Any Proac 2.5 owners out there?

[AJ Bertelson]

Couple of questions

What was the total investent cost with your proacs?

What do you like most about your proacs?

Are they good for HT use?


Are they good in a huge room and can you get up and walk around and they will still sound good?

Gainclone amp here

[Alain]

I made two pairs so far: one with the regular tweeter and one with the 95000. They costed me around $1,000-1,200 US with a nice cherry veneer, Solen caps, flared ports and the best coils I could find.

I like the general tonal balance with the 95000 although the sibilance is almost gone with the regular tweeter after more than 500 hours of listening.

For HT, they are fantastic as they have very extended bass.

[tktran]

The materials for my pair cost the equivalent of USD$900. This excludes some tools necessary for making the cabinets.

I had wanted floorstanding speakers with veneer to go nicely in the living room (7 x 9 x 2.7m (WxDxH)) but even the very cheapest (vinyl covered, thin cabinet) floorstanding speakers in this country costs 1.5 times as much.

They sound great but arguably the best thing about this project is that they're very easy to build and extremely well documented.

(USD$1000 can buy a fairly good speaker if I stick to a bookshelf eg. NHT SB3 or Dynaudio Audience 42).

I've had a pair of commerical floorstanders (MTM with Audax Aerogel HM170Z18) in the same living room and whilst they go louder my clones simply outclassed them in terms of musical enjoyment. I think the Audax are great but simply outclassed by the ScanSpeak. I think the development work by Troels Gravesen has made even a better speaker.

HT- Haven't tried it.

Keep them clear of walls (1metre minimum) and they play beautifully. I don't complain now when I have do do the dishes.

[AJ Bertelson]

hmm, is it possible to put them together for 600-650?

Also the speakers would be put about 6-12in from the wall. How much this would effect the sound?

[cowanrg]

here are some figures in US dollars.

http://www.geocities.com/diyproac25/partslist.htm

the drivers will cost you around $400-$500 alone. but, MDF comes cheap, and the crossover is pretty simple. if you have a good surplus place close by, you can do the crossover for a few bucks.

[AJ Bertelson]

Is the veneer the most costly product then for the speakers?

[tiroth]

You can probably get the drivers for ~$300, which is what I paid from audiocomponents.nl a couple years ago.

I think 12" from the wall is acceptable, the bass may be a little too much depending on your room.

[tktran]

If the rear of the speaker is about 6-12" of the wall then you will have extra bass reinforcement due to "room gain". IMHO this is something the clones certainly do not need.

Also, due to early reflections sound will suffer, most apparent in the midrange and imaging.

With the exception of some small bookshelves or mini-monitors that have absolutely no real bass, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that ALL fullrange speakers sound better when they're kept clear of walls.

Cost really depends on how far you want to take the speakers.

Raw MDF and any old XO parts are really cheap.

Premium XO parts, veneers, wood finishing products, dampening, terminals etc.

When I started I projected USD$650. But then at every step it's easy to add a bit extra... and then these things all add up.

[tiroth]

I agree that more spacing is probably better, but I think 12" is OK. My speakers are not much more than that from the back wall. The bass has a little too much reinforcement, but there is no impact on the imaging (IMHO).

[Dave S]

HI FI Choice (UK) recently tested the new D25 which is the R2.5 replacement and stated that the "D25 is by far the tightest and most rhythmic-sounding speaker Proac has ever produced".
If you inferred from this that the R2.5 has somewhat full (and slow) bass, I think you would be right!!

All is not lost however, I run my TroelAcs 11" from the wall and after much experimentation have ended up with a decent compromise between bass extension and tightness.

With the recommended port dimensions the bass was way OTT (if you do some box/driver simulations the R2.5 box is too small - hence the bass excess), so I increased the length of the port by 30mm which helped quite a bit. A better solution is to fill the ports with straws although the longer port then gave bass that was a bit too lean, so I ended up with the original ports filled with straws.

The bass tuning also depends on which Xover you choose, the original has more mid and treble energy than the Troels V6.1 so the exaggerated bass is not so obvious.

If you want something that may well sound better and is quite a bit cheaper take a look at:

http://murphyblaster.com/content.php...ifa_Tower.html

These will also be more efficient and play louder. The Proacs don't play all that loud due to low efficiency.


Dave