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t E S t R E p O RTS

OCTOBER/09

Pioneer elite in-wall SpEakER SySTEm

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 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."

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.

OCTOBER/2009 | SOUNDANDVISIONMAG.cOM

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-

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

concenTRic-dRiven

fliP the switch

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.