Pioneer's Speaker Genius Hits Low Price Point - Page 8

Good choice as you'll get a better demo in your home anyway. At my store they had them right next to the Klipsch and Polk speakers so you could compare them. Not the optimum place to test but it was pretty quiet at the time and I played the towers and bookshelf speakers for about 20-30 mins.

I could tell I liked them better than the bright Klispch and Polks.

As long as they sound as good or better than what I'm currently using (Polk Monitor 40) then I will keep them.

They wont be as bright sounding as the Polks nor will they be as sensitive. The polks will sound louder so you'll have to adjust the volume up when you play the Pioneers.

my polk m60's don't seem bright to me at all

I guess its all relative. And we all have different listening preferences.

You are better off doing it that way anyway. I went to my local BB and they did have the towers and the bookshelfs, but the set up was a joke. They seemed to do a half a$$ed job of setting up, so everything was hard to demo. They had two different makes of subs connected with the Pioneer sub, so it was difficult to hear just the Pioneer sub. It was a mess and very loud in the store. I am thinking of buying the towers to demo in my room since that would be the ideal thing.
The speakers look a little plain, but they are solid and seemed very well made.

My Polks don't sound bright either. And I agree the Pioneers aren't the best looking speaker but if they sound great that could make up for the looks.

My HK has a lot of power so I'm not worried about having to crank it up higher to get the output I'm used to.

I listen to mostly techno, so I'll stick with the brand I have when buying towers, these speakers sound pretty good I might add and for the price and WAY above they are an EPIC win.

Went to a different BB today to demo these out again and the sales guy could not get them to work in the aisle they were in. Sales guy was actually cool and grabed both towers and moved them to the magnolia speaker room and played them there.

He let me listen to them for as long as I wanted. I got a good feel for the speakers in there. Switched back and forth between other speakers to compare. Its true the Pioneers are not as bright as other speakers but they sound good. The build quality is excellent too.

BB should really make an effort to set these up better if they want to sell them. I wouldn't think a sales person would actually moved them to the magnolia room for demo but he did so if anyone out there is thinking of really listening to them, then you should ask to have them moved to magnolia.

Looks like Pioneer will need help from, word of mouth - to help
promote their speakers.

I've been intrigued by new Pioneer line of "budget friendly" speakers since I got an email from them in early October. I'm a fan of Pioneer's electronics as I own their VSX 1018AH receiver and BDP 51FP blu ray player that's been working flawlessly since day one. Doing the math, if you already have a blu-ray player, you can get a decent 5.0 system for under $400. Add a *better* sub (~$200) and a capable receiver (~$200-$250)...near $1K HITB systems *cough Onkyo cough* have some serious competition. You can't beat larger, dedicated drivers and associated better designed crossovers, housed in a larger cabinet, thats won't take up as much space as a full system. It offers flexability in chosing a better receiver and subwoofer vs what's given in a HTIB. In a small to medium sized room, it should offer allot of bang for the buck performance. I'm tempted to try these speakers for a dedicated 5.0 computer gaming set-up. I may just buy a pair of SP-FS51 (floorstanders) to compare agaisnt my Ascend Acoustics 340se fronts. Woe will be that day I'm in BB looking at these speakers.

This is a great development to have Andrew Jones come in here and speak to us about his great budget creation,looks like i just found my budget setup for my home theater and casual listening,im sold if he's proud of them,then their is no reason why we cant,this is great.Much respect for a big company and a 1 of the best designers on the planet to acknowlege what the rock gut budget audio world needed with the state of the economy,BRAVO!

I can totally see these short towers with their round grills displayed at ikea! I'm really enjoying the sound, even though they're set up temporarily in a second bedroom.

Glad to hear it - keep us posted.

Check the pioneer web site they now have a series 3 speaker with better drivers and same curved cabinet http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PU...eater+Speakers

They should sound better - however, with the smaller cabinet,
I am concerned about bass extension. The 21's have a nice and
tight sounding bass. I would think that there would be more
resolution in the 31's midrange and treble.

Hmmm...no Andrew Jones signature on the product sheet, and over triple the cost of their 21 series counterparts. Could the two 4" woofers in the $749 series 31 towers sound that much better than the three 5.24" woofers in the $199 series 21 towers?

Didn't they say that the 21-series was designed using the preexisting 31-series cabinet shape, and not vice versa?

Looks like Pioneer isn't the only mfg trying to better things in the speaker world...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post19333864

I checked these out today at a local BB... they don't have the "magnolia rooms" at this one so I had to listen to them in the out in a wide open area. They sounded pretty good once I managed to get the receiver to play their demo CD instead of the radio as they had it set.
Switching to the Polks next to them - the volume was definitely louder (as mentioned by others above) and the sound was more spacious with the Polks. I realized later that this was because I think the Polks had a center channel hooked up while the Pioneers didn't.

I would love to try these out in my own house - but sadly will have to wait until Christmas before that becomes an option.

Question: Would making a small MDF riser to place the floor standing speakers on to get the tweaters closer to "ear level" be advised? and if so - would placing the speaker directly on top of the box affect the acoustics by sound transmission from the speakerbox? As in - should it be "decoupled" in some way?

Do it based on your seating position; the towers have a base like feature
on the bottom - however, I would still decouple it.

I have a smallish living room (around 12x18) and am currently using my PC speakers for my HT (Logitech z-5500). I have some home-built speakers (not built by me) hooked up in the front for better sounding music, but am ready for an upgrade.

Can anyone suggest a good receiver to pair with the SP-FS51? I also don't have room for floorstanding rears-- would it be OK to pair the SP-C21 for center and rears? I use my current system equally for music, games, and movies/TV-- the Logitechs work great for games and movies, but not so well for music. Ideally I'd get an amp that can handle at least 4 HDMI ins.

I'm willing to go higher end on a system, but would rather not and from the sounds of these reviews, I shouldn't have to.

Also, anyone know if Pioneer products are typically excluded from BBuy's 10% off coupons they offer frequently? If these are going to stick at this price point for a while, it might be worth waiting until one of those come along.

Thanks in advance!

You can definitely use the 10% off coupon on the Pioneer speakers. They just had a coupon a week or two ago.

Not quite understanding that you dont have room for the Pioneer towers as surrounds. If you plan to put the CS21 back there will you put them on stands? If so, that will take up the same amount of space as the FS51.

But honestly I would just get the BS21 for surrounds as not much info goes to the surrounds. At $90/pr that's pretty cheap.

I currently have my satellites standing on shelves behind the couch. Works great. I assume I can do the same with these.

Thanks for your help.

Any word on if the S-31B-LR-K are worth the extra cost over the SP-BS41-LR or even the SP-BS21-LR? Are the S-31B-LR-K still a good buy at that lines higher price?

All I know is that, the reviews on Amazon are good.

FWIW to anyone considering a buy from the Pioneer website: I placed an order for the towers, BS41's, and their sub late on 10-9-10 and the entire order arrived to my rural location at 6:30 pm yesterday, 10-15-10.
A six day order-to-receive time is excellent up here, especially so considering the physical size of the multi carton shipment.

I'm in the middle of a revamp in the living room that will include these and so can't offer much of an impression of their sound. Even so I couldn't resist taking the BS-41's downstairs and wiring them to the old Pioneer SX-950 receiver that I use as a studio radio.

Those two speakers sounded very good to me with the caveat that I felt that their low frequency response may have been contained by their crossover for use with an accompanying subwoofer or that the woofers were simply too small to offer a resounding experience. This is not to say that I think these speakers are inadequate in any way. For me a 5.1 system is just that - a whole system in which the most important characteristic of each speaker is that it play well with the others. The balance of the system is the important consideration and that is yet to be heard here.

To be fair, the speaker system I use down there are a pair of old Wharfdale W90D's that incorporate both a 12" woofer and a matched 12" passive emmiter to use the back sound of the driven woofer in resonance and create a base sound which is close to that heard in the Mormon tabernacle when their organ is at work. In other words, hardly a fair comparison to make.

Still, as standalone bookshelfs in a 2 channel stereo they sound very very nice, and when driven up to levels that may not be within their intended usage range I never heard any sort of loss of control - the irritating and raspy tweeter rattling and/or bass thrumming as often comes from crummy speakers driven too hard. Not only that I had wired them so quickly that I didn't know whether they were in phase or not.

With these BS-41's the highs were neither muffled nor harsh. When my favorite blues/jazz radio station finally played a set using a guitar and mandolin ensemble I have to say that I was actually delighted to hear such easy transitioning of their clear and precise sound coming from these very reasonably priced speakers and think now that once all installed and "Audysseyized" this set will be, for us anyway, a near perfect home theatre sound, all for just over $100. more than the price of a Klipsch HD-500 kit.

By now it should be unnecessary to add that I like 'em!

I live in a condo so i don't need too much bass. I'm shopping for a new system for my living room (wood floors high ceilings). I'm considering the following setup:

* Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($150)
* Pioneer VSX-520-K receiver ($200)
* and Sanus stands ($50)
----------------------------
$400 (2 speakers + receiver)

OR

Onkyo HTX-22HDX
-----------------
(2.1) = $290

Which one do you think will work better for my situation? I dont want the best just pretty good and something i will be happy with. I can always buy more speakers for either system later down the road but at the moment i want less wires, a very clean simple setup.

Thanks for your help!!!

The BS41 are $200...

Why not get the FS51 towers instead? With a best buy 10% off coupon, it'll run $190 after tax... and give some added bass (since you're not getting a sub)... instead of $250 for bookshelves + stands.

J&R has them for 100$. It was 150$, guess they lowered price again. I think the towers look slightly bulky especially in my situation because my tv/sofa situation is on a slant so those speakers would aim slightly at the tv stand, but speaker stand + speakers would allow the speakers to aim at me and not bounce off any furniture...