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54 OCTOBER/2009 | SOUNDANDVISIONMAG.COM
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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
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 6½-
inch aramid fiber cone that surrounds
the 1½-inch titanium dome tweeter
— is larger than the speaker’s dual
5¼-inch woofers.
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
OCTOBER/09
TR
TEST REpORTS
Pioneer elite in-wall SpEakER SySTEm
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.
»
fliP the switch
“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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