[MMasseria]

Hey all, my name is Mike and I am new to the forums and to home audio; I have some experience in the car audio world.

I just got a pair of the spbs22's and am going to place them on a laminated particle board desk at ear level. The surface is fairly hard and slippery which is causing some vibrations and resonance. Would you guys recommend coupling them to the desk using either rubber pads, spikes, or blu-tac? Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
-Mike

[zieglj01]

I just got a pair of the spbs22's and am going to place them on a laminated particle board desk at ear level. The surface is fairly hard and slippery which is causing some vibrations and resonance. Would you guys recommend coupling them to the desk using either rubber pads, spikes, or blu-tac? Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Thank you. Mike

Rubber bumper feet, or Blu-tac will be fine.

[Letitroll98]

I wouldn't think the Pioneers are tapped for spikes (or are they?) so +1 on the above post.

[roscoeiii]

Hey all, my name is Mike and I am new to the forums and to home audio; I have some experience in the car audio world.

I just got a pair of the spbs22's and am going to place them on a laminated particle board desk at ear level. The surface is fairly hard and slippery which is causing some vibrations and resonance. Would you guys recommend coupling them to the desk using either rubber pads, spikes, or blu-tac? Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
-Mike

Hi Mike,

Welcome to AC! A great community of folks here who are very knowledgeable and helpful.

As for your question, you might also want to look into something like the foam speaker stands made by Auralex. Their SubDude is also great for subwoofers.

[MMasseria]

Thank you all for the recommendations. Also, have any of you added extra polyfill or even dynamat to the inner walls?

-Mike

[jkelly]

In my rectangular room, Cardas dimensions worked better than 1/3rds.

Jeff

[avahifi]

If you are thinking about getting the Pioneer 22 speakers, by all means get the upgraded versions by Dennis Murphy.  His are $150 a pair and include new tweeters and much improved crossovers.  His work turns these from surprisingly good but flawed little speakers (rough and hot high end) into astonishingly good and $1000 a pair class little monitors.

Dennis's work is day and night more important than your choice of speaker wires, spikes, speaker terminals, internal cabinet damping or any other mostly marginal audiophile tweaks you could do to them.  Dennis's work is simply great acoustical engineering and design work, not foo foo dust.

The only drawback to these speakers is that they are not very efficient so not a good match for 10W class D switching amps, although I don't know what is.

You can find them at Philharmonicaudio.com.  Scroll down on the home page.

Frank Van Alstine

[charmerci]

If you are thinking about getting the Pioneer 22 speakers, by all means get the upgraded versions by Dennis Murphy.  His are $150 a pair and include new tweeters and much improved crossovers.  His work turns these from surprisingly good but flawed little speakers (rough and hot high end) into astonishingly good and $1000 a pair class little monitors.

Dennis's work is day and night more important than your choice of speaker wires, spikes, speaker terminals, internal cabinet damping or any other mostly marginal audiophile tweaks you could do to them.  Dennis's work is simply great acoustical engineering and design work, not foo foo dust.

The only drawback to these speakers is that they are not very efficient so not a good match for 10W class D switching amps, although I don't know what is.

You can find them at Philharmonicaudio.com.  Scroll down on the home page.

Frank Van Alstine

Dennis says that he won't be able to get any pairs out until PE gets more of the tweeters in. So (I'd imagine) that most people won't be able to get any pairs until Feb. at least.

[zieglj01]

You can find them at Philharmonicaudio.com.  Scroll down on the home page

This is the up-dated link
http://philharmonicaudio.com/folio-me/html/Phil%20Pages/AALS.html

[dB Cooper]

Dennis's work is day and night more important than your choice of speaker wires, spikes, speaker terminals, internal cabinet damping or any other mostly marginal audiophile tweaks you could do to them.  Dennis's work is simply great acoustical engineering and design work, not foo foo dust.

Sounds like you are saying cabinet damping (with plast-i-clay for example, which I have used many times, always with great results) isn't worthwhile? I don't doubt that Dennis' mods are a bigger change yet, but....

[hearing specialist]

I will be purchasing 2 sets of Dennis Murphy modified books and modified center and can't wait to buy them. Current projection is 2/1 per his site. I will say this about the standard versions, feeding them solid ICE class D juice from my SC-25 greatly transformed them completely vs. feeding them still quality ampage from my Aventage A830. Huge difference in resolution and all inclusive there. Seems some of those tweeter issues were masked and really changed them. Thought i'd share. Mr. Jones, mucho Starbucks for you sir on me!!!

Brian in Fresno...

[amprocks]

I was just looking at the design of the crossover. It pretty much resembles previous generation design, just altered nominals.

if you look at this from classic 2nd order crossover prospective - it does not make much of the sense, some parts are missing 

[amprocks]

I am attaching the diagram for illustration from SP-BS21-LR thread on parts-express forum
I have attached modified diagram with known SP-BS-22-LR nominals. Inductors nominals are unknown, so I left figures from BS21 unmodified.


Based on this diagram, proposed addition of the series 4uf cap in tweeter + circuit will make it a 3rd order crossover. the issue is the phases are mismatching now. Also 3rd order will make potential dip even more prominent as it attenuates even more aggressively. 2nd order x-over has 180 phase shift (reversed polarity) and 3rd order has 270 (-90). In order for this mod to work without any side effects an extra series inductor L3 (~0.42mH, based on BS21 nominals) should be added to woofer + circuit to convert it to 3rd order as well. Anyway, later results would suggest no modification to crossover is needed at all.

Just dropping in new vifa tweeter should be good enough upgrade. It may make it a bit brighter (as vifa is 4 ohm). It is not like this speaker could not use a little more highs, besides I like it that way when listening to speakers.  Right now I could achieve desirable effect by bumping 8kHz +6dB and 16kHz +5dB. It is more than these speaker needs, but I just like it this way. My expectation after Vifa upgrade - could reduce these bumps and highs will get a bit clearer. But it is pretty acceptable right now.

What is good though, modded Lepai LP-2020A seems to be doing great job when paired with these speakers.

As expected, speakers became more of a S_peakers, not a SH_pikers after Vifa tweeter upgrade.  The sound reproduction of Vifa is far better and natural. Original tweeter could get loud, but it sounds very unpleasant, shimmering, compressed and artificial (this is observation when comparing L channel with Vifa vs R with original). Also the tweeter output level did not increase. Later it was confirmed by frequency response test to verify that crossover frequency shift (due to lower tweeter impedance) did not cause any side effect. Luckily, changes had absolutely no impact in the transition range. I was able to drop -4 dB on equalizer: 8kHz +2dB and 16kHz +1dB. BTW, I always listen to my headphones flat, no tone adjustment.

Just drop Vifa BC25TG15-04 (PE Part # 264-1040) or Vifa BC25SG15-04 (PE Part # 264-1026)  and this is it, nothing else is required - you are all set now.

[jk@home]

Just drop Vifa BC25TG15-04 (PE Part # 264-1040) or Vifa BC25SG15-04 (PE Part # 264-1026)  and this is it, nothing else is required - you are all set now.

Sounds like a very cheap and cheerful (and easy) mod. May try this myself, as I've picked up a pair of the BS22s to play with.

Has anyone here tried any of the Class D Audio amps on these speakers?

[milpai]

I use one in my secondary setup with these awesome speakers:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vscnd&1367787674

[dlparker]

I use one in my secondary setup with these awesome speakers:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vscnd&1367787674

--- never mind ---

I actually followed some links and looked it up. Looks good.

Now to get out of here quick before I fall any farther down the rabbit hole..

[jk@home]

FYI, if anyone is doing the tweeter swap, I found that an old Xcelite 99-67 Bristol Multiple Spline Blade I had from one of those Xcelite tool suitcase sets I bought years ago, fit the tweeter screws. 



It looks like the gasket on the original tweeter won't come off easily without damage. What is recommended to put on the back of the new Vifa, as a gasket? Rope caulk?

[MichaelHiFi]

Too much talk regarding these speakers. So I bought them at Fry's Electronics for $89 open box and matching Amazon ad.

Some might find this interesting. I set the SB22's next to a pair of studio monitors, the $15K ATC SCM20's. The ATC's are amazing speakers with their built-in class a biased amplifiers and house made drivers. They measured better than any speaker I've had in my room. In come the $89 Pioneers.

Here's the room response no sub attached. The Pioneers are on their own 


That's about a 12db variation at ~10KHz. As expected, bass drops off at 65Hz. For the most part, these would play well and did in my room all by themselves. Wife gave it a thumbs up.

Here's a pic with the subs attached (Atoms)


Scratching my head as to why I have a suckout at 7KHz after the subs are employed. But you see the response is all over the place. Just like it is in all your rooms. 

Now here's the cheating part. I ran a calibration from Anti Mode and got this.


What you see here is the correction placed between 0 to 500Hz. There's a suckout at 40Hz and anti mode is smart enough to leave that alone.

I know this is cheap and cheerful Thread but I though it might be of interest to someone.
So the Pioneers are being fed amplification from a BMC S1. Not fair but I got to say, $90 bucks is the best money I ever spent on speakers.

So what's wrong with these? The buzzing we hear at a certain frequency I haven't yet identified. Sounds like it coming from the tweeter and more so on the left side. Placement was important but I did manage to get a decent amount of depth and a good central image. The tweeters are a little rough sounding and don't really reach for the stars. The overall image is quite good. Tonality is great. Joan Osborne guttural vocals came through and we got decent separation of instruments although lacking in air. Hey, I could be talking about speakers costing 50 times more! The cables attached to these speakers cost more than 20 times the speakers! Am I crazy or what?

Here's what it looks like now. The ATC's just sold. The subs are going too. Now I'm down to just the Pioneers     

[OzarkTom]

A good notch above the Pioneers without breaking the bank is the KEF LS50's. My buddy Rex now has both and he is astounded on how good the KEF's are.

[srb]

A good notch above the Pioneers without breaking the bank is the KEF LS50's.

KEF LS50 at $1,500 certainly break the bank of the Cheap and Cheerful HiFi circle.