Pioneer S-IW871LR, S-IW571L manual Soundvision+, »flip the switch

tE ST REporTS	TR Pioneer elite in-wall speaker system
OCTOBER/09

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The advantage of a concentric ar- rangement is that two drivers share the same physical location. When a woofer and tweeter are separated, as they are in a conventional two- way speaker, the two drivers’ sound waves interfere with each other, re- inforcing certain frequencies and therefore canceling others. The ef- fect worsens when you move closer to one driver, such as when you lis- ten standing up.

With concentric drivers, it’s physi- cally impossible to move closer to the woofer or the tweeter because both occupy the same space. Thus, the speaker’s sound will vary only

The S-IW571L will work fine for sur- round channels, too, but to add some variety I asked Pioneer to supply a pair of S-IW871LR speakers for the surrounds. The S-IW871LR looks as if Pioneer’s engineers forgot to give it a tweeter, but of course the tweeter’s sitting right there in the middle of the 8-inch woofer.

Both Elite speakers feature a cast aluminum baffle holding the drivers. This baffle is much more substantial than the molded plastic ones used in most in-walls. The more massive the baffle, the better it prevents the dry- wall panels around the speaker from vibrating. Stray vibrations in the dry-

»concentric-driven

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“The voice of a screaming, ecstatic

56-year-old man would push any speaker into harshness and distortion, but the Elites treated Iggy Pop with far more care than he ever lavished on himself.”

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subtly as you move around the room. The downside of concentric drivers is that the woofer cone can narrow the tweeter’s dispersion and color its sound. As proven in the TAD Ref- erence One and designs from Thiel Audio and others, though, careful engineering can lessen or even elimi- nate this problem.

Of the latest Elite in-walls, I was most curious about the S-IW571L, an LCR-type speaker designed primarily for use in the front left, center, and right channels of a surround sound system. The S-IW571L is unusual in that its midrange driver — the 61/2- inch aramid fiber cone that surrounds the 11/2-inch titanium dome tweeter

—is larger than the speaker’s dual 51/4-inch woofers.

wall are the primary contaminant of in-wall speaker sound — and one rea- son in-walls still suffer a poor reputa- tion with many audiophiles.

SETUP

These speakers install like most other in-walls: Plastic “doglegs” flip out to clamp the speaker bezel against the drywall surrounding it. The concentric drivers give the Elites an advantage in installation, though — your installer can mount them vertically or horizon- tally, and they’ll sound much the same either way. This isn’t true of conven- tional in-walls, with a tweeter mounted above a woofer. Some installers make the mistake of flipping such speakers on their sides for the sake of looks or convenience, but this practice often

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The S-IW871LR in-walls (above) feature an 8-inch woofer for big in-wall bass, along with treble level and bass cut switches to fine-tune the highs and lows.

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54 OCTOBER/2009 SOUNDANDVISIONMAG.com