Brilliant sound from a distinctive newcomer.
And the critics agree:
OPERA NEWS (Hans Fantel)
"The cadre of relatively low priced high-performance speakers has recently been augmented by a distinctive newcomer: Pioneer's R300, whose tonal characteristics have been tailored to the results of extensive preference testing with large groups of listeners.
The R300 has a quality of `presence' and immediacy which made Salome's murderous ecstasies positively scary when I listened, and the massive sonorities of the Strauss score didn't faze this speaker a bit."
STEREO & HI-FI TIMES (Larry Zide)
" ... This (R500) speaker will please many with its big, bright sound .. The middle ranges ... are most prominent, but there is more than enough good bass, too ... The high end response is excellent; midrange and tweeter contribute to a smooth, wide range sound that goes well beyond audibility ... It's time that we began to demand appearance along with performance.
This, Pioneer is certainly giving us with this model, and they are to be commended for the effort ... The R500 is a quality speaker and deserves your attention."
MODERN HI-FI & STEREO GUIDE (Robert Angus)
"There are some important differences between the R series ... and most other bookshelf speaker systems on the market ... The R500 is designed to make electronic rock music sound more dramatic ... There's no doubt that with either folk or rock music, these speakers really produce brilliant sound ... bass is remarkably clean and full under any circumstances ... Sound is clean and undistorted up to 18,000 Hz ... at the low end, clean frequency response is measurable down to 22 Hz."
Too often these days superlatives are used to camouflage mediocrity. Let's just say you'll be excited with the magnitude of the achievement of the new Pioneer series R speaker systems, once you hear them. They represent the culmination of our more than six years of intensive research in every phase of speaker design on just this series alone.
We investigated, tested and evaluated every known area: frequency response, dispersion, distortion, transients, drivers, configurations, cabinetry rejecting, accepting, improving until we were completely satisfied that we had the perfect combination. The sound most people would prefer when compared with the conventional speakers now available.
The story behind the grille
To achieve this exceptional sound reproduction, Pioneer has endowed the new series R with a host of meaningful refinements that have become the hallmark for our extensive collection of high fidelity components.
Flush mounting. Unlike other speaker systems on the market today, the R series' drivers are flush mounted to the face of the enclosure, rather than recessed. Combined with the advanced design of the individual speaker units, there is added vitality to the mid tones and wider dispersion.
--------Conventional recessed speaker mountings. New up-front flush mounting
of Pioneer series R.
Exclusive FB cones assure robust bass, clear mid and high tones, improve damping, while keeping distortion at an absolute minimum. High input signals are handled with complete ease.
Unique concave center pole design and pure copper cap/ring
combination. The
concave center pole of the drivers' magnetic structure is covered with a pure
copper cap. Not only does this reduce the inductance of the voice coil, it
also decreases the voice coil's intermodulation distortion generated by the
magnetic field. The result: vastly improved bass and midrange transient responses.
Another example of Pioneer's meticulous engineering detail.
Improved design horn tweeters of die-cut aluminum have completely replaced the more conventional (and less costly) cone and dome-type tweeters in the entire series. You can hear the difference with wider dispersion, and you gain all the advantages of horn drivers, such as high transient response and lowest distortion.
Crossovers are precisely designed in each model. In contrast to other speakers that rely on the capacitance method only, Pioneer has combined both inductances and capacitances for minimum inter modulation distortion. And you'll never hear bass tones wandering to the tweeters, or highs intruding on the woofers. You couldn't ask for better linear response.
The acoustically padded enclosures are sturdily built and faced with handsome two-piece, two-color, removable grilles. The staining process of the hand selected walnut requires ten steps alone, and utilizes an exclusive oil created by Pioneer. Each unit is produced as if it was the only one.
Sound-absorbing foam polyurethane surrounds the woofers of the R700 and R500 to reduce distortion even further. The three R series models each employ long-throw voice coils providing greater cone movement for higher excursions.
There are many technical reasons why you should buy a pair of the new Pioneer series R speakers systems. But, in the final analysis, when you compare them with comparably priced speakers at your Pioneer dealer, their absolute superiority in sound reproduction is why you will buy them.
U.S. Pioneer Electronics Corp., 178 Commerce Rd., Carlstadt, New
Jersey 07072
PIONEER® --- when you want something better.
West: 13300 S. Estrella, Los Angeles 90248
East: 1500 Greenleaf, Elk Grove Village, Ill. 60007
Canada: S. H. Parker Co., Ontario
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Also see:
Pioneer--The HPM series (loudspeakers) (ad, Nov. 1976)
Pioneer HPM speaker systems (ad, Aug. 1979)
Pioneer Elite TZ Series reference loudspeakers (Apr. 1989)
Epicure (EPI) loudspeaker systems (Oct. 1977)
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