After nearly 20 years, I left Magnepan and went ProAc

Randy-11,

1.6

Iistened to the vandy quatro the same day, and they were amazing in their own right, don't recall if the were the wood CT version, but the proacs literally brought me to tears.  That was it for me.  Had to to throw them in the bag.  

Jperry- thanks!

Gnostalgick-

Thanks. They will need some finessing to harness the sound from them. I’m using a an arc ds450 with them, and it is immensely powerful with a 90db efficient speaker. 550 wpc into 4 ohms-I needed it for the Maggies, not so sure it’s necessary with the proacs. It’s hard being patient, but I can hear the glimmer or greatness peaking through. With 3 days on them, they aren’t cooked at all. They don’t sound anywhere near as good as the dealer setup, and that is my ultimate goal. It’s a whole new endeavour now, but one I’m excited to partake in.

Sfall - that's pretty smart!

This is is going to be harder than I thought.  Right now these are in a smaller room 13.75x16x75. It's been a few days now, and I've been fiddling with placement. These are dynamos.  They are getting 550 Watts a side, and The midbass is too strong around 200-800hz and is booming and killing the image.  It's not noticeable all the time, but it's hard to turn them up because the just sound so boomy.  Yes I know the room is small, but I bought them anyway with the thiought of finishing the basement in the future and moving down there.  I have to make due for now.. any suggestions? Woofer face about 3.75 out from rear wall, 3.5 feet from side wall, listening position about 11.25 feet away from speaker.  Whatever the minimum distance I can get away with with these with the MTM array? I have a heavenly speaker in a hellacious room.  It's got that plasticy midbass boom box resonance I remember from being a kid. I want to tackle this head on with the placement, and then look at treatments to help the bass.  Sometimes it sounds good sometimes I want to shut it off.  I know they are still breaking in, but I doubt this weird bass is gonna fix it self with break in. 

Jperry-what a beautiful system!! Are your speakers on the long or short wall? Mine are currently on the short wall in the dimensions above. My room is a bonus room above the garage. The floor is carpet over suspended plywood. The walls are drywall and have that hollow lightweight ring. Grrr. I also have and 8 foot ceiling which has a barnyard top, which extends from the middle of each sidewall at an angle until it reaches the ceiling and 1/5 the way in so in essence the full 8 feet is only roughly 3/5 of the ceiling. I hope that makes sense. It’s a shame because my equipment is good, but the sound I’m getting isn’t. I have to tune this stuff asap. BTW how far out is the minimum distance requirement with the dappolito design? How far away are you listening? Are you sittng up against the front wall? When I’m anywhere but the searing position I don’t get that horrible mid bass nasaly hump. It’s completely coloring the sound, and not in a good way. I will definitely look into to the sumiko master set.

I think I may have found the most ideal placement in my less than ideal room. I went with a diagnal placement and the soundstage exploded. As well, the response is much smoother. Not perfect, but much better. It is so much better than the short or long wall configurations that’s it’s not even a contest in my room. I’m able to get a finely tuned and focused center image with much better timbre and overall tonality this way. While I still am not getting 100% out of them, I can finally hear what led me to take the plunge on them in the first place.

Now instead of feeling disheartened, I can now focus on racking some hours on them. I’m a little over 200 hours of non stop playing. I listened to Charles Mingus and was delighted. I can’t wait till I hear them at beyond 500 hours and months down the road once they have "matured". They have a certain delicacy, and refinement that even a Maggie fan should hear. They are more expensive than Maggie’s, but they sound it too. There is a certain magic of Maggie’s, but these proacs show that there are other wizards out there designing speakers. Maggie’s are a gateway for a lot of us into high quality sound, many of us start off with them, because of their incredible value, i get it. But you owe it to yourself tombe opened minded and to understand that they are not the be all and all, just because they were your first love.

An update. 

The speakers have about 375 hours on them.  They are really starting to come into their own. It's amazing how detailed they are without being bright.  The detail is really at the edges and not "force fed" like the Maggie's. the proacs have a very sophisticated presentation, that has to be heard in the flesh to fully understand.  When you listen to a Maggie, that spooky transparency and super speed gets you hook line and sinker.  The proacs don't portray the music that way, it's a warmer,thicker,  (in a good way) more musical presentation. I understand now what it means when people say how they play the music within the music.  The speakers have been totally all over the place with their sound. Some nights great, some nights not so great, and some nights downright crappy! Tonight, however, they sound more than great. I just down understand how they change from night to night,  but they do. 200 more hours and I will start to,shut down system at night and use the system normally again. Then we shall see if they improve over the next couple of months incrementally. 

I have ordered the soundocity outriggers as per the suggestion in this thread.  My current seating arrangement is not allowing me to get the tweeter at proper ear level. Right now, my is level with the top of the surround of the top of the woofer, way to high above the tweeter.   I don't have the ability to set rake angle because the stock spikes don't have enough travel to compensate for my uneven floor AND adjust for rake angle. Hopefully the outriggers will help me get better imaging and better tone.  I can't imagine my current ear to tweeter height mismatch helping me.  I think I read you can have your ear 3 inches higher or lower than the tweeter and still be within acceptable alignment. With my ear where it is,  I'm way more than three inches too high.  I'm hoping a whole new dimension will come to life once the outriggers get here.