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ProAc's David Amey

Interviewed

By Michael Jones

January 2003 

A recent visitor to New Zealand was David Amey from ProAc Loudspeakers. Deciding on the full Auckland yuppie treatment, AudioEnz interviewed David Amey over a latte on Auckland’s Viaduct Basin. First question was about the origins of ProAc.

The company was started in 1973 by Stewart Tyler. Stewart had been making speakers at home for himself for two or three years prior to that. People heard them and asked if he could make more, and soon it was a commercial arrangement. Stewart used the brand name Celef.

Around 1980 he decided that it was getting a bit big to do on his own, so Stewart thought, let’s make higher end speakers for more money, and make less of them. Hence the birth of ProAc.

This went on until I got involved in 1987 when Stewart found himself in the same situation as with Celef. He thought that either he employ a marketing person or go back to making even more expensive loudspeakers.

I became involved and it’s gone from there. He’s moved factory into a new, purpose built assembly place. The rest is history.

One of the most famous ProAc speakers is the Tablette, now up to version 8 [see AudioEnz’s Tablette 8 review]. How did the original Tablette come about?

The original Tablette came out because Stewart had found these drive units with which he realised that he could get high performance out of a very small cabinet. At that time there weren’t really any small speakers about – the Tablette was a completely different to what was available.

When he launched it, people were so amazed that they keep asking, where was the subwoofer? Or thinking that it was a bigger pair of ProAc’s that were producing the music.

The new Tablette 8 has gone back to the traditional, original Tablette size, but the drive units are very different. The drivers in the 8 have been designed by ProAc in conjunction with SEAS [a major loudspeaker driver manufacturer].

Something different for ProAc recently has been the Future Series. They are very different from a normal ProAc loudspeaker – what is the genesis of the Future Series?

For years Stewart Tyler thought that ribbon tweeters gave the best and most open performance at the top end, and that an open-backed midrange gives that open-sounding midrange without the boxiness that most loudspeakers have.

In the case of an electrostatic, where you have the open treble and midrange, you don’t get the bottom end that you want. Hence the hybrid arrangement where we have a bass-reflex bottom end and an open midrange. The difference is that it’s not electrostatic, it’s a cone drive unit, which is open in the back.

The Future range has come about from years of Stewart wanting to do something like this. The design is quite radical.

What’s Stewart Tyler’s design philosophy? What is he trying to achieve?

The main strength that Stewart has is to be able to integrate drive units together. With a lot of loudspeakers you hear the crossover points.

His other great strength of course is to be able to getting good quality bottom end out of a small cabinet. He’s been doing it for years with the Tablette speakers and now with the Hexa home theatre system.

Stewart does go to a lot of live music, to a lot of classical concerts particularly. That helps keep his ears tuned.

But it’s this midrange integration. If you listen to any ProAc speaker, the midrange is lovely and open, smooth and seamless. Because midrange is where most of the music is.