Tested at £599.00 SRP
Available from Superfi Lincoln and Nottingham Hi-Fi Centre
 
When it comes to multiroom, we think convenience over quality. There's nothing better than coming home from a long day at work and reaching for your mobile phone to press play on your favourite album. But what about if you wanted an equal combination of convenience AND quality? Where do you even start to look?
 
 
"Weighing approximately 5kg, you can feel that no expense was spared when creating this masterpiece" 
 
Well, we have this covered: Technics' latest offering, the SC-C30 has everything your Hi-Fi has with regards to build quality and sound performance. But with the added extra of it being conveniently multi-room. It's a stand-alone device with 5 speakers built in, all driven by a 2.1 channel amplifier giving us 15w per channel and a 30w subwoofer built in. Weighing approximately 5kg, you can feel that no expense was spared when creating this masterpiece. It is capable of playing hi-res and standard audio files from a multitude of service providers and devices including Tidal, Deezer, Spotify, Napster and can access your local NAS drive, PC or laptop wirelessly.
 
It's effortless sound performance really shines when you run the room calibration software, Space Tune to optimise itself to the environment it will be installed in. After we filmed the unboxing, we plugged it in and tested it out. We had it on the table, as you can see in the video, in the middle of a room filled with nothing but cameras and lighting. So plenty of objects for audio to bounce off and rattle around the room. We were suprised with how well it actually filled the space we wanted it to, without the echo you would expect. Of course, as soon as we walked around the back of the unit, we lost some of the volume. But then the C30 isn't a 360 degrees speaker so it's not like we weren't expecting this.
 
"We played a number of songs to try and find it's weakness..."
 
We played a number of songs to try and find it's weakness, but that didn't happen! We started off with a catchy number by Satori called 'Days Without You'. Plenty of bass that needs to be under control for this song to not sound messy and unorganised. It did a good job and the separation was top form. We finished off with 'Hell to the liars' by London Grammar. Vocals were clear and precise and if you took a step back, you would think it was being played on a separates system with tidy bookshelf speakers.
 
 
Features:
- Chromecast built in to support a variety of music streaming services including Tidal, Spotify and Deezer. Simply use your smart phone or tablet to control your music. (your smart device becomes the remote control)
- The ability to control this unit by voice. So long as there is a Google Assistant device on the same network, it can be used to control your music.
- A more compact version of the SC-C50 with a 3-way design housing 5 speaker units in total. Including 2 tweeters, 2 woofers and 1 subwoofer.
- Download the Technics Audio Centre application onto your smart device for free (iOs and Android) and use it to control your C30 speaker. This includes using the multi room functionality if you have more than one compatible Technics speaker or device. You can play music from different sources or the same music from each speaker.
- You can pair two of these devices and put them into 'stereo mode'.
- Includes a USB-A input for playback from a USB stick, a 3.5mm jack input, optical input, Bluetooth connectivity and AirPlay2.
- Up to 9 presets can be set on the main unit itself for easy access to your favourite internet radio stations, playlists on Spotify or USB folders.
 
Pro's: The quality of audio from this unit is astonishing and could easily be mistaken for a Hi-Fi system with separate speakers if you were guided into the room blindfolded. It really does set this unit apart from other wireless speakers at this price point. The fact that it is multi-room capable was sometimes overlooked in our review until we reminded ourselves that this unit is actually marketing as such. We also liked the ease of use from the mobile application and setting up to the network was done in a matter of minutes.
 
Con's: There is really very little that we can criticise the C30 for. But we were confused with why it is Google enabled but not Alexa also. Perhaps this is something they will activate further down the line? Also the shape won't be for everyone. It's squashed oval shape means it won't fit into a tight corner very easily. But then, would you want to sit such a thing of beauty in the corner?
 
Overall, the Technics SC-C30 is a solid-built compact wireless speaker. It packs a good punch with its built-in subwoofer and gives us crystal clear vocals, but they are very well separated with no confusion when the volume is turned up. We do have this on demonstration in our Nottingham Hi-Fi Centre store in Nottingham and in our Lincoln Superfi branch.
 
Find the Technics SC-C30 here...
 
