Stéphane DUBREUIL and Emmanuel DUBREUIL. ATOLL was founded because the brothers felt that there was a lack of affordable and cost-effective audiophile equipment in the market, so many people were blocked from the charm of hi-fi, so they were determined to produce a hi-fi that most people could afford.
ATOLL's first work was the IN 50 combined amplifier, which was followed by the IN 80 combined amplifier, PR 100 preamplifier, AM 50 and AM 80 power amplifier, which were improved over time and upgraded to se versions. In the summer of 1998, ATOLL's sales were a huge success, and the French and European media gave it high praise, and ATOLL quickly expanded its sales network.
In terms of production, ATOLL does not compromise, the products are fully symmetrical wiring, the use of full discrete components, the amplifier is a dual mono structure, the pursuit of the lowest interference, the shortest connection length. Open ATOLL's machine and you'll find high-quality capacitors, metal film resistors, precision-paired MOS-FET FETs, and more. ATOLL products are pure, ethereal and full of cultural connotations, all designed and produced in Europe: the parts are inserted and welded at the Brecey factory in Normandy, and after installation, they must undergo 4 tests and subjective listening before packing. All parts are from Europe, the chassis is manufactured in Britany, the aluminum panel cutting and laser etching is done in Lorraine, the circuit board is produced in Pays Basque, and the transformer is supplied by Rhone. At present, ATOLL has become synonymous with cost-effective fever equipment.
The cost-effective system presented this time involves two pieces of ATOLL equipment – the IN 50 Signature combined amplifier and the CD50 Signature laser record player. The other is a Giglio bookshelf speaker from Rosso Fiorentino, Italy.
So how much do these two ATOLL devices cost? You may not be quite convinced – the price of two pieces of equipment is only 6980 yuan! 6980 yuan? Now a slightly famous power cord is more than this price, but ATOLL can provide you with a beautiful sound, exquisite workmanship of French-origin fever equipment, ask you whether you are satisfied? In fact, even without considering inflation, the price of these two pieces of ATOLL equipment of 6980 yuan was competitive twenty years ago. What about today' expensive things?!
The Rosso Fiorentino Giglio bookshelf speaker has Italy's iconic glamorous sound and exquisite craftsmanship, priced at 16,500 yuan, and now a 10,000-yuan Italian box with good sound and color like Giglio is also rare. The three pieces of imported equipment add up to only 30,460 yuan, and most audio and music lovers can easily afford it, which does have a strong attraction.
The IN 50 Signature combined amplifier is a continuation of ATOLL's debut IN 50 with an output power of 50W/channel (8Ω). Although inexpensive, the IN 50 Signature material is not ambiguous: the Ring Bull uses the Spanish HR DIEMEN EFITER product with a capacity of 170VA; each channel uses a pair of IOR MOS-FET field effect tubes, each tube is equipped with an independently designed high-efficiency radiator; the fever MKP capacitor is used in large quantities, with a total filter capacitor of 15,000 μF; in addition, the IN50 Signature also has an ear release function.
The CD50 Signature uses two transformers, the black one is a German HAHN product, the orange red is a British MYRRA product, one of which is used in the analog part, and the other 30VA transformer is designed to power digital circuits. The turntable is an audio-only movement provided by Japanese TEAC, and the bald head is a component of Sanyo, Japan. The CD50 Signature uses a PCB double-layer nickel/gold printed circuit board with overtemperature protection, and the decoding chip is the Burr Brown PCM1793.
This concludes with Rosso Fiorentino's Giglio bookshelf speakers. Francesco Rubenni, the designer of Rosso Fiorentino, trained in music, studied harmony and composition in Florence, then spent five years studying loudspeakers, acoustics and psychoacoustics at the University of Slford in Manchester, ENGLAND, and finally graduated with the highest credit as an electroacoustic engineer. It can be said that in the audio industry, there are very few designers like Franceso Rubenni who are born in music and sound.
Giglio's appearance is not as beautiful as it is in a 10,000-yuan speaker: giglio's cabinet surface is paved with leather, which is not only for aesthetic purposes, but actually to prevent sound diffraction and obtain more accurate sound and image positioning.
The tweeter is a specially customized Scanspeak 25mm filament membrane dome, which can be extended to lower frequencies and is well connected to the midwoofer due to the large vibration area, and the use of dual magnets also allows it to obtain a good high frequency extension.
The mid-woofer is also a 7-inch Scanspeak unit specially customized according to Rosso Fiorentino requirements, and the larger caliber ensures good low-frequency replay results.
This unit is characterized by the use of NRSC resin to apply glass fiber diaphragm, and the use of high rigidity of the ventilation basin frame, can withstand a lot of power, has good control of the diaphragm, due to the high rigidity of the diaphragm, light weight, so can push the segmentation distortion to a very high frequency.
Giglio's cabinets are made of high-density panels, aluminum, rubber and leather, and Rosso Fiorentino knows that each single material can only have an effect on a range of resonances, so he combines these materials to achieve the desired results, thus creating a Giglio "silent" box.
To my surprise, the Giglio divider is made of luxurious materials, with a large circuit board covered with the famous Clarity and Mundorf capacitors, Mox resistors, and huge inductors wound in pure oxygen-free copper wires, and the internal wiring is silver-plated Van Den Hul oxygen-free copper wire. You know, the above supplement-level components have not even appeared on some of the more expensive opponents!
First of all, the second song "Skyside" from Yao Yingge's "Dream Prairie" album was played. The texture of the horse's head piano at the beginning is clear, the guitar has a soft luster, and then Yao Yingge's generous and soothing singing voice floats leisurely, and when she sings "There is a mountain in the distance", I inadvertently have a particularly peaceful and comfortable feeling in my heart.... Originally, I didn't have too high expectations for this twenty-thousand-plus system, but I didn't expect its voice to be so kind and relaxed, which suddenly added a lot of goodwill. Listening further, I found that the system is not only good, but also the sound background is particularly quiet, and many details can emerge, such as it can expose the slight flaw of unstable breath when singing.... This advantage is especially valuable for an affordable system!
Then play the song "If the Cloud Knows" from Zhong Mingqiu's "It's Time" album. At this time, the guitar and flute presented by the system have a luster with a sense of purity, while Zhong Mingqiu's voice is clear, tight, and has a clear sense of line, and he breathes, inhales and uses nasal resonance to see the details. Don't you think that instruments and vocals have two very different ways of expressing themselves? Yes, this is one of the advantages of this system, it always faithfully reflects the original appearance of the recording, rather than using its own style to brand all the recordings "the same".
The outstanding advantages of this system", "background tranquility", can also be reflected by the knot that makes the instrument invisible: the guitar is located on the left side of the soundstage, flush with the speaker, and the flute is in the middle, about 1 meter behind the speaker plane, but then the flute runs behind the left guitar, which is obviously an imperceptible trick played by the recordist on the mixer, but it is also impossible to escape the fire-eyed golden eye of the protagonist of this article!
And during the listening process, I also found two subtle instruments - synthesizers and drum kits, both of which were looming, but the system effortlessly excavated them. But when I looked through the inside page of the record, I found a problem - there were no synthesizers and drum kits in the list of accompaniment instruments, was it that I heard it wrong? I rushed to contact the head of Tianyi Records, and her reply was that "the accompaniment instruments in "If the Cloud Knows" do have synthesizers and drum kits, but the inside page of the record only lists the main accompaniment instruments, so these two instruments are not listed." "At this point, I had to give another thumbs up to the background tranquility of the system.
There are many editions of Liang Zhu, and this time I have chosen the version of Takako Nishizaki, published by Marco Polo in 1992. It was an unexpected choice because I didn't have a very good impression of the record, but the record with violin at the time of the test was only available for it. I bought this record around 1994, and when I heard it, I thought it was thin and seemed to be nothing outstanding, so I put it on the shelf.
But this time, the protagonist of this article has changed my opinion: the violin in The hand of Takako Nishizaki has a soft luster, the texture is condensed, the lines are clear, but the sound of the piano will be slightly moist, and it can ooze a silken luster... I think this should still be attributed to the advantages of this system that the background is clean and transparent, which can faithfully reflect the original appearance of the recording. At the same time, the advantages of this system also help to reveal the differences in playing styles, for example, compared with the familiar version of Liu Yunzhi, Nishizaki Takako's performance tends to be elegant, neat, introverted, biased towards the German-Austrian system, I can feel joy, resentment, excitement and other emotions from her piano, but they are just right, not easy to vent, so that I have enough imagination. In contrast, Liu Yunzhi's performance is more extroverted, sensational, biased towards the Soviet Russian system, and although all kinds of emotions are hot, sometimes I am a little overwhelmed by the pouring sound of the piano...
The system consisting of the French ATOLL IN 50 Signature combined amplifier, the CD50 Signature laser record player and the Italian Rosso Fiorentino Giglio bookshelf speaker costs only 30,460 yuan, which is cheaper than the price of a power cord of many high-end brands, but the music enjoyment it brings is touching, its sound is clear, transparent and moist, and the excellent background tranquility makes me give me a thumbs up again and again. Many music lovers do not have the opportunity to appreciate the fun brought by hi-fi audio equipment, only satisfied with the sound effects of mobile phones, thinking that the charm of music replay is just that. But I'll say, "If they had the system, they'd regret wasting so much of their music time!"