ATC marks design legacy with EL50 Anniversary active tower

ATC has announced the EL50 Anniversary, a new active 3-way floorstanding loudspeaker that brings together five decades of in-house engineering, loudspeaker design and professional audio heritage.

The latest evolution of ATC’s long-established 50 series design blueprint, drawing on technologies and design principles developed across multiple generations of the company’s flagship loudspeakers. It combines the discrete active tri-amplification architecture first introduced in ATC systems such as the SCM70 in the 1990s, later refined through the SCM50 Anniversary (2004) and SE Series (2014), with the elliptical enclosure concept introduced on the EL150 in 2006.

Designed as a long-term reference product, the EL50 Anniversary is an active, fully integrated system rather than a passive loudspeaker with external amplification. The industrial design features an elliptical cabinet form, leather detailing on the front baffle, and hand-selected veneers, positioning the product for both high-end residential installations and statement listening environments.

An initial limited run of 50 pairs will be produced, each supplied with a hardbound owner’s handbook documenting ATC’s development from its origins as a drive-unit specialist in 1974 to its current position as a globally respected loudspeaker manufacturer. Following this limited edition, the EL50 Anniversary will move into continued production.

At the core of the EL50 Anniversary is a new proprietary 3-channel discrete active Amp-Pack. This integrates balanced input stages, fourth-order active crossovers and three dedicated power amplifier channels delivering 200W (bass), 100W (mid) and 50W (high-frequency) continuous power.

Key engineering developments include new discrete gain blocks in the balanced instrumentation input stage and crossover network, designed to lower the noise floor and reduce distortion. The power supply has been comprehensively redesigned, using individual toroidal transformers for each amplifier channel, plus a separate transformer for the low-voltage supply. This topology improves headroom under demanding loads and reduces intermodulation distortion between channels, contributing to greater clarity and system stability.

For integration into custom installations, the system includes user-selectable input sensitivity for source matching, power on/off trigger input and link control, comprehensive thermal management via a large heatsink, and live fault monitoring for DC offset and temperature. Output stages use discrete MOSFET class A-B amplification.

The cabinet structure uses formed and laminated multi-layer construction to maximise stiffness and internal damping, reducing cabinet-borne colouration in the upper-bass and mid-range. A curved cabinet face and edges reduce edge diffraction, supporting a smoother on- and off-axis frequency response and more consistent in-room performance.

The bass driver is mounted in a precision-turned aluminium ring, bolted into the cabinet face to further increase structural integrity. Finishing details include hand-selected European crown-cut walnut veneers, ebony inlays on the rear panel, high-gloss polyester lacquer, and fine-grained black napa leather panels around the mid and high-frequency drivers and lower front section.

All drive units are designed and manufactured in-house by ATC, and comprise:

SH25-76S ‘S-Spec’ tweeter: A neodymium motor system delivering 2.0 tesla, dual-suspension coil support and a coated fabric dome, providing extended response beyond 25kHz with low harmonic and intermodulation distortion.

SM75-150S ‘Superdome’ mid-range: Covering 380Hz to 3.5kHz, this 75mm dome driver combines a high-power magnet system with a large voice coil and under-hung motor design, enabling high dynamic capability with low compression and consistent performance at all levels.

SB75-234SL bass driver: ATC’s 9-inch Super Linear bass unit uses a Super Linear motor system to reduce 3rd harmonic distortion in the upper-bass/lower-midrange by 10–15dB, with optimised spider and surround geometry allowing large linear excursion for controlled low-frequency output.

The ATC EL50 Anniversary is available from March 2026, priced at £49,500 per pair.