Review: ProAc Future Point Five speakers
I bought these on eBay at the weekend - they retail at £3500. Ex-Dem from AudioVation in Huddersfield - I spoke to them a couple of times about delivery - we are talking Deep-Yorkshire here! - I could barely understand them, and they had the same problem with me! Nice folks to deal with, though.
These are the babies of Pro-Ac's top-of-the-line Future range. 3 speakers - my Future Point 5, a Future Point 1 (6 inches taller) and the Point 2 (a lot bigger).
From what I have read, the Future series are the speakers that Stuart Tyler (ProAc founder & boss) has always wanted to make - they are his dream come true, apparently. But for some reason they have received very little publicity (apart from a Stereophile review for the Future One back in 2000 which came up with one significant criticism and a rave) and are not at all widely known. I'm definitely a little baffled by that after an initial listen. These are great speakers!
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OK - so what have we got here? .....
Quite an unusual design ... from the front the impression is quite imposing, 42 inches high, and 18 inches wide (at the bottom rear where they are at their widest). One Big Muther!
But look at them from the side and they look like just half a speaker!!
A mere 9 inches deep at the base, tapering to about 1 inch at the top!
They are kept from toppling over by a pair of metal brackets at the bottom rear.
The secret here is that the tweeter and the midrange are open baffle - no rear panel to the speaker behind those drivers.
The bass unit is in a sealed enclosure (not open baffle) with a port on the bottom directly facing the floor. the bass enclosure takes up something like the bottom 60% of the cabinet height.
4 cones are supplied to keep each speaker at the correct height above the floor for the port to work properly.
The speaker has a weird cross-section - 18 inches wide at the back, 10 inches at the front, and sloping sides to make them meet up! .....
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\___/ - that sort of shape.
Oh, and as you can see, they've got a ribbon tweeter.
The specs are 87dB/W, 28Hz-30KHz (no tolerances stated), 8 ohms.
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So, how do they sound?
Well, I've only had them a day and for most of that I had a bad head cold, but mid-evening yesterday my ears started to unclog and I began to appreciate what these can do.
Initial impressions are of a more 'sophisticated' and natural sound than other Proacs, with a nicely 3D soundstage when they are pointing directly at you.
I have previously owned ProAc Response 2 & 3 speakers, and have heard more recent offerings in the Response series at Shows. The Response series are great speakers, no doubt of that imho. But this example of the Futures is even better, I think.
Very detailed - that ribbon tweeter is excellent. Tonally gorgeous - naturally rich and fruity! And the bass appears surprisingly deep for what is quite a small bass enclosure volume. 28Hz? - maybe. Very high up on my list of audio priorities is 3D soundstaging and image focus - and these babies excel in that department.
But do they rock, I hear many of you asking?! I don't know yet, my listening so far has been limited to classical and a blockbuster SciFi DVD (Sunshine - crap film, really!). I'll try out some 'lectric-geetar and bass thrashing later today.
Setup is critical for these it seems - for best imaging they need to be facing directly at you. But they don't seem very bothered about the distance from the rear wall, which surprises me, especially given their open to the rear top end. I guess the floor firing bass port helps here. I've currently got the set up with about 30 iches from the back wall. Much more experimentation to be done here.
They seem quite fussy about speaker cable - with multi-stranded NVA LS3 they are a bit vague & woolly in the imaging department, but with solid core LFD Spiroflex 1 they sound very nicely focussed indeed. (Sorry you CUBs* out there, but that's just the way I hear it).
They are certainly very valve friendly - I have a pair of 40wpc OTL valve monoblocks that chicken out pronto into difficult loads, and the Futures are sounding sublime with them at the moment with no limits to headroom that I have encountered yet.
I also have a pair of 80wpc NVA A80 solid state monoblocks - they sound very good (great amps!), but initial impressions are that they are more outclassed than usual by the valve amps.
Looks like my recent speaker quest may well have come to a close
- I suspect the ProAcs will be doing the music for me for the next 6 months or so!
I'll post more about them as and when!
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* CUB = Cable UnBeliever
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Originally Posted by spendorman
