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No bass in the Proac Response 3

I've just had the opportunity to buy a Proac Response 3 from a fellow agon just recently. One of the foam the 6.5" woofer was
torn ( with holes) so I already had it replaced with brand new foam. The treble improved quite a bit once I had the foam replace. The midrand is still the same and I have to say the Proac midrange is beautifull. I can sit and listen to female vocal (Krall, Elle, Cassandra) music all day. There is no sign of harsh or etch at all.

However, my problem now is that the bass is nowhere to be found when I play rock/pop. I do the regular Proac reccommended speaker placement of 2 feet away from the wall and the deep bass , mid bass are all but lost. If I moved the Proac very close to the wall then I get stronger bass, but now my image and everything else got all messed up. A simple analogy would be like I don't feel the singer is standing in the rooming sing anymore once I move the speakers toward the wall. Everything is just so flat ( 2-d), but the bass is good.

The most simple weak link that I can see in my system is that maybe the Krell integrated is just not big enough to produce the kinda big bass that I used to. But another interesting thing to know is that before I got the R3, I also got a much smaller Proac supertower that produced bass twice as much as the R3; and the R3 is twice the size, but lacking in the lower freq department.

My system is following:
Krell KAV-300i (integrated amp)
Arcam DV-27 (CD player)
Sony DVD player + PS Audio UltraLink DAC
Proac R3 (Full range speaker)
ducchau
jea48
2,944 posts
 
04-17-08: Prefab
Could you have reconnected the drivers out of phase? Try switching the polarity on one of the drivers

My thought also......

Ducchau, without having to remove the drivers again you can check for proper polarity using a 1.5 volt D cell battery.

* Pull the front grills from the speakers.
* Disconnect the speaker cable wires from the Amp.
* Take one speaker cable and hold the negative wire on the negative post of the battery. While watching the speaker driver cones of the speaker momentarily touch the positive wire of the speaker cable to the positive post of the battery.
If the polarity is correct each driver cone will move forward. If any cone pulls in instead of outward reverse the wire connections on that driver.
* Repeat process for other speaker.
hifibri
39 posts
 
If you are filling the cabinet with sand you are changing the internal volume of the enclosure which will change the frequency response of the speaker, most notably reducing the bass response. Try taking the sand out. You could try a shopvac with a small hose through the port. You may need someone to tip the speaker while you vaccume. You have plenty of power for the speakers. I've heard them sing with 25w Quick Silver Mini Mites. I agree with Dodgealum, the response 3's never had a lot of strong bass and are a little lightweight in presentation, especially for thier size, but are a very nice speaker. New surrounds, as others have said, will take some time to break in, sometimes hundreds of hours. Upgrading the crossover with capacitors of your choice will make a wonderful improvement.
tiger
313 posts
 
Aside from all the great comments already posted, have you fed the speakers with test tones? Also, since these speakers are bi-wires, have you tried to use the 'low' set to see if any difference occurs? With different aged drivers you are always going to have differences in the response. In speaker land, there is something called 'matched drivers' and that can have some impact on what your listening to now. I had that problem many years ago when I replaced a woofer in another ProAc model.
ducchau OP
12 posts
 
Hifibri, how could the sand filling change the internal volume of the cabinet when the cavity that contains the sand is totally separate from the other box that contains the drivers ? So this is the point that I don't quite get from all the techniques of higher end speakers designers use.

However, I did remove half the sand last night and it seems to help the bass quite a bit. Although not to the point that I am happy. So more speaker placement experiments.

Jea, thanks for the technical trick to test out the polarities of the speaker connections. Although I feel that I did connect the speaker wires correctly, I will try what you suggested.
jea48
2,944 posts
 
Ducchau, here is what ProAc says about filling the sand cavity......

Quote
"After removing the cover the cavity should be part filled with dry silver sand, then the listener is invited to add or subtract sand, which will tune the bass quality for his taste and room acoustics. As a general rule of thumb, a small amount of sand will give the bass more warmth, adding more sand to the cavity will give a dryer tighter quality, most people will find that half to two thirds full is optimum in most models."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Also, I assume you are using spikes on the speaker plynth.
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