Flagship standmounters deliver a masterful sonic balancing act
ProAc’s high-end K series has been in production for 13 years now. The speakers have evolved and been improved in that time, but until now they have always been floorstanders.
The K1’s unusual plinth design echoes the design of the K series towers, and it takes a little acclimatisation when transferred to a standmounter. This arrangement allows for a downward-facing port and gives a known fixed boundary (the plinth) for the port to fire on, without which the speaker designer is left to guess at the available space between the port and any surface it fires onto, which naturally leads to less precise port tuning. A downward-firing port should also make the speakers a little less fussy about room placement.
ProAc has gone for High Density Fibreboard (HDF) panels but with different thicknesses to spread resonances. These panels are carefully damped with bitumen to control those resonances and the result should be a quiet, but rigid, cabinet.
INSIGHT AND REFINEMENT
The K1 are a two-way design that makes use of ProAc’s well-proven ribbon tweeter with its machined faceplate, damped rear chamber and Alnico magnet assembly. We have heard this tweeter in other ProAc models and it always impresses with its high levels of insight and refinement. Here, it is combined with an esoteric-looking 16.5cm Kevlar mid/bass unit, based on the one used in the larger K3 floorstanders. Various aspects of the driver have been tweaked to account for the differing technical needs of the two speakers.
A carefully calibrated crossover blends the two drive units and results in a reasonably high sensitivity of 90dB/W/m and 8 ohm nominal impedance – ProAc tends to make speakers that are relatively kind loads for amps to drive, as here.
The K1s are musical, expressive, cohesive and comfortable. The last of those isn’t a term we use often when describing the sound of a product, but it fits these standmounters perfectly. These are the kind of speakers you can listen to for hours on end without fatigue. They have a calm disposition that makes it easy simply to concentrate on the music. But don’t mistake calmness for boring – that isn’t the case here.
We play Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes and the K1 respond with enthusiasm. They deliver the hard-charging beat with verve, rendering those grungy bass notes with punch and power. Rivals such as the Fyne Audio F1-8 certainly deliver more in the way of outright muscularity, but these ProAcs hardly sound lacking on t
