Speakers: Glossary

By their very nature, large floor-standing speakers often allow internal standing waves to produce an uneven and ‘boomy’ response in the low-mid frequencies.

Our ultra-accurate ABD (Acoustic Balance Drive) / AFAST (Acoustical Filter Assisted System Tuning) technologies eliminate the standing waves inside the enclosure by optimizing the position of the drivers on the baffle board and, if necessary, by tuning an internal resonator that comes into play at
critical frequencies.

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Sir George Martin, the legendary Beatles producer and an Academy Award-nominated composer, founded AIR Studios in 1969. AIR Studios is now a state-of-the-art recording complex with matchless facilities for film scoring, rock, pop, classical and orchestral work, video game sound design, post-production and live events. Many popular and celebrated musical talents have recorded in this unique and inspirational recording environment.

The EX Series speakers have undergone rigorous acoustic testing at AIR Studios in London, and therefore meet its strict studio replay standards.

AIR Studios sound engineers have contributed an unquestionable amount of know-how to fine-tune the EX speakers, enabling them to replicate a professional studio sound environment in your home, with ideally controlled acoustics.

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To perfectly reproduce the musical source signal without sound colouration and resonances, the cone of a driver needs to be as light, rigid and well-damped as possible. This implies that very few materials are suitable. Aramid proved to be one of the best materials for the woofer and midrange driver.

Our dedicated reinforced cone structure composed of layers of aramid and carbon provides a dynamic, powerful and linear sound reproduction of low and mid frequencies, even at very high listening levels.

Note:
EX Series speakers feature woofer aramid cones.
S-81 Series speakers feature woofer and medium aramid cones.

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Sharing the DNA of TAD world’s renowned compression driver, the diaphragms of the S-1EX, S-2EX and S-7EX tweeters are made from the lightest and most rigid metal applicable – the rare element beryllium – offering strength and damping characteristics unequalled by any other material.

Created under vacuum, using vapor deposition, these 100% pure Beryllium diaphragms ensure solid piston performance and ultra-high accuracy of sound reproduction up to 100 kHz.

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Ceramic Graphite is one of the lightest and most rigid materials available for tweeter diaphragms.

Its combination of lightweight and exceptional strength enables diaphragm resonance to be pushed far beyond the operating band of its drive units. This produces near-perfect piston behaviour, resulting in cleaner sound and greater accuracy of reproduction.

Thanks to this improvement, the Pioneer new Ceramic graphite tweeter can reproduce the very high frequencies of the new high definition audio formats.

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Concentric drivers were specially designed by Pioneer and TAD engineers to ensure that all sound — direct and reflected — arrives at the listening position with identical timbre.

The tweeter is mounted in the centre of the midrange or woofer cone, allowing the sound directivity to be precisely controlled at all frequencies.

The resulting aligned sound delivery is extremely smooth and coherent. Unlike conventional drivers, the problems with phase and off-axis frequency response have been totally eradicated.

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Only the best materials have been selected to design our first-class EX Series. That’s why our engineers opted for a high grade efficient magnesium as material for the cone of the medium driver.

The light and extremely rigid EX Series magnesium cone rejects mechanical resonances far beyond its working range, leading to a dynamic performance associated to an ultra-flat frequency response.

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Phase Control manages the time and phase response of the speakers to minimise the effect of additional sound delays usually due to the filtering process of multi-channel recordings.

By combining our AV receivers and speakers that support Phase Control, multi-channel sound is reproduced faithful to the original source.

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In traditional speakers, several drivers are aligned on a flat front baffle. Because the various frequencies from each driver must cross different distances to reach the listener, this composition inevitably leads to confusion in the overall sound.

Our EX Series solves this problem by using a curved baffle design that ensures a perfect time alignment. This means that all frequencies are focused on the listener and take the exact same time to cover the distance from the speaker set to the listener’s ear.

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Our Speaker Design Centre is established in Paris to stay up-to-date with European trends and new technologies. A cosmopolitan team of experts in Acoustics, Design and Electronics develops our speakers in collaboration with the Engineering Division in Tokyo and the Pioneer R&D facility in Los Angeles.

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The mechanical design and shape of the enclosure play an important part in reducing acoustic perturbations responsible for sound colouring.

The round shape of the cabinet has been refined to optimise the rigidity of the enclosure and to reduce the internal standing waves levels, while avoiding sound diffraction externally.

Distortion is reduced, allowing sound reproduction to reach a higher level than ever before, with exceptional clarity and focus.

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Created by Pioneer in 1975 as a separate branch for professional speakers, Technical Audio Devices (TAD) continues to establish the benchmark for cutting-edge sound reproduction that has earned the company a place in the most prestigious recording studios around the world.

Many of the world’s best-loved artists have recorded with TAD professional studio monitors, and TAD speakers continue to play a major role in the digital re-mastering of history’s most cherished recordings.

S-1EX, S-2EX and S-7EX speakers adhere to TAD’s rigorous standards and feature TAD reference-class drivers, crafted with extreme precision.

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The 25 mm diameter titanium dome tweeter includes our exclusive Harmonised Synthetic Diaphragm Optimised Method (HSDOM), which optimises and extends the high frequency response.

Thanks to this method, the shape of the diaphragm has been created by meticulous computer analysis. The resulting piston motion and vibration modes are harmonised, resulting in a more accurate and precise sound reproduction.

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Our engineers focused on the linearity of the woofers magnetic circuits to keep the force factor constant, even during extreme cone movements.

These dedicated magnetic structures improve the amplitude linearity at high power levels, allowing woofers to deliver nothing but fast, powerful and extremely dynamic bass that extends to the lowest frequencies.

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