Atoll Electronique
Just in, straight from France, is Atoll Electronique. Yes, Atoll is made in France, not China, and comes with a THREE year warranty.
Atoll was founded in 1997 by brothers Stephane and Emmanuel Dubreuil. You’ll see that Atoll is barely more money than the Chinese imports- yet the performance is astonishingly more dynamic, rich and smooth sounding.
The line is so good, and so reasonable in price, that you have to ask why nobody else is doing this. Ultimately, Atoll is SMART and efficient. They use a short menu of chassis sizes. Their base units use a generous array of large components. As you go up in the family, let’s say integrated amps for example, you get more and larger transformers, filter caps, output devices etc. The formula is unbeatable.
Because Atoll has created a wise building block platform, you end up getting a big slug of hardware at each price jump. I’ve been in the biz since the early 70s and never seen a LINE of gear better planned and implemented!
Do any of you remember Audire? Atoll is even better at it than Audire was. The result is that YOU get remarkable, true audiophile performance, hand made from France, for not much more money than a boatload of chips and widgets from China. In China, dozens of brands can come from the same house with a plethora of brand names on the boxes- just like labeling baseball hats.
To massage this further, let me use a boxing analogy. With most companies, their entry level unit is a flyweight, then bantamweight, then middleweight, then cruiserweight, then heavyweight. With Atoll, its entry level integrated amp, IN50 Signature, is a hard punching middleweight. Atoll is so efficacious that they don’t have a flimsy starter piece. As you go up the ladder you get more beef. With most companies, the entry level piece is a sissy, and often the top level piece gets hot and bothered when you kick it in the tail. With Atoll’s sage strategy all models in the line benefit- even the kid brother.
Atoll’s electronics are dual-mono in design. Their double sided circuit boards with through hole construction are like art work. Through hole design allows a more secure installation and dissipates heat better than surface mount components. Atoll PCBs are built symmetrically with actual French humans wiring and soldering boards in their factory in Normandy. The symmetrical design pays off far more than aesthetically. The PCBs allow Atoll to run short wires and use a star alignment system to achieve a black background floor.
Atoll uses metal chassis, front panels and knobs. They’re built for stability and longevity.
Atoll’s muscular bass performance in particular, puts it a step above similarly priced Chinese gear. Atoll designs with massive power supplies- large transformers and filter caps. Atoll even has custom power supply caps made for them in Japan. These caps use a steel shield and implement a resin material to eliminate transformer humming. The result is low ESR and an indiscernible noise floor.
Atoll integrated amps and preamps come stock in line stage designs. You can create your own pizza with Atoll. You can add a DAC board and/or phono board, based on your needs. The pricing of these boards is downright CHEAP. Atoll has planned for these and we can customize your unit in our shop. This game plan allows high efficiency in manufacturing.
Atoll is especially adept at delivering human and instrumental voices with lifelike grit and character. Atoll uses MATCHED MOSFET output devices for optimal clarity and push. Atoll has designed an electronic card with microcontroller which measures each transistor. It’s their own secret sauce. When you hear even the modest Atoll integrateds on some fine speakers, you’ll be as shocked as we were by their sophistication and brute strength.
In fact, Atoll’s power is so formidable, you will infer double the muscle you’d expect from
their rated power. That’s correct. Even Atoll’s entry level integrated amp. IN50 Signature ($1200, 50×2) will impress you with great speakers like Magnepans or Brystons.
While Atoll is probably most well known for its scintillating integrated amp values, they also make separates, CD players and a myriad of other product categories. The quality, sage choices and efficiency run line wide. Atoll gear sounds so clean, quiet and SOLID, that you would do well to plan your electronics with Atoll and keep your powder dry for great speakers. We have those too by the way.
Miracle of miracles, Atoll also makes a real CATALOG. Can you imagine?! We’ll link you to it. Remember the good old days when companies spelled out the nuts and bolts of each piece in the line? It’s great fun to study the minutia of what is offered, and understand what you’re getting. Of course there’s no substitute for an in person audition- which we’d like to do for you.
Please Buy N American or Euro!
Atoll’s line of integrated amps in particular, should move the needle away from buying Chinese products. Even if you don’t care about the politics of the matter, just look (& listen!) to what you get from Atoll at a given price point. You get bigger/better transformers, filter caps and superior MOSFET transistors in matched pairs. You’ll be happily surprised at how GUTSY the integrateds sound. Again, even the lower level models will drive hungry speakers to your pleasure. NAD has made among the best affordable integrateds on the market for years. Atoll’s power leaves them in the weeds. Considering Atoll’s pricing is in a the same ballpark as the imports from Asia, please buy Atoll- hand made in France.
RIP Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024)
The GREAT Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini died on March 23, 2024 at age 82. Pollini recorded prolifically for DG. If you buy his monster CD box, it could be said you have covered most of the important bases of classical piano literature. In his book The Great Pianists (1963), NY Times’ Harold Schonberg ranked Pollini #1 of current pianists. I had the pleasure of seeing Pollini in Chicago about 2010. He sounded lyrical and still had his A game on my favorite Schubert sonatas. Pollini’s son, Daniele, a pianist and conductor, survives his dad.
