Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: ProAc Studio 150 Speakers by omers

After selling these lately, I thought I'd share the experiences. These are discontinued these days, so bargains should be available. The bottom line of the review is that these speakers are just to beautiful for me. It may sound strange, but read and see.

I've had these for almost a year, and these are very good speakers in almost all audiophile departments. They are very detailed yet not analytical, and has this proac'ian quality of total lack of compression, great separation without "tearing" the sound apart.
Acoustic instruments and performances really draw you into the music, with great soundstaging. They're quite easy to drive (88DB, 10ohm), and are the most beautiful speakers I've seen. So it's easy to see why I've bought these rosewood pair (cheap, ex-demo). I was also struck by the mild warmness of the sound, after living with cold speakers before that. The bass is not the deepest I've heard, but it's decent.

After living with them I realized the folowing:
1. They need space, I had mine 2' from the rear wall, but it wasn't the most convenient with my little one.
2. They needed forever to run-in. Though ex-demo, I heard improvements even after six months, i.e. 100's of hours.
3. The reveal nasty SS amps. not a good match.
3. They have a signature of sound, which comes from two sources:
a. The treble is "special", as with other proacs. It has a dip in the ~4k, and rising afterwards, which gives great "air" along with a smooth sound (with good amps. with Rotels, the treble was real nasty). However, I felt that these smoothing is not the reality, and when the sound has to be nasty (Pixies, Shostakovitch, Janacek, Sonic Youth) it was still too smooth. It also makes the treble a bit "detached", and the sound is not integrated enough. It robbed the sound of immediacy and effect.
b. Over-bloom in the lower mid. (This was also found by a review I've read last week in Hi-Fi World.) This gives nice body to piano and cello, but female voices are too chesty, and male voices too pronounced. Period instruments sounded too full (they should be skinnier), and a small piano, like in "Buena Vista Social Club" sounded like a steinway. It makes the music a bit heavy.

After a while, I just felt I was paying too much attention to the sound and not to the music. These colorations, which made everything beatiful and sound a bit similar, somehow stood between me and the music. I don't want a smooth drum, I want it to sound real. If a guitar is howling, is shouldn't sound sound nice and comforting. I listened less to music, which is a bad sign.

I was also short in money, and had a fair offer on them, so I've sold them.

Before selling, I had them checked with the following gear:

source : Rega Planar 3
Arcam Alpha 8SE
Linn Mimik
Rotel transport + California Audio "Alpha" Dac
Rotel 855, 970
Clifornia Audiolabs CL15
Marantz 63IIkis

Amplifiers:
Naim Audio Nait
Naim Audio pre-power (42+snaps+250)
Ensemble tiger (hybrid)
Crimson latest pre+power
Rotel pre+power (980+980)
Acurus dia100
Simaudio PW-5000 integrated

Speaker cables: Naim's, van den hul, Linn, rega, kimber 4tc and others.

They need good partners, above all no nasty SS amps. Their treble can sound bright (not yet real IMO) with the wrong patners.

You can see I tried really hard to solve these problems. My friends think I made a mistake, that they were wonderful speakers. I agree that they're wonderfull speakers, just check that the tonal balance is to your taste - I was struck by their other virtues, that I overlooked this quite important aspect :-)

Omer Shibolet, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

REVIEW: ProAc Studio 150 Speakers Review by omers at Audio Asylum