ProAc K6 On Demo At CMY

A new highend loudspeaker from ProAc is currently on demo at CMY's Damansara Utama branch. Hot on the heels of its use of carbon fibre loudspeaker cones in the Carbon Pro series, ProAc has identified Kevlar as the choice material for the follow-up model, the K6.


The K6 is a 3-way speaker, featuring two 6.5" kevlar bass drivers, a 2" soft dome midrange, and a ProAc ribbon tweeter. The K6 lists for RM70k.


Contact CMY Damansara Utama branch 03-7727 2419.

10 Qs For David Amey, ProAc Representitive.

During ProAc's recent event held at CMY Audio Visual, A Musical Listening Experience with David Amey, I had an opportunity to throw 10 quickie questions at him over a cuppa, after the initial Carbon Pro 8 speaker musical demo. So here they are:

1) Big E: ProAc seems to have moved all their speaker ports towards the bottom firing direction, any design or user application advantages for the move?

David: ProAc is heading that direction with all our floor standing speakers, as you can see. We feel a bottom firing port allows more flexible speaker placement in a domestic environment, which now days are increasingly subjected to the WAF(Wife Acceptance Factor), i.e. hifi must co-exist in harmony with the family well being. With a bottom firing port, one can place the pair of speakers that much closer to the rear wall with out the room boom effect, meaning more space for the family and a less intrusive speaker in the living environment. However, there two versions of the theme. First, on our more afford able models, the ports just fires direct to the floor, which is not so good, because we will never know what's under the speakers, like carpets or rugs, wooden or concrete floors are just some of the more common surfaces. So on our higher end speaker models, we built a plinth under the speaker, supported by an arch design on the sides. This design allows the bottom firing port to have a consistent surface to work on, allowing bass response to be more predictable. On our Carbon Pro Series speakers, the plinth is made from carbon fibre composites, which has a certain reflective quality, very desire able to achieving tuneful, tight and dynamic bass response.

2) Big E: Tell us a little more about the carbon fibre drivers, for instance, how are they made?

David: Our factory is very close to those F1 racing team support facilities. We get the carbon fibre technology direct from them. For instance we have to over lay up to 300 very fine layers of carbon fibre sheets, in between allowing time for each layer to cure completely before laying on the next layer. It's a labour intensive process, that requires skilled hands. The plinth of the Carbon Pro 8 speakers for instance, can take the weight of a person jumping up and down on it repeatedly without cracking or breaking, with both ends supported like a bridge! You get the idea. We chose carbon fibre for it's stiffness to light weight ratio, so that our speaker cones will achieve the ideal pistonic movement.

3) Big E: O.K., but in recent years, other speaker manufacturers have also started to use carbon material on their speakers. How do you differentiate your product from the others?

David: Yes, I am aware that Wilson Benesch do use carbon on their speaker baffles, but not on the speaker drivers. Others may lay claim to have also use carbon material on their speaker drivers, but as far as I know, they are more like carbon particle infused, or rather, carbon coated on the cone surface, but never use carbon fibre as a whole speaker cone construction, that's where we are unique.

4) Big E: With the speaker drivers achieving ideal pistonic movement, do ProAc have to adjust the speaker cross overs to suit the new technology drivers?

David: In a way, yeah, because of the ideal pistonic movement of the speaker drivers, we can simplify our cross overs designs, using less but better quality passive components, you know less is more here?

5) Big E: You mean first order passive cross over designs are used for the Carbon Pro series speakers?

David: We at ProAc would rather you hear great sounding products best, without knowing what goes on inside the products. But yes, the Carbon Pro series passive cross overs are of first order designs. I know you audio writers are always looking for more information to spice up your stories!

6) Big E: Agreed! We aim to provide some insight and depth in to the products that we write about. Care to tell us if ProAc has some kind of an listening room in the factory to test audition and finalise voicing of it's speakers?

David: Yes, we have 2 listening areas to test and fine tune our speakers in the factory.

7) Big E: Any particular amps that ProAc uses to test it's speakers?

David: When we design a speaker, we would have no idea what our customers will partner them with, as there are so many amplification choices out there. So we use a variety of amp designs ranging from solid state to valves and modern class D to test mate our speakers during development stages to ensure they work with a wide variety of electronics available in the market.

8) Big E: The Naim/ProAc combo on demo today sounds really good. Is Naim one of those amps used to test ProAc speakers during development stages?

David: Yes, like I said, we use many different amps for testing our speakers. So far Naim, Creek and a few others have proven to be very suitable partners for our speakers.

9) Big E: Have the current global economic downturn affected ProAc sales?

David: Yes, we are certainly not spared on the economic front. In fact we saw a drastic down turn of orders at the end of 2008 till mid 2009. By July last year, I must say that things started looking up again. And when the orders start pouring in again, we had to re-adjust our inventories and ramp up production out put to cope. In fact we now have backlog orders to fulfill, which is an extremely positive turn of events.

10) Big E: How many pairs of the flag ship Carbon Pro 8 speakers have ProAc sold to date?

David: I am glad that we have sold out our first batch of 20 pairs of Carbon Pro 8 so far, we are still working hard to fill our order back logs. I am also happy to announce that we have just started manufacturing the smaller Carbon Pro 6 speakers, which I estimate to do even better!

Big E: Wow! Congrats to your success and thank you for your time.

With that, our friendly chat ended and it was time to go back to our regular week end life.

A Listening Experience with ProAc Carbon Pro 8 at CMY

CMY held a listening event for audiophiles with the new ProAc flagship - the Carbon Pro 8 loudspeakers on 24th Jan 2010 Sunday.

The Carbon Pro 8, fronted by all Naim electronics, impressed with its scale, dynamics and transient response, while remained poised at very high listening levels (the listening space was pretty large). Anyone interested but missed the event should make a beeline to CMY's showroom at Damansara Utama for the experience.

The Carbon Pro 8's specifications:
Nominal Impedance : 4 ohms
Recommended Amplifiers : 10 to 500 watts
Frequency Response : 20 Hz to 30kHz
Sensitivity : 91.5db linear for a 1w at 1m
Bass Drivers : 2 x 8" studio professional drive units
Midrange Drivers : 3" soft dome
Tweeter : ProAc ribbon
Dimensions : 49.2" x 9.6" x 18" (hwd)
Weight : 146.9lb each
ProAc's rep, Mr. David Amey, told the audience that the Carbon Pro 8's application of carbon fibers in its drive units benefited from technology transfer from Formula 1 racing.

CMY's head honcho, Mr. John Yew kicking off the event

Mr. David Amey of ProAc explaining the design of Carbon Pro 8
The listening session going on in earnestClose-ups of the ProAc Carbon Pro 8

The supporting cast - Naim and Richard Gray
Our very own Big E discussing the merits of ProAc's design with David Amey

One for the album

CMY Invites! A Musical Listening Experience, With David Amey of ProAc UK.

Yes folks, here's another reason to go to CMY Audio & Visual, Damansara Utama PJ, flagship showroom this weekend! John Yew and his team are inviting interested parties to share "A Musical Listening Experience", with ProAc speakers representative, Mr David Amey of UK.

Time: 3pm
Date: Sunday, 24th January 2010
Venue: CMY Audio & Visual, 32, Jalan SS21/58,
Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya.
Contact Tel No: 03-77272419 (Chan), 016-2861000(John)
E-mail: admin@cmy.com.my

Please call Chan or John for RSVP or alternatively, use e-mail if you wish, as seats are limited.

See ya all this Sunday!

Proac Carbon Pro 8, On Demo Now, At CMY Damansara Utama.

The latest Proac's magnificent flagship speaker is now on demo in CMY Damansara Utama, together with CMY's well known flagship demo system, consisting of Metronome CD player, Jeff Rowland pre & power amps and all Siltech Royal Signature cabling.

I believe the sound of the Proac Carbon Pro 8 is now blossomed fully. Go take a listen to the latest state of the carbon art in speaker technology.

Please call Chan at 012-2873551 to avoid disappointment.

CMY Audio & Visual YES Campaign!

The good folks at CMY Audio & Visual is having a YES(Year End Sale) campaign for packaged systems priced with substantial savings!

Look at the variety of systems on offer! System offer prices starts at RM$2999.00. Now who says hifi needs to be expensive? Also note that most system are literally start me up packages, with very respectable cables thrown in for good measure.


For those whom Santa is very generous with, look at the offers! The sky's the limit.

The package system sale is available at all CMY branches. Don't miss out on this one.

Proac Response Tri Tower.

This is an old post of ours in the blog we previously contributed to.

Proac Response Tri Tower. The slim and lanky profile permits better WAF(wife acceptance factor).

This is a speaker in which it's design brief probably means form first, but sound is almost if not equally as important. In today's expensive real estate environment, where spouses and kids thread places in the home, with every family member trying to elbow just that bit more room for each other's activities, audiophile compromises sometime takes precedence, for the sake domestic harmony. No wonder then space saving and sexy products like the plasma/LCD and lately LED screens have been top family entertainment equipment choice. Couple that flat screen to a set of equally sexy lifestyle designed speakers and an AVR receiver and you have the basic recipe for today's home entertainment system. Problem is, most of today's sexy lifestyle designed speakers also tend to have very un sexy voices, if strict audiophile standards are to be met!

Tri Towers, top-down view. Note the transparent cone on the top driver.

Here comes the Proac Response Tri Towers to fill that market niche. A pair of very slim and lanky towers, almost 4 feet tall, designed to complement the sexy flat screen look, and blend seamlessly in to the room/lounge decor, yet still sound sexy enough to satisfy the lust of a typically domesticated audiophile!

For the speaker to look slim and lanky, big woofers are out of the design brief. Instead, Proac opted to use 3 pcs of 4 1/2 inch aluminium bass drivers to do the equivalent work of a typical 8 inch driver. The remaining 2 drivers are a Vifa sourced tweeter and a transparent cone material mid driver, also measuring 4 1/2 inch, sitting a top the previously mentioned tweeter, probably lifted off the Proac Response 1SC. With a total array of 5 drivers per tower, the concept is not un similar to the line array concept, much used in the pro concert speaker set ups.

From another angle! Rated sensitivity is 90db @ 4 ohms. It goes very loud cleanly too.

All 5 view able sides of the speaker is lined with book matched veneer(the review sample featured cherry wood). There's a flared port at the bottom of the speaker box, supported by a X- designed plinth, with spikes at the four corners, which keeps the whole speaker tower very steady when set up. These slim, lanky Tri Towers are very heavy for their size, at 23kgs each! A knuckle rap test indicates very thick panels were used with much bracing enforcements inside the box.

The design looks very attractive indeed, but does it pass the muster where it matters most to the audiophile whom has to compromise on his speaker choice for the sake of keeping the domestic harmony? How much sound quality does he have to compromise?

The generic looking bi-wire able speaker terminals. Note the van den Hul CS122 cable used.

With the Tri Towers, I initially put the speakers where my Audio Physic normally sounds best, but ended up moving the speakers much more in to the room(I felt a little space for the speakers to breath will result in better sound). Finally settling for 48 inches from the speaker back wall and 20 inches from the side wall, in my 10ft x 12ft room, bass response was still a tad strong. I totally underestimated the performance of the dinky 4 1/2 inch bass drivers!. I also ended up moving the speaker cables to connect to the highs of the bi-wire able speaker terminals. That way the bass response is much more even in the room. I also found my regular speaker cable, the Straight Wire Maestro, is far too bloomy in the lower mids to complement the Proac. Instead I used a pair of silver coated vdH CS122, which seems to match this speaker better. All further comments in regards to the sound of the Tri Tower are based on these final set up and ancillary used.

First up, the Tri Towers presented a huge sound stage and imaging that is nearly life sized in my room. The speaker's ability to totally disappear in to the room sonically, is amongst the best I've experienced in my audio cave. This must surely be the result of the slim baffles, I think. The density of the images, especially rendering of vocals, must be highly commended. The speakers also presented string instruments like violin and piano, portraying their full richness of harmonic decay.

The nicely extended highs are vibrant and airy, yet never sibilant. The mids are rich, full and seemingly have that classic British lower mid bump signature in overall frequency response. That's why the bloomy nature of the Straight Wire Maestro speaker cables, which suited the more neutral Audio Physic Spark so much, is a little over whelming when used with the Proac. Where else the previously thought to be leaner sounding vdH CS122, seems so balanced when used here.

The bass response is strong, as I mentioned earlier, I under estimated those dinky 4 1/2 inch drivers. Whilst Proac specs claimed frequency response of down to 35hz, I think it's probably quoted at -3db or so. The Tri Towers just doesn't seem to go that deep(at least in the context of my room, that is). However, bass quality it delivers is very good for a floor ported design. Bass notes never sound one notey, the notes are always clearly audible. Over the period of 2 weeks or so in my audio cave, only 2 or 3 tracks, manages to up set the almost impeccable bass response. The killer percussion track no.15 on the Musik Wie Von Einiem Anderen Stern, or what most people call it "Manger CD" for short, is one short example. The big drums in the percussion ensemble does indeed sound a little hollow and somewhat insubstantial, comparing with speakers of more normal design. On the flip side though, the equally big Chinese drums on track no.5, tittled Three Plays Of Plum Blossom, in Koo Shuen's Melody All Over The Land, sounded very realistic, just as how my regular Audio Physic would present it to be. It's quite a paradox, the bass quality element of these Tri Towers.

Twin Towers! I like the way it matches the Pass Aleph 0 mono blocks.

In the area of transparency, the Proac Response Tri Tower, ever worthy member of the Response series, is very slightly more resolute, in the areas of low level details. However, the overall slightly coloured(I would prefer to call it harmonically rich) signature sound of the Response series, that endured so many fans over the years(Did you know the Proac Response D25 is the most cloned speaker in the world, ever?), is retained. I can now say that I am a fan too!

Priced at RM$16K, you can have your hifi cake and not just eat it, but almost finish it too. The speaker's audiophile integrity is still very much intact, and you can have your family bliss too, all the while enjoying your music, not to mention movies too(Did I tell you that the Tri Towers truly glorifies movie soundtracks too?, making them great for AV duties as well). Needless to say, I am impressed.

Proac Speakers are sold by CMY Audio & Visual, tel:03-21439206.

Posted by Panzer 2 May '09