Pioneer TS-A2503i Co-axial Speakers

Three-way coaxial speaker with ten inch woofer. This set has big regular ferrite magnets and the cone is very softly suspended. They are not about big power handling but rather high efficiency. The chassis is pressed steel and has the regular speaker lug connectors, (not Gold plated) marked with a cut ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ sign in the fibre board that holds them. A central plastic pole supports a large ferrite magnetted 57mm midrange (that’d make it a 2.5 inch in old money) and an 18mm tweeter with no magnet to be found, making this a Piezo electric type. The grandly termed passive crossover ‘network’ isn’t so much a network as of course just one capacitor to give the basic -6dB roll off to the lows for the mid/tweeter assembly together. The Piezo sits on one side of an oval mounting plate with the midrange which features shiny bits and the Pioneer logo nicely mirror-imaged so you can put the speakers in also correctly mirror imaged left and right. They arrive in a large carton with plentiful instructional printing upon it as well as templates perforated in it to help installers and pretty mesh and plastic moulded grilles as well as fixings and two terminated speaker leads. 

– Nominal Rating 80W
– Impedance 4 Ohms
– Frequency Response 20Hz to 31kHz (-20dB so ‘generous’ like the 420w ‘peak’ power rating)
– Metal mesh and moulded plastic grilles
– Sensitivity (1W/1m): 92dB
– Woofer size: 268mm (10 in)
– Woofer magnet weight: 945g (33Oz)
– Cone material: Injection moulded Carbon Graphite IMPP Interlaced Aramid Fibre Cone with Foamed Rubber Coated Cloth Edge
– Tweeter size: 18mm
– Midrange size: 57mm
– Midrange magnet weight: 48g (1.7Oz)
– Passive crossover simple -6dB type
– Mounting Depth: 115mm
– Weight per speaker 3.28kg or 7lb 4Oz
– Complete with 12 screws and two 4.5m long terminated speaker wires
Review by Adam Rayner
Somehow boxes with Japanese equipment are most exciting. It’s in the details and the little bits and bobs and the whole way they make and finish products. These speakers are a simple three-way coaxial but they are built upon an heroic yet easy to afford scale, which is dead rare! And it makes for a massive box of Nipponesque sexiness!
The Piezo tweeters are not refined but a bit splashy and the woofers are NOT meant for ‘Two-tens and a fahsand watts, Mate!’ but rather to utterly rock on a headunit. I fired up the sexy resident reference Pioneer P88, which was like putting a Rolls Royce engine in a Ford but was interesting on headunit power.
The incredibly detailed presentation of the competition deck was not really what we needed, although I listened to some of the posh SQ CD as well as some daft super-bass stuff from Power Supply. Of course, with just 4×50 watts to call on, even the Pioneer legend that is the MOSFET chip amp, will hardly be parting your hair, so those huge bass notes didn’t really impress.
What did impress in a big way was just how bloody LOUD it was in my hallway with just a headunit and two coaxes. OK, they were mounted in solid boxes rather than hanging in a shelf “free-air” as the instructions show but It was still impressively potent, reaching 114dB close-up measured on the SA-3055 RTA/SPL meter from AudioControl. The raw ragged edge of splash that the few-cents-cost Piezo was spitting out was brilliantly ameliorated by the classic ferrite midband, smoothing it out a bit and the whole was well matched to the point of virtuosity. For Pioneer are bloody brilliant at this sort of thing.
Anyone could make a big assed ten and hang a sexy comp HF and a pukka mid in a steel basket over it but no-one would buy the product at £300 a pair even if they could keep the price that low. This is a set of first-but-big speakers.
These are for cutting into the cupboards in your camper van you take surfing to Newquay (actual example, I recommended an earlier incarnation of these to a bloke I met at Bug Jam who asked for a high VFM solution.) because you can buy them and still afford shorts.
I ran out of time but determined to try them on the P8100BT deck I also have to test, it’ll be a similar tale of very high quality unit but more sensible. I’ll do that next!
OK, I’ve now given those big old triple element speakers a pull though with a lesser-but-not-by-much deck. The main point is that it’s the best you get before you go all mad end as Pioneer can do for the competitor types. The amplifier is the self same 4x50w Mosfet and the result was so similar as not to be able to tell them apart. I reckon the P88’s actual signal will be the best but that’s another review.
So, in summation, a wicked set of VFM speakers from a range that’s good VFM! the Accelerate line and pretty much unique on the UK mainstream market to be a coaxial ten incher set. Oh and one tip, don’t box ’em in like I did, let â’em run free air in a shelf or else in a really big cupboard in your boat or camper.
POSTSCRIPT TEST:
As per instructions from the chaps at Pioneer, I hooked these up to a “known good” amp to see how they fare on amp power. I used the Genesis SM100 on a Diawa power supply and in this case, driven by the Pioneer DEH-P8100BT headunit recently tested.
And it was another speaker!
The high end goes from merely splashy to harsh and congested under proper wattage of drive as Piezos are a bit cheap, but oh my WORD the bass and the tight accuracy of it on a decently grippy amplifier was revelatory!
I played some Seal, with his characteristic bass guitar melody and you could hear the grunting within the guitar notes. It had authority and might and amazing efficiency. The whole thing about the boxes being too small, turned out tot be rubbish as they loved their home once they had some watts to play with, so in FINAL summation later, very good on headunit power but if you amplify them and want to party, these are literally unbeatable on the UK market and shamefacedly, I admit a new Talk Audio First.
As a result of secondary testing, I am forced to re-mark the product as an eight for power handling, rather than a five as it ate all the genuine Genesis watts it was given and didn’t cough, so is true to it’s 80w nominal rating.
Sound Quality 7.0
Build Quality 7.0
Power Handling 8.0
Efficiency 10.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 8.4