Pioneer is one of the older companies in the audio business. They began in 1938 during WWII in Tokyo with a radio repair service and survived to form Pioneer Electronic Corp. with an IPO in 1961. Shortly after this the company introduced their first home component stereo system in 1962. Pioneer came to America and formed Pioneer Electronics to import Pioneer home stereo products in 1966. In 1972 the company realized the importance of quality audio in the car and formed a new car audio division, Pioneer of America. This clearly puts Pioneer in the forefront of the early development of hi-fi car audio, which I suppose is another way of saying that Pioneer is definitely one of the "pioneers" in the car audio industry (check out their web site at www.pioneerelectronics.com)
The subject for this month's review is the new Pioneer Premier Reference Series 2-way component system. Unlike many 2-way component systems, the elements of this system are individually packaged as opposed to everything in one box. Putting this system together consists of the TS-M7PRS 6.5-inch midbass driver, the TS-T3PRS 1.25-inch soft dome tweeter and the UD-NRPRS 2-way passive crossover network. Given the $800/pair MSRP of this system, its obvious that Pioneer is offering this system as an example of the best in car audio. Cosmetically, the Reference Series certainly looks the part and is dressed in an expensive looking champagne silver finish on most of the metal parts. If its performance is as good as its looks, we should be in for a good ride.
I began by examining the TS-M7PRS. Pioneer lists this driver as a 6-3/4-inch midrange, but its cone area (sd) is pretty much the same as any other 6.5-inch woofer I have examined. The build quality of this product is very good and in fact, the entire system is actually made in Japan. If you are not aware of it, a vast majority of loudspeakers sold in the U.S. are now manufactured in China, Singapore and India, all so-called third-world countries; so in that context, "Made in Japan" is tantamount to saying, "Made in the USA" nowadays.
Built on a new custom designed cast aluminum champagne silver painted frame (with standard four hole mounting) the TS-M7PRS uses a composite cone that consists of a moderately curvilinear woven Kevlar layer glued to a paper cone. The combination has the stiffness advantages of Kevlar and the damping qualities of paper, so it's a good combination. Properly terminating the speaker cone is always the key to success with any woofer used in a 2-way application. For a dustcap, Pioneer choose a 1.25-inch diameter aluminum type which probably accounts somewhat for the extended upper range which is 3 dB down on the top end at 9.4 kHz (without the crossover).
The surround, however, is very unconventional. What Pioneer has done is to articulate the surround so that it alternates between positive and negative rolls (3 positive rolls and 3 negative rolls in the circumference). According to Pioneer's literature, this technique is designed to provide more linear travel for the cone, which is another way of saying that the compliance is equal in both directions. Given the fact that the surround only provides about 20-30% of the total compliance of a woofer, working on spider linearity is probably more crucial. However, it does look cool and I suspect it may have a positive affect on edge termination of the cone (damping the cone edge smoothes out the frequency response). A 3.5-inch diameter flat spider provides the rest of the suspension.