Speakers, Microspeakers, and Audio Quality in audioXpress October 2025

Read the report of the 2025 Ohio Speaker Design Competition, immediately followed by a comprehensive Market Update on MEMS Microspeakers. Next up, Steve Hutt and Roger Shively write about Audio System Variance in vehicles, and Thomas Huber and Christoph Apel explain how StreamUnlimited’s StreamAmp Platform can make Speaker Designs Active, Networked, and Connected. Magnus Schäfer (HEAD acoustics) discusses a new MDAQS approach for Cars and Headphones, and Estefanía Cano reviews the Nugen Audio DialogCheck. And much more.

Confronted with the impossibility to conduct reliable measurements in the low-frequency domain for his DIY speaker project, George Ntanavaras explores the alternative of relying solely on simulation software. To validate the design of an open-baffle subwoofer using the AKABAK software, created by German company R&D Team, he also explores the transition from measurements to simulation. His experiments contrast the near-field response measurements of his loudspeaker with the accuracy of the simulation using AKABAK.

In the October 2023 issue of audioXpress, Jan Didden visits Dutch & Dutch, Reinhold Lutz shares a practical way to measure loudspeakers in any room with his AudioChiemgau Mode-Compensator, which is tested by Rens Tellers. We have two DIY open baffle projects from Perry Marshall and Charlie Laub, Richard Honeycutt writes about the Western Electric 91E, and Ethan Winer shares his Popping P Filter circuit. In the Sound Control column, Honeycutt explores Passive Variable Acoustics, and Chuck Hansen concludes his article series on Power Transformers. audioXpress October 2023 is now available in print, digital, and online.

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 Voice Coil May 2021, Andrew Taylor explains Klippel’s approach to "Comprehensive Transducer Testing in 24 Minutes," Mike Klasco writes about the use of "PEEK High-Performance Film Diaphragms and Cones," and there are two updated directories on MEMS Speakers and Microspeaker Vendors. James Croft reviews Mikhail Dinaburg’s “Speaker with Dual Diffuser” patent, while Vance Dickason characterizes the NSD1424BTN 1.4” compression driver from Eighteen Sound, and the Twt28_vMS high-end dome tweeter from Kartesian in Test Bench. Now available in print and digital.

In this classic speaker from Speaker Builder, the author proposes a complete project of a speaker design with a pyramid-shaped cabinet. The fact that its nonparallel walls minimize standing-wave effects, and the slanted front improves the time adjustment of the dri­vers, added by the fact that the front is wide enough at the base to accommodate a larger woofer, and narrow at the top, where the tweeter is located, were the fundamental considerations. This article was originally published in Speaker Builder magazine, March 1998.

Our always popular loudspeaker edition is now available online and in print! audioXpress' Speaker Builder, Speaker Focus edition covers loudspeaker building, design, and testing with a balanced amount of DIY, speaker history, theory, R&D, and manufacturing articles. Read two articles about speaker history, a review of the Magnepan LRS, explore the details of two amazing speaker builds, and learn how to do loudspeaker measurements at home. And there's much more in speaker research and development, measurement, and production!

The September edition of audioXpress is our always popular Speaker Builder - Speaker Focus edition. Once again, audioXpress focuses on loudspeaker building, design, and testing and for this issue we have combined two great DIY articles with a review of the PureAudioProject Trio15 Heil AMT speaker system. Ward Maas reports from the High End 2019 show in Munich, Jan Didden met with Purifi Audio's Bruno Putzeys and Lars Risbo and comments on the company's research, and much more.

The phase nonlinearity of most second- and higher-order speaker crossovers is illustrated with the step response of cascaded all-pass networks. Audibility issues are discussed. The audibility threshold depends on many factors; reports vary from about 100μS to 2mS. A sufficient amount, though, is certainly audible. This article was originally published in audioXpress, November 2007.

This article shows that in the digital domain, you can implement phase corrections in a very straightforward way, although there is still an approximation involved. My focus here is on compensating for phase nonlinearities in the driver. This article illustrates the problem for the midrange driver in a three-way system, which will be crossed over to a woofer on the low end and a tweeter on the high-end. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2011.