Pioneer SP-BS22-LR Bookshelf Loudspeakers

Round two with Pioneer'southward Mr. Andrew Jones. Every bit you may or may non know, I was very disappointed in the Pioneer BS21's that I reviewed. You tin can see that over here if you are interested. For the Pioneer BS22 Jones was able to design the speaker drivers themselves to get the most out of the toll point. No off the shelf parts at all is most unheard of at this price range, and so notwithstanding over again expectations are set high. High expectations have never turned out very proficient for the speakers I review, merely hither goes.

Well, This looks practiced. A overnice looking pair of speakers. I miss the fancy pioneer emblem that was on the BS21'due south just having a real grill that doesn't look similar an iron curtain is a large comeback.

Visuals:

What the hell dude, the tweeter is supposed play high frequencies through the office that looks similar a thick plastic chain link fence. Well, the grills are worthless. I approximate y'all could try and cut a clear path through the plastic, just it'southward best to just toss them in the trash if you want to go the most out of these speakers.

Backside the grill nosotros can see the fancy custom drivers hand crafted past a tiny clone army of Andrew Joneses. The look is improved from the grill off of the BS21, but man it's withal an odd proportioned speaker with it's fiddling woofer and big box.

Drivers:

The tweeter is set in a deep moving ridge guide. Tweeters with that kind of horn loading are usually screamers with silly high efficiency.

Woofer is some blazon of plastic with a grid pattern embossed on information technology. Offset time I've seen something like that. I'm guessing he was trying to spread out the cone resonance to make information technology less awful to deal with in the crossover. Information technology's a squeamish touch and reminds me of the Scanspeak Illuminator's embossed paper cone I used on my chief system. The surround is butyl rubber and is pretty strong because the size of the driver.

Definately a custom driver, looks pretty sharp with a really large magnet on the back. Also note that you tin see a poly capacitor on the crossover for the tweeter, supposedly poly is better than electrolytic for crossovers.

The dorsum of the speaker is identical to the BS21's with acceptably nice speaker terminals and a port.

Setup:

I'm looking at these as desktop speakers for this review, if yous want to hear my impression of how they audio when they are non straight in your face I'll cover that in my terminal thoughts. These are up on stands of random non vibrating garbage to bring the tweeter's up to ear acme, and pull them out from the walls at least a human foot to let the rear port work. I messed with toe-in, but the wave guide is similar a death ray of cymbal energy and the imaging sounds too much like headphones this close and toed in, so out pointed they go.

Uncorrected impressions:

Keen... yep... well... After well-nigh a calendar month of listening...

Cymbals are likewise precipitous, the midrange is a chip thin, and they are boomy every bit well, but over all these are doing the task for the cost. These play much louder with than the BS21's although the trivial woofers will probably pop pretty quick if y'all try to get crazy. They don't need a sub on the desktop, but if yous programme on listening away from the desk a sub would exist pretty useful.

I would say that the flaws of this speaker are similar to those of the more expensive Sound Engine P4, but meliorate and worse at the aforementioned time. The waveguide's extreme loading makes it very harsh on the acme along with a very narrow dispersion of those frequencies. I end up hiding from the tweeter, but if you get too far off axis the whole elevation end disappears. A thin midrange is 1 that makes boys sound a scrap too much like girls, and tin audibly shrink both heads and instruments. Information technology'due south noticeable here, just it's not too bad. Every bit for dispersion, these definitely projection more than energy frontward with the large front end bamboozle, as such they don't throw a giant stage near field. The sound stage is limited to the confines of the speakers. If you want information technology bigger y'all are gonna need to move the speakers further apart. Pulling the speakers further apart means playing with toe-in on the speakers every bit you move them apart to continue the frequency response counterbalanced.

Lets take some measurements:

This is on the tweeter centrality, close windowed and we tin see one issue here, that tweeter is spitting hot fire above 12k.

My data is pretty shit below 1k, and then I'm going to default to old faithful beneath that. Stereophile did a full write upward on the Pioneer BS22's and gave them a passing grade also as ran them through the ringer of measurements. Now Stereophile does 30 degree horizontaly averaged measurements to get an average frequency response. That's not the way I do things. In Virtually field desktop listening speakers accept less space to piece of work out their problems, then I observe the direct on centrality measurement to be the about accurate representation of what I hear. With a speaker this size below 1k the averaged response should be the same as directly on axis and so I tin can use that data to fill in the blanks.

DSP Correction:

Using a combinations of my measurement and Stereophile's information in conjunction with a few hundred hours of listening I came up with this correction, which is an updated correction as of this review. I'll start from left and movement to the right. The response beneath 800hz was about two.8dB down from the rest of the speaker, so that got a boost. To my ear it sounds similar the port is tuned as well high, so I cutting the bass a little where the port and the woofer overlap to clean that up. The only other thing I messed with was the screaming top end which got chopped.

Corrected impressions:

Well, these speakers were alright before, and outside of the narrow horizontal dispersion they are damn almost perfect according to my ear. With the correction you can toe them in without murdering your ears, and they sound proficient and detailed setup that manner.

Final thoughts:

These are large speakers and putting them on the desktop is going to eat up a agglomeration of infinite. I really wish these had been standard not waveguide tweeters on this speaker. I honestly relish the corrected Micca MB42x speaker more on the desktop, so my recommendation for them stands.

As for the living room or systems that you can not utilise the DSP correction to, the winner is definitely the Pioneer BS22. The Pioneer in its' natural class is the best tonally counterbalanced cheap speaker out of the bunch I've that I've heard or reviewed. While I don't enjoy a horizontally narrow sounding speaker, it has information technology's upside with more detailed sound with a peak end that is not colored as much by the room. If that sounds like fun to you this speaker might be correct up your alley.

Other content you may like:

  • Vanatoo Transparent 1 Review - Software update brings new standard of performance!
  • Lone Star Audio Fest 2018 - Staying up late, drinking too much, smoking like chimneys!
  • Andrew Jones goes dorsum the be begining, ELAC B5.2 Debut two.0 Review is upward!
  • New Scores for all reviewed speakers - Compare and sort for fun!
  • Creative Audio Solutions DIY Solution for the high cease - CSS Criton 1TD v2 review is up!
  • Dayton Makes a Upkeep Desktop speaker with a crossover - Dayton Audio MK402 review is up!
  • Smaller than small, deeper than deep - iLoud Micro Monitor review is upwards!
  • Vanatoo'south new speaker, The Transparent Zero review is up!
  • SVS Prime Bookshelf Review is at present available for your viewing pleasance
  • ELAC A-Stock UB5 Listening Impressions are upwardly!
  • 30 years in the making, the ancient Bose 901 finally gets measured - The Bose 901 review is up!
  • Lock and load, we are hitting the lesser of the barrel with both barrels - The Logitech z313 review is up!
  • Bulletproof speakers... No, it's only the B&West 686 S2 Review!
  • Declare independence from the British sound! - The KEF Q300 review is upwards!
  • Recommended System Finder - Just in time for the Holidays!
  • JBL LSR308 Studio Montor - Super Massive Epic Review!
  • Two years after starting this site I finally become around to talking about my stereo.
  • Modest and inexpensive speakers transform into retarded and good... Micca COVO-S Review!
  • AMT tweeter on a B652? The Dayton B652-AIR is reviewed for great justice!
  • JBL LSR305 Studio Monitor Review!
  • Zu Essence Review!