SP-FS52 Andrew Jones Designed Floorstanding Loudspeakers, re-engineered for 2012

If you made it here you likely have been reviewing youtube videos with reviews and a lot of website reviews from people that probably wanted to like the speakers they spent hours mulling over reviews. Most folks never actually listen to the speakers they are purchasing and having shipped to them. I'll start with my basic set up and what these speakers replaced.Room-12x12 with 8 foot ceilings, converted den and not super big at all. Still I felt like a solid set of book shelf speakers were going to run anywhere from $300-$500 for a pair like ELAC and then you will likely need speaker stands which can run anywhere from $75-$250 to much much more depending how fancy you want to go. I started to think a floor speaker knowing I would not need a lot of power to fill the room still made sense and perhaps I didn't need a full 5.1/7.1 systemWhat I was replacing was a Polk Surround in a box type from about 18 years ago, they were great for my needs at the time and I just never got around to upgrading or going in a different direction. The Receiver I was using and was set on replacing I am now actually going to milk a few more years out of. It's a Panasonic from about 18 years ago, it is a 5.1 with DTS/Dolby and 100 Watts per channel but I will caution you that these numbers companies throw up are not always reliable.The speakers arrived days apart, in fact I had to call Amazon as the 2nd one never shipped, nice customer service woman actually stepped in and had it overnighted all was good. The set up is pretty easy, banana clips work or the old method of raw wire twisted to make a connection. I literally just unhooked the Polk and set up the floor speakers with the same wires, I have full plans on re-wiring but my 18 yr old receiver does not take banana clips so I have to mix/match some new 16 gauge wire.Once set up they came on rather quickly and easily, I didn't make any judgements on what I first heard as most speakers need 25-50+ hours to open up and really showcase what they can do. I did start turning up the receiver not long after connecting them to the receiver, I was impressed. No center channel connected, no subwoofer, these things sounded great. Believe me, if you are a heavy EDM type, you will be surprised how much bass in in these for a small room filling sound, but you will eventually need a Subwoofer if you crave bass but these supply plenty for regular TV watching.These speakers sound really good playing rock n roll, classic to Greta Van Fleet I found rock n roll to really shine thru on these floor speakers. I don't listen to country but I bet that also would sound good on these. 80s pop like Duran Duran has a nice vibe and bass tone on these. For classic music lovers, played some Brahams and I thought the speakers handled the symphony well with a full rich sound, but these speakers have their limits so let's talk a little about that.If you go to the Symphony and Opera often in your hometown, well it's not likely you are trying to lowball your home audio but if you love classical music, these speakers will suffice but you probably should think about upgrading to something else. These speakers are for the masses I would say not the Audiophile who is picky picky picky.Ohms and Your Current Receiver...Most new receivers pair well with speakers that are 8 ohms impedence, we don't need an Audiophile moment here but we do need to understand that if you have a receiver from 15 years ago and it works fine but you kind of feel like your speakers are lacking, these might be what you need. The Pioneers here have a 6 Ohm for the their rating and there really are not a lot of new speakers in that category. In fact these floor speakers are probably about 7-8 years old from coming into the market so they are not cutting edge technology.These speakers are going to solve many problems for you, even if you order them and decide to send them back it will give you a good starting point. If you bought a new amp in the last couple years(Denon, Onkyo, Marantz) I wouldn't waste your time with these, you likely spent a good chunk of money on the new receiver, don't go cheap on your speakers.Monitor Audio, ELAC, a few others have a lot of floor speakers that are about triple the price per speaker of these...the $500-$1,000 floor speaker market is pretty vast. You will spend under $200 for these, grab a Sony 6 ohm Center Channel for $100 on sale, Yamaha has a nice Sub around $150, you have the makings of a pretty rich sounding surround sound system that will make those small to medium size rooms feel like mini theaters.There is a set of bookshelf speakers that match these floor speakers for about $100 for the pair, those might make great rear speakers to pair with these in the front. I want to say a quick word about the build quality and size/shape. The build for $100 is just fine, these speakers are not light but they are easy to move around even after you attach the feet. They stand about 3 feet tall and could be placed on a box if desired but I like the way they sit int he corners angled where I am sitting int he middle of the couch forming a triangle of sound. In fact they slide into the corners because of the shape around the back of the speaker.My favorite listening was a simple 2.0 Stereo no Subwoofer and these speakers sounded fantastic for what I wanted. You can play with them but there is a spot for these in every house. They are a great Step-1 to build around, you cannot lose on these speakers and it's frightening how much money people blow on basic sound, if you're not going to fork out North of about $750-$1,000 for a set of speakers, just buy these. Hope this helps you end your search, cheers!

Moving in a few days so needed to set up multiple systems for new house. I've had 50 years of extensive expensive experience with really high end equipment and currently use electrostatics for my main system. The reason for these are curiosity since I've read the many reviews and I needed another set of speakers to simply put besides a TV in one of the rooms.I got my order through amazon late yesterday. I set the speakers up and connected them to my big system. Frankly, they sounded pretty awful, but imaged and sound staged very nicely. High end was very harsh and grainy, but I've been through this many times before. I knew I needed to get some miles on them before judging. So I stuff one of my favorite break in CDs in on repeat, ECM, Miroslav Vitous, Emergence, and let it go.Now, about 12 hours later, the high end has settled into mostly smooth and nicely detail. Color balance is quite neutral for a speaker this price. Imaging is even better than last night. Soundstage extends well past the edge of the speakers and in some cases wraps around me to 90 degrees left and right .... impressive trick at this price point. Bass is decent, but I may have these too far out into the room. There's no back wave to speak of so these might not need to be as far out into a room as bi-polars. I roughly use the audio rule of thirds for speaker placement to start with and then start moving around from there. These are still about five feet into the room from the front wall.These are still far from broken in, but I'm very impressed with what I hear so far given the price. They're not, needless to say, big Magicos or full range electrostats, but I wouldn't expect that. For the absurdly cheap price, (I don't even have a pair of interconnects this cheap) they are a fantastic bargain.Edit: Update 3-7-2015I think my pair of FS52 are getting pretty well broken in and I'm very pleased given that the pair are cheaper than any interconnect I've ever owned. Shocking how far speaker technology has come.High end is smoothing out, but still doesn't particularly like female vocals as it remains a bit sibilant. Better than it was so maybe more break in hours will help, but I have hunch that it won't. These are not gorgeous as my electrostats are on my reference female vocal CDs (Patricia Barber, June Tabor and a few others).What they do well is that they're exceptionally neutral and very coherent top to bottom. And speaking of bottom, these speakers will go down into the 30s with weight down there. Placement is critical though. I get them any closer than 48" to the front wall, bass becomes too heavy and loses detail, sound stage depth collapses and loses focus. I get them out beyond 58" and sound stage depth and image placement is fantastic, but I lose the bottom end. Right now, I'm playing around between 52 and 55" as that seems to be the best compromise. My best reference CD / LP for setting up the bottom end is the string bass recording, ECM Records, Miroslav Vitous, Emergence. In 55 years of collecting that remains my number one. I have 13,400 albums and although I've never counted the CDs, I imagine its around 3,000 - 4,000.I can't comment on vinyl yet as I sold my Well Tempered Signature that I had for years and have the new VPI Classic Signature with 3D arm in Rosewood on order. I'll use a Koetsu Rosewood on it and will use the Fosgate Signature tube phono stage with it. First though is the move into the new house and start the process of getting the new audio room setup.I'm far too old and need to conserve cash to put $100,000 to $200,000 in a table so $10,000 - $12,000 will have to do for now.So why I'm I reviewing a speaker that's $129 ea.? I'm more impressed with someone who can put together a musical $1,000 - $2,000 system than I am with someone who has a state of the art $500,000 to million dollar system .... and oh yeah, you can do that!!!3-23-2015Since my last comments, and with more break-in 'miles', they've further improved to the point that the sibilance I noted earlier on female vocals seems to be going away. They're amazingly uncolored and coherent, top to bottom. No way on a sub with these as it's unnecessary and a bunch of money for a sub that goes much lower. Placement is critical, but if done correctly, these are going down into the 30s.I'm impressed overall enough that I bought a second set.

The SP-FS52s are great for the money when they can be grabbed at or below $150. I actually own two pairs, one hooked up to a TV in the bedroom for primarily Netflix, another in the kitchen/dining room to the TV and HTPC. Both are also being fed from Yamaha R-S202BL receivers. The bedroom TV is driving the R-S202 through a little Fiio D3 converter. Dining room TV is driving it direct through analog out, and the HTPC through a Grace Designs SDAC.Now that the system setups are laid out:Size - Small for towers, even though Pioneer says they added 3". Easy to place.Installation - Easy. Outriggers are easy to install (as they should be) as well as low profile, and wire screws hold onto speaker wires tightly.Sound - The big one. Both systems, coupled with the R-S202, are fairly neutral sounding. Clean as well. Good for TV and non-action movies out of the box. Bass is a little recessed however, but with 5 1/4" drivers this shouldn't be surprising. I added a small sub, also from the Pioneer Andrew Jones line (the SW-8MKS) to the dining room system, which adds a tight, controlled (although not deep) low end that meshes well. Makes the speakers shine with certain genres of music. Only other downside? At 87dB, sensitive they are not. The R-S202s put out 100w/ch, (closer to 150w/ch into 6 ohm speakers but THD takes off), and even in a smaller room they aren't going to rattle the windows.Conclusion - Great for $300/pair towers. When in a 2.1 system, they punch above their weight, leaving room to upgrade other components and "still hang". In a 2.0 stereo system they can still outpace TV speakers and many bookshelf speakers, but don't expect to blast EDM/bass heavy music without a sub.