Excellent imaging, realistic sound stage and very transparent greatly benefit from crossover and subwoofer

lacking in the bottom end. Poor efficiency

I have been using a pair of ProAc 1sc for over 15 years. So I'd say they are very well broken in or past broken in. They are my favorite pair of speakers. Yes, you can find speakers that go deeper, much deeper, I have those too. Yes, you can find speakers that go higher also. For example, those with metal tweeter or ribbon tweeters. However, these gams are so sweet that they draws you into the music and you can forget about them being there and just enjoy the music.

They are not for all sorts of sound reproduction such as booming explosions in movies. As much as I love classical music, some speakers are so piercing that I can't get through the whole disc at times before getting tired of it. Don't have this issue with these speakers. Vocal, instrumental, jazz, fantastic. Put it through it paces with pop and electronic music. While bass could have been deeper and more importantly with greater pressure, They are still very enjoyable and makes me wonder how it gets so much bass (while it is upper bass) into the small boxes.

Had a listen to some newer ProAcs at store on the weekend, especially the D2. I can't say I am impressed. Perhaps I have been too spoiled. It wasn't as tight, focused as these old 1sc. Perhaps it is because of the poor stands they put them on and positioning in the room. I am also surprised how much the speaker walls where vibrating when I put my hands on them. Mind you I wasn't listening at high volumes. I don't listen at high volumes. The wall vibrations might explain the somewhat loose sound a bit. I was so shocked I came room and straightaway did the same test on mine. No where near the same amount of vibrations there. BTW, mine are on solid stands and they are filled.

There are even smaller (or larger) speakers with similar or even better focus and clarity. But the pleasure I get from these is unparallel. Take what I said with a grain of salt because there are tons of speakers out there and I didn't audition such as the K6. They were way too out of my budget despite wife did like how they looked (to my surprise). Besides speakers is just one piece of the puzzle. Source (I mean the recording), amp, player, power source and even cables make a difference.

I am approaching my fiftieth soon and did spent an awful lot of money over the last three decades for this hobby, and what a beautiful hobby this is, listening to music.
I owned so many different speakers that I am almost unable to recall all of them, but most being British and a couple of other European ones too, and often there was something missing. Some were really nice, and some clearly overrated.
With those little 1SC’s I found my Holy Grail.
No, this is not a perfect speaker. Those ProAcs are designed for small to medium sized rooms. There are limitations in their bass extension and in sheer volume. As many other thoroughbreds they have a very limited sweet spot. Sometimes, when my better half vacuums the carpets it can happen, that I measure whether the distance to my listening position is still the same. If one speaker is pushed only 50mm behind the other one in distance, the sweet spot is gone. The same applies for the toed in angle. No other speaker I ever owned made small alterations so clearly audible (with exception of Quad’s ESL 57). You only need to replace a chinch cable and you will hear a difference, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. As if those wooden boxes are somehow alive. They don’t need extremely strong amplification, but insure a good quality one. Ones the right electronics and setup is found the music will disappear from those speakers, there is no room as such anymore. Time becomes somehow irrelevant, and I am not talking about the speaker’s timing. All those phrases like imaginary, vocals, soundstage, midband, heights etc., used in describing the quality or lack of such of a pair of speakers, are only used once those parameters are somehow missing.
The 1SCs are able to reproducing music in a three dimensional space, timeless but most importantly in a very touching emotional way. They just sound so right. I don’t want to turn the stereo off anymore, and running through my record or CD collection becomes a habit the same way it was 30 years ago, when I dreamt dreams as a teenager. No, they are not perfect, but absolutely magic little things.
Just imagine the feeling when listening to a track you listened to countless times before and out of a sudden you hear a new tone, you have never realized earlier with other speakers. That is unreal.
Put on Georges Bizet’s “Je crois entendre encore”, performed by Salvatore Licitra or Keith Jarrett’s Koeln Concert, or Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”, and you will know what I mean.
I want to thank my beautiful wife for standing by me all those years, and enabling me to spend the money we did spend for this hobby especially as those little ProAcs are not cheap. Believe me, if you love music they are worth every single cent.
That is ProAc’s secret, really being able to reproducing music in a way, that music itself becomes alive. Those little beauties are real gems….……………………………………

P.S.: Just read on the ProAc webpage, that after 12 years of production, the 1SC has found its successor in the brand new D1 model. Can it really get any better?

I first heard these little speakers in a shop about 10 years ago, directly comparing them to my KEF 104s. I decided on the basis of clarity of sound, particularly in the reproduction of female voices and upper range solo instruments, that they were among the best speakers I have ever heard. Certainly better than the KEF 104s, although not equaling the low-end of the KEF bass, obviously.

10 years later I finally picked up a pair of the SC 1s to replace my existing Mackie HR 824 monitors, which are powered speakers. I was not as impressed with the SCs as I had been on that first listening experience 10 years ago. Voices still sounded phenomenal, but the SCs completely lacked the immediacy and clarity of the bass and lower mid range of the Mackie HRs, which are half the price and powered as well.

The fact is that in a living room that measures 19x13x10, large orchestral music lacks accurate bass. It seems to me that the low end of small ported speakers like the SCs does not quite measure up to the accuracy of the bass you get with good bass radiator systems, and that this MAY be the deficiency I'm hearing.

The problem nowadays is that speaker shops are not set up to allow a direct comparison of equipment, as was the case years ago; so it's really hard to make the kind of discriminations that were possible in the old days!

see above

I have tried them in other combinations and the sound can collapse. Don't use them with to analytical components. The combination in my case is supurb ( copland csa 8, cda 277, nordost blue heaven.

These speakers have something special. Most models I have owned or heard can impresse but not for long. I have these for about two years and stil they do impress. It has something to do with the terriffic midrange en the space around the music.
Epos es 11 was my first love, then came the proac 2000 signatures. It was an improvement mostley in the bass regions and sligtly in the ambiance and space.
I liked the signatures but I became bored by the atmosphere of the produced sound . I tried :totem model 1, dynaudio contour 1.1, 1.3,vienna ac. and more.
Mostly good speakers but nothing special. The 1sc is something special.
Clean, cold and warm at the same time ??, great ambiance and space, tight bass.
I am in love with these.

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see above

Mids and highs---mids are liquid, highs are airy and transparent

Needs a decent amount of current from the amp. Very fussy and revealing of source components: make sure you spend at least as much on amp and source as you do on the speakers. Also highs have benefitted massively from mains filtering.

Outstanding speaker---I've listened to quite a few high end speakers, and I've choosen these little boxes. They just reveal everything clear and pure. I've never heard mids so nice and liquid. Percussive sounds are so real that it is sometimes scary! The bass is good for standmounters---defintely enough for me to enjoy rock and organ music. It's surprising how much bass such small speakers can produce, and very well-defined. More than adequate unless you have a huge room and want the floor shaking. Beautiful build quality too. Highly recommended

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Castle, Ruark, PMC, ATC

Sweet mids and highs, smooth bass, openness

None for this price

I purchased these little jams about 4 years ago and I heard them since about 3 years before that and completely fell in love with them. I still love them and keen to buy more of them if wife allows. Because of their size, you won't expect ultra deep extended and punchy bass from them although I still find the bass more than adequate and yummy. It is a top performer in all other areas. Of course, where you put them - stand, room acoustics, positioning would make a difference. Good luck to all who share my love of these 1sc's.

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Dynaudio 1.3MkII

Musical.

Maybe bass in a big room. But OK in small.

One of the best mini monitor at jet!!!! Just listen' it. All parameters are very good.

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LS3/5a, Totem Model one, Sonus Faber concertino, Sonus faber signum, B&W Nautilus 805,....

- Every recording now has a sound of it's own, not the sound of the speaker. - Neutrality.

Room treatment needed. (A new cd-player and amp needed!)

These speakers are so much better than my aging cd-player and modest amp, so I'm only going to express my awe at the long burn-in. I bought my Proacs used, two months old they said, an absolute bargain. But as I noticed, they were not properly burned in! It took almost a month more of regular playing, until they opened (bass etc.). Maybe the previous user didn't play them enough, in any case he/she never got to experience the true magic of response 1sc. I use Dynaudio stand2-stands with blu-tak.

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Jamo Concert 8

Natural sounding. Excellent for female vocals.

none. Well maybe price but i think i got a good deal on them.

Very easy to power. Sounds great with almost any type of amps. Awesome details. Cost plenty but in the long run worth every penny!!

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B&Ws, Paradigm, JMlabs, Totem.