Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Pioneer floor speaker questions. Power ratings and

Sorry about this being a little long. Thanks. About a year ago + / - I bought some Pioneer S-G 300 B-K floor speakers, but bought some stands for them at the same time. Believe it or not I was using some speakers that my dad had made back the late 60's. Yes, late 60's. Back then they were considered very high performance and even still had great clear high end even with my current system. They were old obviously, but still sounded good given the limitations of the system. The old 12" paper woofers that were used could not handle much power needless to say.

Ok it was time to at least make the whole system look better so I head off to C.City and told them basically what I would like and bought those as mentioned earlier in this post. Needless to say I didn't ask for any specs on the speakers. I should have inquired more info about them before buying, but there was some info inside. I did tell the salesman what my power output was so he had some idea. This was about a year ago and like I said just wanted something better looking that those old speakers my dad had built in the 60's.

My reciever is a Pioneer VSX-D308 with 100 watts into 4 channels. I have a matching cd deck, cassette deck, and have a Kenwood fully automatic turn table with direct program search or manual search if you prefer. It's a fully programmable turntable. Yeh, I still play vinyl ocassionally. It sits on top of the cabinet. OK, I'm getting carried away here.

Just recently became curious as to what the specs were for the Pioneer speakers. Well, I wasn't impressed. I guess at $85 a pop you don't get much obviously. The specs are: Bass-reflex, 3 way 3 speaker system. 12" woofer, 4" midrange, and 1" dome tweeters. I am dissapointed in the frequency response of 50 to 20K HZ. Sensitivity is only 90db/w at 1 m distance.

Lets talk about power handling now. I'm weary about this. The info states maximum power is 160w. Based on some car speaker specs I have here, they have 3 different power ratings printed outside the packaging. Example the info states that: Max music power 200w. Peak input power 100w. Continuous input power 50w. Specs taken from my Boston Acoustics RX97's (3-way 6 x 9 's). I obviously look at continuous power rms. But on my home Pioneer spearkers they are stated as: Maximum power 160w. So is continuous more like 80w or even lower like 40w. I couldn't imagine a 12" speaker system only having only a 40w rating. But 80w continuous I could understand. Do you agree with that?

The cabinet size is 26.3" high, 14.4" wide, and 8.4" deep. and they are ported. Having a frequency response starting at only 50Hz is nothing. I can do one of two things.....maybe. Can I swap out the woofer with better one producing a lower response. I mean my cabinet size shouldn't TOTALLY dictate response should it? So can I get a better woofer to work well in that cabinet and get a lower response. Or should I say the heck with it and just buy two subwoofers to use on the other two channels? That is probably the answer.

But how would you rate the continuous input power of the speakers I have now if max power is 160w? I don't play my system much, or even loud, but if I want to push 75-80 watts or more, I don't want to damage the Pioneers. Thanks for any help on this and sorry again this post was long. Kedoba2014

My personal opinion, you are reading way too much into the specs. Speaker power ratings are virtually useless.
Cabinets are VERY much part of the speaker and most definitely affect the sound.

In short answer to your 'below 50Hz' question, buy a subwoofer. That is what it was designed for. Some towers have incorporated larger bass drivers (and 12" IS rather large for a typical home sub let alone a tower) to use for bass frequencies, but i have yet to hear one that sounds any good.

If you want more info on wattages, power use, speaker specs, etc. do some serious searching through these forums. You will find plenty of info on all those topics.

K, welcome, but without going through the full story, as chess said those speaker specs are essentially meaningless, both as to frequency response and power handling. Just to give you one point, a speaker playing at a normally loud level is using about 1-2 watts, although on extreme peaks for a fraction of a second it could draw 50-100 watts. Don't worry.

chesseroo and JohnK: Thanks for responding. I frankly became alarmed a bit when I looked at the performance ratings. Both power rating and frequency response to ME aren't what I thought they should / could be. Ok, so I won't worry about it. Just a little disappointed. Yes, the fact is I would be doing myself a big favor by purchasing a couple subs for the other two channels to take care of the sub levels. It's amazing the difference of comparing the subs in my Buick to the woofers in my home system. But then again there is no comparison. Two different applications altogether. Thanks Kedoba2104

Ok, I think I can chime in here in a meaningful fashion.

With all due respect, I'm willing to bet that the 50hz and beyond that those pioneers were producing was pure, unadulterated, crap.

I had a similar pair of JBLs - rated with lower SPL's, but were louder, rated to 40hz, which compared to the M40's I bought... but the specs were all just fluff. The JBLs were much louder, sounded like a tin can screeching from within a bass tube compared to my very low end axioms.

I would not ever worry about powering my speaker with too much power, unless you are living in a stadium. The 1w figure banted about is pretty much accurate, but I frequently hit the 40w peak of my old amp, so I upgraded. Level meters are more than just for looks, sometimes.

Axiom and Grado are the most forthright companies I have ever dealt with. You ARE getting what you pay for. If you don't like and send it back - they are more than nice.