ProAc Saga - Part III

Posted by: Greg Beatty on 15 February 2002

This is probably the final (Whew!) chapter of this too long and drawn out saga.

I got my speakers back from the now-defunct ProAc dealer in Owings Mills Maryland. Following Richard Gerberg's advice, I removed the drivers and looked inside. He said to check the polarity of the wiring (ridged wire to pos on each driver) and to see if the larger driver was the specified 8 ohm or a daft replacement 14 ohm. My speakers are wired properly and have the specified 8 ohm drivers. So...

The nice folks at Soundworks in Kensington, Maryland let me borrow a listening room, a full Naim settup, and a pair of ProAc Response 1 SCs to use in checking out my ProAc Response 2's against a reference (the 1SCs). The naim kit on tap was a CD5/112/FC2/150 with NACA5. The system had been moved to a different room from last time.

To make a long story short, I no longer believe anything is wrong with my speakers(!). They sounded very similar to the 1SCs - easily bettering the 1's in scale and overall loudness with the 1's winning out by a small margin in the midrange. Good to know my speakers aren't knackered!!!

They are dang fine speakers and possibly *too good* for my current downgraded kit. These are not speakers that flatter a system that isn't up to snuff - no smoothed out highs and no bass boost. If it ain't there, you don't hear it.

I will probably advert these speakers on e-Bay or the local paper. Time for me to move on.

- Greg

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Posted on: 15 February 2002 by David Quigley
What is it that you remain dissapointed in with the Pro-ac's? As a currently happy 1SC listener I am wondering what I am missing. I had all kinds of problems with bass bloom until I sorted out cable routing and positioning but now feel happy - am I deluded? The remainder of my system is 3.5/Hi/72/Hi/140/NAC A5 - so not better than your setup.

Regards, David

Posted on: 15 February 2002 by Greg Beatty
...methinx. The ProAcs are wonderful speakers.

What got me going on all of this was that vocals had a "cupped hand" sound to them. This came to my attention when:

1) I added a TV to the setup so the ProAcs are doing AV duty (lots of vocals on tele programming)

and

2) we moved house and got cable.

The problem isn't nearly as noticeable on CDs and records, so some (possibly all) of this is down to the source. For some reason, I hadn't noticed before that the effect is more pronounced with the TV source - I thought this was down to the fact that most of my CDs do not have vocals so I simply wasn't hearing the problem with CDs as much.

If I have time this weekend, I want to move the cable box onto a glass support and see if this helps. Anyone else have experience changing the tele sound by fiddling with the cable box?

The 1SC is a really great speaker and you are all set if they play loud enough for you in your room. Our new room has 10ft ceilings, opens onto the dining room, and is long and wide. I think anything smaller than the Response 2's would get lost in there. And we do turn the wick up from time to time wink

While at Soundworks, I also demo'ed another pair of speakers. See the new Totem Staffs thread.

- GregB

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Posted on: 15 February 2002 by Martin Payne
quote:
Originally posted by Greg Beatty:
What got me going on all of this was that vocals had a "cupped hand" sound to them.


Greg,

sound to me more like you've got a serious problem with your listening room.

May get the same problem with your replacement speakers, unless you've already proved that something else works a lot better at home?

cheers, Martin

Posted on: 15 February 2002 by Justin
When i owned the 1sc's and the tab 2000 sigs, I never had that "cupped hands" effect, though i know exactly what it is (I've owned speakers that exhibiited it all too well).

You say that it's only really a problem when listening to the TV, but not on records or cds. I'd say it's a TV thing, and nothing else.

My problem with the 1sc's had to do with bass boom and a slightly glassy quality in the upper-mids (female falsetos and whatnot). I owned vitually the same system as David Quigley. Also, I thought they were a bit reticent overall. I favored the tab 2000 sigs to the 1sc mainly because they timed better and grooved a good bit more (less boominess in the bass getting in the way of the notes). But, my preference might have changed had I been able to sort the boom problem, as David has done.

Still, I think proacs are great speakers, and may go back to them. I'm in between (well, knee deep in, really) speakers right now--just trying to find something I can live with.

Judd

Posted on: 15 February 2002 by Greg Beatty
...it could be the room, but I heard it, to a lesser extent, in my old appartment.

I need to try moving the cable box thingy. Is the cable box the source component in this case, just like a tuner would be?

I wonder if Naim will ever come out with a NAC01 for cable...

- GregB

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Posted on: 16 February 2002 by Greg Beatty
quote:
Since your speakers are better than mine, try them with some better components further up the chain and I think you will find the problems lie somewhere else.

The more I listen to what my system does/doesn't do, the more I am convinced you are spot on.

Trouble is, I've heard many systems of far lesser cost than the upgrade you suggest that would suffice. A speaker that is more friendly to modest settups may be more my cup of tea for now. And I still haven't tried the cable box on a different support. Source first wink

- GregB

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