This is a review and detailed measurements of the Pioneer Elite SP-EC73 Center speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $399 on Amazon including Prime shipping. It is the matching speaker to Pioneer SP-EBS73-LR bookshelf Atmos which I just reviewed.
This is a 3-way speaker with a coaxial mid and tweeter in the middle, a bass driver and passive radiator:
As such it is NOT the common MTM configuration which has directivity issues and causes side reflections to be dissimilar to direct ones.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
All measurements are reference to tweeter axis with the grill removed. Frequency resolution is 2.7 Hz. Over 600 measurement points were used to assure high precision in higher frequencies. I am also using averaging to lower noise in bass frequencies. Accuracy of the measurements are better than 1% during most of the frequency range but drop to about 2% in 5 to 10 kHz range.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
I am not happy about the performance around crossover frequencies as levels don't seem to be matched, especially around the mid to tweeter. We see distortion characteristics matching this as well:
Coaxial drivers are good in the way to provide similar vertical and horizontal response. This can be a good thing or bad. The latter materializes here to some extent in that what you get on-axis, you also get off-axis resulting in predicted in room response to also be choppy:
Most preferred response here is higher frequencies dropping off gradually as otherwise the speaker sounds bright. Here, the drop is quite slight so you likely will hear a brighter than preferred response. Fortunately this aspect can easily be fixed with "target curve" of an automatic or manual EQ system.
For center speakers as I noted earlier, we want unified response on and off-axis and we have that here:
Impedance for a change is above 4 ohm for a compact speaker:
Pretty Speaker Graphs
Conclusions
I am not setup to test center speakers so no subjective opinion there. Objectively, response is less smooth than I like to see. Granted, maybe this is the best you can do in a $400 center speaker. Judging by what I see on objective measurements, I can't get excited about the Pioneer SP-EC73 so can't recommend it.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Had one of the highest shipping bills (for UPS alone) of $150 last week. Appreciate a few dollars to offset that by using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
This is a 3-way speaker with a coaxial mid and tweeter in the middle, a bass driver and passive radiator:
As such it is NOT the common MTM configuration which has directivity issues and causes side reflections to be dissimilar to direct ones.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
All measurements are reference to tweeter axis with the grill removed. Frequency resolution is 2.7 Hz. Over 600 measurement points were used to assure high precision in higher frequencies. I am also using averaging to lower noise in bass frequencies. Accuracy of the measurements are better than 1% during most of the frequency range but drop to about 2% in 5 to 10 kHz range.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
I am not happy about the performance around crossover frequencies as levels don't seem to be matched, especially around the mid to tweeter. We see distortion characteristics matching this as well:
Coaxial drivers are good in the way to provide similar vertical and horizontal response. This can be a good thing or bad. The latter materializes here to some extent in that what you get on-axis, you also get off-axis resulting in predicted in room response to also be choppy:
Most preferred response here is higher frequencies dropping off gradually as otherwise the speaker sounds bright. Here, the drop is quite slight so you likely will hear a brighter than preferred response. Fortunately this aspect can easily be fixed with "target curve" of an automatic or manual EQ system.
For center speakers as I noted earlier, we want unified response on and off-axis and we have that here:
Impedance for a change is above 4 ohm for a compact speaker:
Pretty Speaker Graphs
Conclusions
I am not setup to test center speakers so no subjective opinion there. Objectively, response is less smooth than I like to see. Granted, maybe this is the best you can do in a $400 center speaker. Judging by what I see on objective measurements, I can't get excited about the Pioneer SP-EC73 so can't recommend it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Had one of the highest shipping bills (for UPS alone) of $150 last week. Appreciate a few dollars to offset that by using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
