Home demo. ProAc D48R and Spendor D9

I’ll try and close this thread up with a few comments.

I have never heard a speaker change in the space of 130 or so hours as the D9.

The hot midrange / treble has gone, bass deep, tuneful but with real impact as required.
What was disjointed bass/midrange/treble is now a full , coherent soundstage.
One of the other posts here had similar findings with the D7.

Sure, the treble may not be as crisp as the D48R , I am sure no done tweeter ever will be. Ribbon tweeters are special in this regard.

But the D9 did everything as good and in most of the things that matter to me - better than the ProAc in my room with my gear.

Why I chose these 2 as a final speaker bake off is.

1. Budget, they are the only ones in my budget range that I could get to demo. in my house. 

2. I am in an area with limited speaker brand choice. For example I would love to hear Kudos, Joseph, Magico and a few other brands, just not possible though.
 
3. Tried the ATC SCM 40, good, very good but not excellent in my room. And need far more watts than the 90 Naim watts I could give them. Active was an option, but not worth the mess around as naim
and the ATC are not very compatible with cables etc. Just too hard.
Anyway, no bad choice , I just prefer the D9.

The ATC SCM 40 is not in the same league with the D9 and the D48 this  2 options are much better and you are correct the ATC are power hungry speakers, the other two are more efficient , anyway they are both excellent choices and I am sure you'll enjoy your new D9 speakers for many years.

Between the Spendor D7 / D9 and Proac D30RS / D48R, which one does piano timbre better?  I'm allergic to hearing a piano reproduction that (given a good quality recording) does not easily, clearly and immediately tells me, even if I'm not paying much attention, that this is a real, mechanical piano, not a "digital" piano. There is a very... percussive, let's say, quality especially to the upper range notes of a piano that makes the listener very much aware that there are some very tight strings that are being hit, and some systems don't reproduce this quality too well. Take, for example, George Winston's album "December", the 12th track called "Peace". How do the Spendors and the Proacs fare in this regard? 

I can state that the Spendor D7 (just below the D9) have the best piano sound I have ever heard in a speaker- better than my previous Harbeths which made piano sound excellent.  The Spendors make piano sound alive and real.  

@donquichotte,You will get biased opinion on this question because between the ProAc and Spendor owners we have purchased the loudspeakers that "we" thought, sounded the most natural to us. I have heard the ProAc D30, Spendor D7 and own the ProAc D48R. For piano, I would highly recommend the D48R. But would also urge you to listen to the Spendor D9 to see what you prefer. Both my kids play the piano and based on that experience I can say that the larger speakers get the sound "closer" to the original. But one thing to remember is - for a piano recording to sound "like a real piano" on a large loudspeaker, you need to provide them with enough room to breath. The smaller D30 and D7 also do piano very well, but the "scale" is different compared to the larger loudspeakers.