Pioneer TS-E1702iS Supreme Co-axial Speakers

Two-way coaxial speaker with a high quality tweeter above it, pole mounted. This tweeter is a soft dome and has a chamber behind it, like high end home HiFi devices and is also cooled and damped by the presence of a metallic fluid held in the voice coil gap by the magnetic flux, that is both incompressible (unlike air) and conducts heat very well as it is Ferrofluid a ‘liquid iron’. A major development in speakers a few years back, the videos of what this ten-thousand dollars a gallon stuff does when excited electromagnetically are all over YouTube and most diverting. Here, a tiny amount in the voice coil gap of your HF device means a massive increase in both power handling and smooth linearity of sound as it removes most all of the possible power compression. This is when a voice coil doesn’t slam as hard under the force of the magnetic field it is bathed in since for a brief moment it is very hot indeed. Lack of power compression is heard as great snap and attack and definition. The cone is made of Basalt fibre and another fibre called ‘Aramid’ after spiders. I gather it makes for a wondrous cone material for the classic lightness with rigidity and that Basalt as against glass, fibre is a better cone material, too.
There are two versions of this speaker. The TS-E1702i and this one, suffixed ‘S’ TS-E1702iS. The difference is in the size and quality of the passive components used that are larger than those supplied with the huge Vibe QB69 ten-inch woofer magnet-equipped monsters and significantly more major than those used on the regular model! Also, the tweeter is a bit bigger although from the same design at 28mm versus 23mm and the frame is a pressed multi-hole custom-fitter on the I whereas this, the S has a more robust affair.
– Nominal Rating 60W (Non-S version is 35W)
– Impedance 4 Ohms
– Neodymium magnets
– Frequency Response 30Hz to 32kHz
– Metal mesh and moulded plastic grilles
– Sensitivity (1W/1m): 87.5dB (or a half dB less than the regular ones)
– Cone material: Dual Layer IMX Injection Moulded Matrix Aramid/Basalt fibre and rubber edged
– Tweeter: 28mm soft dome with rear chamber and Ferrofluid cooling and damping (23mm on non-S type)
– Passive crossover: LPF 6dB, HPF 12dB heavy duty (Simple -6dB type on non-S version)
– Mounting Depth: 54.5mm
– Complete with 8 screws and 8 panel clips two 30cm long terminated speaker wires and two cable ties
Review by Adam Rayner
I have been working with and reviewing Pioneer speakers for many years but recently learned a whole load more about their history in speakers while working for Home Cinema Choice magazine. The company started out in 1932 making cones for speaker makers and have been involved at a high level in speaker manufacture ever since. I mean, I knew Pioneer were bloody clever but until I sat in front of a set of stereo speakers that said TAD on the front and essentially made by Pioneer as their subdivision, I had no idea that they went up to £50,000 a set! They were being used to master some insane heavy metal Motorhead, from a transcription deck, via a serious set of mastering electronics, to create a definitively clean and quality-tweaked version for heavy weight new Vinyl master pressings! The tragedy was that these �50k behemoths were gorgeous and the users could not have cared had they been Grittex black!
Oddly enough, these golden eared mastering engineers were driving said very esoteric and revealing loudspeakers via individual mono Class D digital amplifiers of very high quality something that has just come to in-car in the shape of the new Alpine PDX amplifiers, one of which was used as the ‘known good’ reference amplifier to drive the watts into the speaker for this test.
Incidentally, I had to use all the outputs of the resident reference Pioneer DEH-P88RSII headunit for the first time and so had to manually switch from NW (Net Work) to STD or simple full range outputs, since this is a competition headunit and you can set some very sophisticated crossovers.
I played some tracks from the Talk Audio standard test disc of huge resolution through this delicious deck and super-crisp amplifier combo and was impressed way beyond the price of these speakers.
At first, I found them a little brash until I stood so as to be just a tad off axis a theme I have noticed more of late and found they performed best like that. (Anyone might think they had been designed for use in a car’s stock locations!) The detail these superb tweeters offer up is incredible and puts an embarrassingly large number of supposedly-better component sets to utter shame. Delicate, tinkly, detailed and rare with subtle nuances all to the fore.
The coaxial nature is being really stretched here as the fat old passive components installed upon the chassis would need a pretty decent enclosure to house them in, were they sold as compos.
And they easily could be.
The bass was stupidly good for a six as well. I mean OK, they were mounted in fabulously high quality sealed test enclosures with some nice internal wadding, but the depth and meatiness was tangible. That’s stuff that any damn brutal-fool-driver can do with a fierce magnet but what these offer is a serious slice of proper high speed response. They can do big wave fronts for their size and track the big stuff on their own bizarrely well. They do full range and melodic bass well down to low octaves.
In fact I would go so far as to suggest that with some good tuning and a posh headunit such as the one I used for this review, you could enter a sound off contest with these as sole front speakers. They really are that capable.
Utterly above their punching weight in the fidelity stakes, these will be actually a bit depressing for some makers, or aughta be.
I swear there will be manufacturers buying sets of these and using them as benchmarks-to-beat for their R&D departments as by using certain known-good technologies in things like the Ferrofluid tweeters and that they have chambers behind them, along with the exotic materials science going on in the cones, Pioneer have created an amazing result for the money.
Again, I look forward to the new software we will be using for the mag soon as you know what? As well as being permitted to award nil points out of ten for the really awful (the ‘older’ system doesn’t let you do that!) I could occasionally offer up an Eleven out of ten and call it the ‘Spinal Tap Point’ effect. This is such a product. For a ridiculously low price for what you get, you have a gateway to a world of proper, in car audiophillia and tweakery.
Plus, they handle lots and lots of power, happily using the dynamics of a proven-128w channel from the Alpine PDX-F4 amp, when it’s ‘Nominal’ rating is but 60w!
I am well impressed and happily award these speakers the coveted Talk Audio Best Buy status.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 9.0
Power Handling 10.0
Efficiency 8.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 9.2