Pioneer TS-WX77A

An active subwoofer that is intended to be as easy to integrate as possible. It has a very shallow profile and is intended to go behind truck seats, up behind estate car seat backs or simply to strap down in the boot. It has an especially tough coating so that you may put luggage on top of what is a proper wooden bass enclosure and thus not lose significant boot cubic capacity. In fact it looks like a skinny but tough-nut sort of a shallow suitcase itself. You can connect by either RCA inputs from say the link output of a Pioneer amplifier, or else simply piggy back a speaker wire into the inputs and go in on speaker level. The device has two 16cm drivers hidden within that are actually designed for serious use. They are each provided with a true 50w RMS from a MOSFET amplification circuit (more balls, basically) and they have extra strong magnets made with Strontium in them so as to offer a higher magnetic ‘shove’. Also, the speakers have dual layer voice coils for coping with heavy prolonged drive without burning out. The speaker drivers’ output is squeezed through an opening into a tapered horn affair which takes the sound and gives it some degree of acoustic gain. It reminds me of transmission line horns as the sound’s path length to the outside world is so long. It this sort of loading that Bose use to make tiny speakers give an impression of real bass in their smaller speaker products like the Wave radio’s. The whole item feels solid and weighty with a distinct mass at the end the amplifier and drivers live in. really rather good looking this nevertheless seems to be about toughness rather than bling. That said, the end port hole where the bass comes out is distinctly curvy and gas-flowed and quite lovely to behold.
– Frequency response: 25Hz to 200Hz, in car response to 102dB SPL (SUV type)
– Built in MOSFET 2 x 50w power amplifier
– RCA and speaker level inputs
– Two 16cm IMPP composite cone woofers (injection moulded Polypropylene)
– Rare Earth Strontium magnets for more powerful sound
– Heat resistant two layer voice coils to woofer cones
– Back loaded 16 litre MDF horn enclosure, bandpass/transmission line similarities
– Built in lowpass crossover, variable between 50Hz to 125Hz @ 12dB per Octave
– Die cast aluminium heat sink to amplifier
– Anti-slip, anti-scratch tough polyurethane coating to enable luggage to be put on top
– Wired remote with six metre non-gripping cable to control gain, crossover frequency and phase of output
– Dimensions(WxHxD): 890 x 52 x 350mm
– Mass 11.2kg (24lbs)
– Complete with straps, anchor points and fixings, main Molex-plugged loom and fat mains wire and RCA-to-speaker adapter wire.
Review by Adam Rayner
In another lovely Talk Audio exclusive, we are the very first to get a go on this device. It has no real antecedents as despite there being plenty of big active woofers and quite a collection of tiny under seat woofers with their own amps onboard out there, this does seem to address an old idea in a new-ish sort of a way. The idea is that even a skinny space can be used to make some genuine lows. It isn’t going to rock your pants but what it does do is quite remarkable.
Whereas a normal under seat woofer gives you just the beginning of a bit of bass, enough to be able to feel that your sounds have some weight behind them, what this does is a great example of why subwoofers are also great for home HiFi systems. When the bass is reinforced, the rest of the speakers’ sound becomes tighter and more defined. You drive them less hard as the bass is coming from the woofer and whole result – not just the bass – is enhanced, tightened and made an order or magnitude more enjoyable. You might know that Pioneer are makers of some of the most powerful headunit chip amps in existence and even all these years later no company has been able to emulate the MOSFET headunit amplifier that you can actually hook real woofers up to using the rear channels bridged.
This is another product that can show what can be done with mere headunit power and turns the system from one that would be obviously just what was in the dash if you were sat next to the thing in traffic with all windows open, to wondering just what system the bloke had on board after all, as you will hear and feel their bass. And just by using headunit power plus the 2×50 watter in this unit.
It isn’t breath taking but it does cross the line from no bass really to obviously meaty and as such will offer an instant upgrade to all those thousands of folks who don’t want to mess with their car’s ironmongery by permanently installing an amplifier and bass box in their car but who still feel their stock system of plain 50w MOSFET (or worse an OEM) headunit just can’t quite cut it. It takes you from the zone of the deprived to a full-on system in one easy move. I heard TS-WX77A in the Pioneer marketing man’s ride and it was remarkable. Full and able to really drop and hold some weight! So much so that I had to point out that bassy demonstrations were really not something that I like to do on my doorstep as the neighbours would get rather a lot of it – so it wasn’t piffle!
Whereas so many of this sort of small item has been a bit of an afterthought before, this is from a range of unique looking active subwoofers that Pioneer do to fit in the strange places in some vehicles. They’ve always had some odd and cunning ones – I saw a mad looking thing in Tokyo once that we never even saw in the UK. But now with the TS-WX77A I really think we have a properly important product that could be the making of an awful lot of cars’ acoustic lives.
Well impressed!
Sound Quality 7.0
Build Quality 8.0
Power Handling 6.0
Efficiency 9.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 7.8