Pioneer Andrew Jones SP-FS52 Flr-Stand Loudspeaker

DaSaUT

New Head-Fier
Pros: Small footprint, contains 2 5.25" drivers for lower frequencies. 1 5.25" driver for midrange frequencies, and a 1" soft dome tweeter for crisp highs
Cons: At this price point, function is put before form in the cabinet resulting in an enclosure that isn't the best lookng.
     The MSRP on this floor standing speaker is only $129.00ea. Each cabinet encloses a 1" soft dome tweeter and 3 5.25" drivers. Two of the 5.25" driver are dedicated to lower frequencies while the other 5.25" driver is a mid-range.  I like older hi-fi equipment and my receiver/amp is a later 90's era Yamaha RX-V795a Audio/Video 5.1 DD/DTS capable unit rated at 85wx5ch @ .04THD which is an extremely clean and distortion free signal and is actually conservatively rated.  These Pioneer brand speakers are the only pieces of my system that are not 90's era.  I read some reviews of these speakers online and they got some great reviews to my surprise and I wanted another set of floor standing speakers with a similar footprint and same height as the pair of Infinity Reference 2000.5 series I already had. I purchased the Pioneers from Amazon knowing I could return them if I wasn't happy with them and they also included FREE overnight delivery for me which really blew me away since the cost of the shipping had to be outrageous for TWO large and heavy boxes! I purchased on blind faith of the reviews I read during my research of these speakers.
 
     When I opened the boxes and removed the speakers, I was pleased at the quality construction and feel of both the cabinets and the drivers.The fabric grills/covers are removable and I run them without the covers to I can see all speaker drivers on each cabinet while listening to music or watching a movie. Thanks to a high quality crossover and woofers with extended inverted vented pile pieces and extra large magnets, the bass achieved from such small diameter drivers is quite impressive. The bass these produce is much more than the single 6.5" mid-range/bass driver of the Infinity 2000.5's. As we all know, the amount of bass a set of speakers can produce doesn't gauge the quality of sound reproduction and imaging. These Pioneers do a great job of all things, especially with the help of a separate 8" Onkyo sub-woofer to take the pressure of such small drivers to reproduce such low frequencies. It's almost unbelievable such a decent sounding and room filling set of speakers can be had at such a low price! I'd say these speakers would have no problem blending in with other brand speaker in the $400-$500/pr class.
 
     For home theater, I think these would make superb little towers to use for each channel other than center and sub. They are quite efficient and also have a 6ohm resistance rating to pull a bit more wattage out of your amp. I don't know, however, how these sound on newer receivers/amps that typically are rated much differently at much higher distortion levels. It seems current receiver/amps weigh half as much and are rated at 2x the wattage, but also at 10's of times higher of distortion! I can say these sound great on older high-end conservatively rated receivers.
 
     I'm currently running these pioneers as my rear surrounds with the Infinities up front with the Onkyo 8" powered subwoofer. I've crafted a center channel out of two Mirage M-90i speakers and use a slim case Gateway PC with a 2gb Invidia graphics card as well as a sound card with optical digital output that allows my Yamaha RX-V795a to decode DD/DTS as well as decode CD's and high bitrate MP3s from the PC. My other input source is a Technics SL-BD27U turn table for vinyl. All the pieces in my collection except for these pioneers were bought 2nd hand (the turn table was in it's original box and never used before though!) I think it's amazing the quality of sound/video system one can piece together at low cost if you know what to look for. There's a lot of equipment out there that's much higher quality than what is manufactured today that can be found at very low used prices. Using a HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer) to send an optical digital audio source to the receiver/amp and an HDMI HD video signal to a LED TV provides a home theater experience one could only dream as possible at such a low price point compared to 15 years ago.
 
     One thing I will stress, no matter how far technology has progressed to enhance our audio and video pleasure, vinyl is still superior to any other form of recorded media. I know I went into many tangent subjects in this review, but there wasn't much to say about the Pioneer speakers other than they are an excellent value and IMO nothing at their price point compares and they make the ultimate rear surrounds for a Dolby Digital 5.1 or Digital Theater Systems 5.1 home theater set-up!
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