ProAc

One speaker brand i have never ever heard

Keep taking the Tablettes. 

Well back from the demo and here is my take.

Only got the opportunity to hear the Response D2, and the Response D48R.
Now to be fair I cannot judge the speakers in a way that would do the justice.
Because of the following, the room where the D4 was playing was so full of reflections it would not be fair to judge the speaker. Plus he had them playing on the Pathos Twin Tower hybrid SET solid state Mosfet amp.

The chap was a tad anal to say the least, the speakers are 4 ohm nominal and using this amp it is recommended that 5-6 ohm and above is the ideal.
This became obvious when presented with something more complicated, than the usual acoustic and vocal, the speakers went into a flap, tripping all over themselves in the mid and lower bass. When played on the turntable the woofers were pumping like a 14 year old playing with himself. Pumping = distortion plain and simple.
The bloke was insistent that this combination gave the best sound.

What I did hear is that the speakers were very good in the mid range, and I felt they had a lot of potential to be a very fine speaker. When I bought my Vandersteens, I heard them on demo, they did not sound particular exciting, but I could hear that they were not bullshitting me, and they had the potential to become a very fine speaker, I was absolutely right, once I got them run in and set up properly, that took some fiddling because they are funny that way they turned out to be tremendous music makers. I feel the same about the ProAc.

Price is a bit steep for a two way tower, beautifully made, but R100,000 in our funny money is a lot to pay R100,000 = 5,400 pounds

The D2.
Again with the SET, this time a Unison Research Simply 2 EL34 SET. 13w on a good day p/c.
I have no love for SET amps using an EL34 in particular, they are just to compromised, give them something complicated and they fall flat. A EL34 in a push pull done right, are great amps as good as they get.
He played some classical with a big smile on his face and it sounded no better in my opinion than a Blue Tooth tube thingy speaker played from a phone.

Again I did hear potential, so all in all if you got the bucks and the will to play around, good speakers.

Foot note:
Blokes on the local forum raving, the best sound I have heard to date, blah, blah, blah.
Then I must be deaf, totally deluded, wasting my time with this Hi-Fi malarkey, or they have never heard a full range 3 dimensional system, that images like a clout on the head with a cricket bat, a full wide, front, sides, back, and high sound stage, where you can pick out every single instrument playing in it's own space.
Okay I know it ain't like live music sounds, but this is Hi-Fi and my preference.

The tablets which i never got to hear.

I started out expecting dealers to know what they were doing. That has long since disappeared. One notable landmark in the shattering of my illusions was the well regarded dealer who shipped me a Rock without emptying the trough. When confronted, he said he was “too busy” and didn’t see what I was complaining about. Tit.

I've been in similar situations where the sound was not at all good but people were enthusiastic about it. I am very picky about sound quality but then isn't everyone?

There was one system fronted by an RTR and it sounded a bit rough. Not terrible but not great either, yet people were exclaiming out loud at how good it was, and how nothing beat RTR. Wasn't the fault of the tape deck either as it was just as poor from CD. But I think maybe seeing the wonderful RTR they decided there was no way it could sound anything other than fabulous, and then imagination takes care of the rest.