audioXpress September 2021 Takes Speaker Building to the Next Level

audioXpress September 2021 celebrates its Speaker Builder magazine origins, once again offering an expanded focus on loudspeaker building, design, and testing. Mike Klasco provides an update on Speaker Technology, Claus Futtrup and Jeff Candy discuss Parameter Estimation and Box Simulation with Speakerbench, and Geoff Hill tells us the Tetrahedral Test Chamber Story. In this edition we pay tribute to Roger Russell (1935-2021) and we feature two great DIY projects. Now available online and in print.

In September 2020, British brand KEF updated its extremely popular LS50 speaker design and introduced the LS50 Meta, an improved version of the original LS50 passive design, now featuring a new Uni-Q driver that is coupled to an interesting new metamaterial absorber in the back. audioXpress requested a pair of the loudspeakers for review. Oliver Masciarotte did the listening, and Kent Peterson confirmed their impressions with extensive measurements. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2021.

audioXpress June 2021 offers the most complete overview of the fascinating world of automotive audio. This series of articles discusses all the key technologies, platforms, and innovations that should be on every developer's radar, with perspectives from Meridian Audio, Roger Shively (JJR Acoustics), and Krunal Maniar. This edition also includes a detailed review of the KEF LS50 Meta loudspeaker and many more great audio electronics and practical projects.

We looked at the most-read articles of 2020 in audioXpress.com (which also includes selected articles from Voice Coil magazine), and we created this Top 10 list of news stories and online articles. 2020 was another record-breaking year for audioXpress.com, with visitors from all over the world returning often to read the more than 6,600 stories available. Which of the topics and stories published online in 2020 were the most popular? Here are the results!

Forced to shelter at home, Oliver Masciarotte looked around his home base in the Twin Cities, and decided it was time to have a serious look at the Magnepan LRS (Little Ribbon Speaker) the company's latest affordable, full-range quasi-ribbon speaker. For this review, Masciarotte writes about what he heard, while Kent Peterson (Warkwyn) measures its performance in the lab. If you are curious to see how does a ribbon speaker measures on a Klippel Near-Field Scanning (NFS) system you definitely want to check out this article, originally published in audioXpress, September 2020.

The Sennheiser AMBEO soundbar is a sophisticated multi-speaker integrated home cinema sound system, created in collaboration with Fraunhofer IIS to be one of the world’s best soundbars. It is a single all-in-one device that is able to generate a convincing immersive soundfield from home entertainment sources that are able to render object-based audio formats such as Dolby Atmos or MPEG-H, from movies, games, music, or TV content. And this is because the large size soundbar offers 13 high-end drivers, a frequency response down to 30 Hz, and even ships with a measurement microphone for room calibration. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2020.

AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) 2019 took place April 12-14 at The Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center and Hotel. In this report for audioXpress, Masciarotte spent three days traversing multiple hotel floors packed with listening rooms, which this year included 50 new exhibitors, and writes about all the product highlights in most categories, from speakers to headphones, electronics and the traditional oddities. This article was originally published in audioXpress, August 2019.

Oliver Masciarotte and Stuart Yaniger tested Cambridge Audio’s Edge series power amplifier, the Edge W, which the British manufacturer introduced in 2018 as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations. audioXpress submitted this design, which claimed to be the culmination of the brand’s audio engineering expertise, to extensive listening and measurement sessions. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2020.

In this speaker review, Oliver Masciarotte and Kent Peterson (of Warkwyn) listen, measure, and listen again to the PureAudioProject Trio15 Heil AMT speaker system. This is a fascinating modular system, in this case designed using an ESS 6" Air Motion Transformer (AMT) and two Eminence 15" drivers, specifically optimized for use in open-baffle applications. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2019.

2018 was another record-breaking year for audioXpress.com with visits and users doubling the figures compared to our record year in 2016. Want to know which of the topics and stories published online in 2018 were the most popular? We looked at the most-read articles of 2018 in audioXpress.com (which also includes selected articles from Voice Coil magazine), and we created this Top 10 list of news stories and online articles. Here are the results!