Given Pioneer’s current prominence in the world of plasma displays, DVD players, and other home audio and video electronics, it may be surprising for you that it began as a speaker company. In fact, Pioneer speakers still have a significant market presence in many parts of the world.

Credit: productwiki

Designed around the award winning EX floor-standing platform, the new Elite EX Series not only redefines the entire architectural category, but also now offers an even more comprehensive solution for the most refined of audiophile tastes.

With an experience that blends seamlessly within any environment, the EX Series offers exceptional sound with all but complete invisibility.

The EX series speakers feature a 1-3/16″ ceramic graphite tweeter, 5-1/2″ magnesium midrange and are based on CST driver technology. The high frequency output and overall tonal balance is adjusted according to the room environment.

While the new EX Series bares a more recognizably Japanese brand name Pioneer rather than TAD it is very much an international loudspeaker. The basic design was supervised by the director of engineering for TAD’s Home Audio Division, Andrew Jones, who also worked on the Model-1 and subsequent TAD home designs with Brett Frank, TAD’s senior mechanical engineer for home audio, and Toru Nagatani, chief engineer for both TAD’s Home Audio and Professional Divisions. Andrew, who hails from the U.K. and is currently working at Pioneer’s California facilities where much of the EX design was finalized.

All three full-range EX Series speakers have been designed with a unique cabinet configuration that Pioneer calls Perfect Time Design. It’s most obvious in the S-1EX, but also used in the other two. This arrangement places the drivers on a slightly curved front baffle—following the arc of a virtual sphere. The intent is to have the signals from all the drivers arrive at the listener at the same time.

Pioneer also provided two S-W1EX subwoofers. Each is equipped with a 12″ driver loaded by a 12″ passive radiator, and the on-board amplifier is rated at 250W into 4 ohms (at 100Hz).

The overall key here is balance. The S-1EXs and S-7EX produce a virtually seamless front soundstage on well-produced soundtracks. They portray depth well and play loud without obvious compression. Dialog is relaxed, clean sounding, and as uncolored as the soundtrack allows. The highs are crisp and open, and if they sound a bit less sparkling than with some competitors, that characteristic contributes to their overall listenability on a wide range of material.

As far as the Music is concerned it is Dynamic, slightly rich, and capable of creating a large, well-defined, and full-bodied soundstage without strain. This is the first impressions of the S-1EXs used as a stereo pair on music with either one or two S-W1EX subwoofers. Not all that different from how the overall system sounded on 5.1-channel film sound, though of course with a less enveloping sense of space.

Final Word:

If you try S-1EX (front), S-7EX (center), and S-2EX (surrounds) with a wide variety of movie soundtracks. They are dynamic and punchy, but never  edgy. And the S-7EX center handled everything thrown at it with the same ease, including delivery of very natural-sounding dialog. The system is a definite candidate for the best film sound that anyone had yet heard in their home theater.

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