Pioneer Teams Up With Powersoft To Introduce Line Of Premium PA Speakers

While not a new name to the pro audio arena, Pioneer is a new name to those familiar with PA speakers. JBL and QSC have dominated the space with speakers lines for nearly every price range, but now Pioneer is throwing their hat into the high-end ring with a line of speakers developed in conjunction with Powersoft. The Italian amplification company is known as one of the best in the world, so it’s no surprise that Pioneer chose to work with them when developing the amplification for their speakers.

There’ll be three models available to start with including a 12″ full range box, a 15″ full range box, and a dual 15″ subwoofer. 12″ and 15″ are pretty standard sizes for PA speakers, but the dual 15″ subwoofer is the most interesting unit in the lineup. Generally manufacturers go with 18″ drivers which tend to hit deeper than 15″ drivers, but it looks like Pioneer is aiming to get more punch by utilizing a pair of smaller speakers as opposed to one larger one. All of the cabinets are made of wood as opposed to plastic which is easier to maintain, but lacks the depth and warmth of a good wooden enclosure. The internal Class D amplifiers will deliver a whopping 2,400 watts of peak power, so there’s plenty of headroom for even the largest parties. Oddly Pioneer went with a 1.75″ compression driver (the speaker that produces the highs and some of the mids). Other high-end PA speakers like the RCF ART 745-A use massive 4″ compression drivers for better throw and a smoother blend between the main driver and the compression driver, but I trust Pioneer knows what it’s doing. At nearly 63lbs the 15″ model is no lightweight, but I’ll take a wood cabinet over a lighter plastic one any day.

The speakers also will include built-in DSP (Digital Sound Processing) for helping to tune the sound to the room and have an array of limiters and overdrive protection features to keep you from blowing them out. As far as I know no pricing has been released yet on these, but I would expect them to be similarly priced to speakers from Turbosound, RCF, and FBT. Basically I would be surprised if these are less than $1700 a piece. As we get closer to their May 2016 release date we’ll update this post with more accurate pricing and information.

See the full announcement here.