British speaker alternatives to Proac 1sc?

A good quality small stand-mount speaker is obviously a safer bet in a small listening room but maybe a sealed-box type speaker would suit your room better than a ported speaker design?

You can find more efficient speakers but you may lose bass power and extension if you replace the 1SC's with speakers of the same box volume. If you can accommodate slightly larger boxes, the Studio SM100 could be the best contenders as they maintain ProAc's fine sound qualities.

You're making the common mistake of equating power with quality.  Power only determines how loud a system will sound, it says nothing at all about quality.

If you need the system to go a lot louder than your current arrangement, then you are listening at much too high a volume.  In a small room your present amp and speakers will give you a maximum sound level of more than 100dB at your listening position (assuming about 2m from the speakers, including the reflected and reverberated sound).

Changing the 5i for a SN2 will only increase this to 102dB.  Changing this for a 200W monster amp may give up to 106db, but will also massively overload the power handling of the speakers.  Similarly increasing the efficiency of the speakers doesn't make for better sound, it just just makes it louder (all other things being equal).  Changing to an SN2 and using very high efficiency speakers will give 106dB.
For reference I normally listen at about 70-80dB and find 85dB way too loud.

Changing the 5i for a Nait XS or a SN will considerably improve the control of the speakers and give you more detail in the sound - this is probably what you want rather than just making it go louder.

i am using the Amphion 410 with Naim Nait 5i-2 and am very happy

very good clarity, low level resolution, very fast and quite a lot of bass.

this is not British though.... its Finnish and maybe it will finish your search for speakers

:-))

audition before you buy..

Power has little to do with the volume - that is determined by the gain of the amp. In any case it does not sound like the OP is seeking more volume. 

What sort of budget do you have in mind? I have heard good things about the KEF reference speaker, but not sure if it is an easy load. The Harbeths have a following among the naim set.

Volume is controlled with the volume control (which is normally implemented as an attenuator that's matched to the gain of the amp; volume is not normally controlled using the gain of the amp).

In a properly designed amp, the gain is matched to the input sensitivity of the pre-amp and the gain of the power amp to ensure full power output into the chosen load.  Gain is determined by power requirement and sensitivity not the other way round.

The maximum volume is limited by the power output and the sensitivity of the speakers (and still has nothing to do with quality).

Some KEF Reference series speakers have been a very difficult load.

I think we are talking at cross purposes. The gain of a normal power amp is fixed - e.g 23 or 29 dB. For a given sensitivity speaker you use the preamp to attenuate the incoming signal. 

johnlh posted:

''...There are times when I think the Proac's could use more power. ''

The more powerful Naim integrated amps will have a better control of low frequencies because they have larger and more refined power supplies without regard to their rated power output.

A well known person once said   ''An amplifier is only as good as it's power supply''  and I believe that! 

Thank you for all the responses.

I don't think I articulated the totality of what I had in mind very well. It's not higher volume that I'm looking for.

I believe the Proac's are capable of a bit more lower end presence and control; however, I think achieving that requires significantly more power than the 50W from the Nait 5i. I'm estimating that a high power, high quality, amplifier will require a significant budget. A Stereophile reviewer stated he used a Mark Levinson No.39/Conrad-Johnson ART/Krell FPB 600 amplifier chain to review the speakers with. He went on to state that while it "may seem silly to connect a $2100/pair loudspeaker to a high-power $9000 power amplifier, but the combination was truly spectacular." I believe someone on the Naim forum suggested that the true cost of the Proac's includes the cost of the necessary amplification do drive them.

So, I've begun to wonder whether there is a more efficient alternative to the Proac's which could be paired with lower power high quality amplification. I don't know enough about the science of pairing speakers with amplifiers, therefore I don't know whether a smaller but more efficient speaker can achieve the lower frequency of the Proac's. Maybe I need to move to a larger box? My budget would probably be in the $2000 - $3000 range second hand.

Thank you.

Why do you think you need more power - more power just means higher volume and that's what you've said you don't need.  The only thing more power will give you is a higher maximum volume.

Higher efficiency speakers is just another blind alley, for the same quality of speaker, just as with more power, the only thing higher efficiency will give you is a higher maximum volume.

Another misconception is that higher efficiency speaker will give more bass.  Actually the reverse is true - for a given cabinet size and type and cone size, the higher the efficiency of the speaker, the less extended is the bass response.

What you need is higher quality amplification irrespective of power rating or speakers.

Ok. So, are you saying, for example, that within the Naim Nait line the XS or Supernait while not being significantly higher in power are nevertheless significantly higher in quality and that it's the step up in quality that will drive/control the speaker better than the Nait 5i? I've always associated lower end control and toughness with power first if not foremost. 

Correct: the XS 2 and SN have much better control of the speakers ( than the 5i ), and the NAP 250 DR even more so (despite them being 70W, 80W and 80W respectively).  In fact sound quality and control of difficult speakers is the main reason for the existence of the 250.

Ok. Thank you. There isn't much I wish to change about the Proac/Nait 5i/Saturn-R setup I have. Mainly just a bit more control of the lower end.

Do you have any thoughts on speaker cable and interconnects? I currently have Kimber 4TC speaker cable and Kimber Here interconnects.

Cables are the next step. I assume NACA 5 speaker cables should be on my short list.

Speaker cable for bottom end control: use a 4mm² cable (such as NAC A5).

My personal preference for an interconnect is to use Mogami W2549 (or W2534, but that's more difficult to work with).

Hi John,

Although Huge is correct with his technical explanation on "high powered amps" and "high quality amps", the way he has put it may be causing a bit of confusion. With Naim amps, you will gain BOTH power and quality when you go up the range. In other words, higher power will actually give you better sound quality as "power" and "quality" go hand in hand.

However, if you compare Naim amps with other makes, a significantly more powerful amp (on paper) can be worse in performance. For example, the Sony TAE-9000 and TAN-9000ES pre/power combination is rated at 130W into 8 ohms. Compared to the Nait XS the Sony boxes have less control over the speakers. I know since I have owned the Sony having compared them with various integrateds in the 50W to 80W range.

Nevertheless, if you are looking specifically at Naim amplifiers you will definitely gain more with higher powered amps, since higher power = higher quality. If you like the sound of the Proac 1SCs I would suggest that you try higher quality amplifiers (or sources) to maximise the potential of the speakers. Perhaps there are few 1SC owners who might be able to advise on the optimal amp for the speakers.

Perhaps Huge can explain on the aspects (other than power ie. higher watts) that contribute to QUALITY. I believe power supply is a major factor, at least with Naim. You can see that with the higher range amplifiers as power supplies get bigger, housed in separate boxes when going up the range. You not only have separate power supplies for the power amps but you have separate power supplies for the preamps too. With Naim, the more boxes you have the merrier. :-)

I've driven the Proac's with a few different powers sources: solid state preamp/amp, tube preamp/solid state amp, tube integrated and the Nait 5i-2. The solid state amplifier was a 205 watt Parasound, the tube integrated was about 38 watts. I've decided to stick with solid state. The tube preamp/solid state amp may have had the edge over the Nait 5i in the midrange and upper range but not by much. I think the Nait 5i is the best overall performer I've paired with the Proacs. The Nait 5i provides much more control than the tube integrated.

Based on my experience so far, I'm inclined to stick with Naim and upgrade to another integrated.

Get a Nait XS, SN, or SN2, and you will be happy - if you can dem before buying, all the better. You should be able to land any of those on the SH market with your budget and selling your 5i.

I mention again that power is not necessarily related to volume. You need more power (and a lower output impedance) to give better control of the speaker drive units.

Dozey posted:

I mention again that power is not necessarily related to volume. You need more power (and a lower output impedance) to give better control of the speaker drive units.

Power, per se, is related to volume, but what I assume Dozey means is that a more powerful amp is not necessarily louder, and in general these days with hifi amps the gain of power amps tends to be fixed within a manufacturer's range (e.g. Most of Naim's are the same), so for the same volume control setting the sound level will be the same when swapping power amps. What is differernt is the capability to provide sufficient power on peaks in the music, so that they don't run out of available power. Of course in this regard the high 'headroom' will be much less significant when listening at very low levels compared to listening loud.

as well as the maximum power capability there is the speed with which the amplifier can supply the power, which if not fast enough can affect the 'attack' of instantaneous  peaks, such as percussion instruments.

As for output impedance, hand in hand with that has to below resistance between amp and speaker, meaning low resistance speaker cables (I use 6mm² copper) and the best physical connection possible at each end -e.g. not loose banana plugs!) This aspect  starts to stray into discussion of damping factor, on which there is a recent thread  (on which I haven't yet responded to the last post as I haven't had time to finish looking into it).

ryder. posted:

Perhaps Huge can explain on the aspects (other than power ie. higher watts) that contribute to QUALITY. I believe power supply is a major factor, at least with Naim. You can see that with the higher range amplifiers as power supplies get bigger, housed in separate boxes when going up the range. You not only have separate power supplies for the power amps but you have separate power supplies for the preamps too. With Naim, the more boxes you have the merrier. :-)

There are a number of factors involved some of which are given below; not in any specific order:

Transient ringing: Transients such as voltage steps should produce a ringing solely related to the bandwidth limitation of the amp - any deviation from this behavior is undesirable.

Transient intermodulation distortion:  When a transient appears with another waveform both should remain mathematically independent.  Any effect whereby either waveform is affected by the presence of the other is undesirable.

Transient current response (current risetime): When a speaker's complex electro-mechanical impedance requires the current to change more rapidly than the applied voltage (N.B. speakers aren't like resistors), the amplifier's output stage should be able to track this change with sufficient alacrity.

Current limitation: The amplifier's output stages must be able to supply the sum of the real and imaginary components of the current to provide the instantaneous and long term needs of the complex load attached.

There are a wide range of partial engineering solutions to these issues; a larger power supply is one such partial solution.

Dozey posted:

I mention again that power is not necessarily related to volume. You need more power (and a lower output impedance) to give better control of the speaker drive units.

The maximum volume is directly related to the maximum power output of the amplifier - look at the electrical and sound definition of the decibel.

The actual volume level (in a correctly operating audio system) is controlled by the volume attenuator up to the limit imposed by the power output of the amplifier and the sensitivity of the speakers.

Control of the speakers is completely unrelated to power output.

However, in any given product range, higher powered amplifiers are usually more expensive and that increased cost allows them to be designed to be better in other ways in addition to simple power output.

I ran them with 135's for a while but had a room interaction in the mid-bass which no amp could resolve, so off they went to a more appreciative owner. 

G

Huge, it appears you disagree with me. That is ok. I won't try to argue with you.