CES & THE Show 2010 Hot Product
Residing in the category of "speakers
we'd like to take home with us" is the new ProAc Carbon Pro Six ($30,000/pair), which
gets its name from the carbon fiber used for its drivers and plinth. Driven by an Audio
Research VSi60 integrated amp ($3995), with an Audio Research Reference CD8 CD player
($9995) as source, these speakers showed off their expert voicing -- a deft combination of
tonal beauty, spacious soundstaging, full imaging and bloomy bass.
ProAc makes the carbon-fiber parts for the
drivers, shipping them to the manufacturer, Volt, which uses them to create the
proprietary drivers. Making the cones and other parts is exacting and accounts for a good
share of the time needed to produce the speakers -- and the speakers' cost.
Along with the carbon-fiber midrange and
woofers is a proprietary ribbon tweeter. We were a little concerned about this. The ProAc
silk-dome tweeter has always sounded remarkably refined; nothing about it needed to be
changed. However, the ribbon tweeter is in the same tradition, and offers a touch more
high-frequency sparkle. It also has good vertical dispersion -- an issue with many ribbon
tweeters. |