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
You need to experiment more with speaker positioning. Also experiment with the listening position. You should be able to get bass response solidly down into the 40Hz range with the ProAcs.
I agree with Onhwy61. Your amp should have enough juice to drive the ProAc's. Probably a speaker-room issue. Maybe you are sitting in a bass node? Try walking around the room to see if the bass improves. I know someone who added a subwoofer and could hear no bass at all, yet his room-mate upstairs was complaining :)
I agree with the rest--the issue is not the amp. My buddy has a pair of R3's and we have found that they benefit from much experimentation in placement. And, they are somewhat fussy in this regard--as you report there are often tradeoffs to be made when moving them around. Even under the best of circumstances, however, the R3's do not produce what I would call strong, foundational bass. Despite the cabinet size they can be a little lightweight in their presentation, despite some other very good qualities. Also, this is a speaker that has issues with aging woofer foam, as you have addressed. I've been trying for years to get my friend to move to another speaker but he won't budge--likes his Proac's just fine.