Industry Watch: April 2014

New England Audio Resource (N.E.A.R., which was originally called New England Audio Research) was founded in 1988 by Bill Kieltyka. Interestingly, the company purchased a lot of the transducer tooling from Rudy Bozak, and its line was always based, as with Bozak, on aluminum cone woofers and tweeters. (For a period of time, I designed the networks for the entire N.E.A.R. line of two-channel and home-theater speakers).

Antonio subscribed to audioXpress after being linked to it from Elektor, which he said he had been familiar with for a long time. At first, he said he just read the audioXpress articles. Then he said he realized there is a community of great folks, who are really into audio and acoustics innovation. Antonio said, “I thought that I may learn and have a lot of fun if I could be part of it.”

I was not really seeing audio products designed for a variety of applications with different approaches to record or play back music that would suit my needs. So in late 2009/2010, the former head engineer from Summit Audio and I started designing visionary gear. SBS designs makes my vision of US-made high-end designs with a left-field approach available to users.

With the year’s first audio shows behind us, we have seen several technical breakthroughs and innovations that give us reason to be excited. Thus far, we have attended the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) 2014, and the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE)!

Triad grew out of Aspen Recreational Products, which manufactured a pre-Walkman cassette player designed for skiing. It was called the Aspen Audiopac. We sold about 5,000 of them before massive Asian competition to the Walkman destroyed the price point we addressed.

At Prolight+Sound 2014, Harman’s Soundcraft introduced its brand new Vi3000 ‘all-in-one’ digital live sound console, offering a host of state-of-the-art features including the groundbreaking internal DSP Soundcraft SpiderCore, a new industrial design, 96 channels to mix, onboard Dante network compatibility and much more in a very compact footprint.

Liverpool based Adlib Audio launches a new specialist division – Adlib Speakers – to manufacture and market its AA brand of speakers, which are very proudly made in Liverpool, England. Hand-crafted and designed to perfection by a dedicated team of individuals who know their audio, using quality components, precision engineering and innovation, the AA series intends to be the ultimate ‘boutique’ brand for those who understand that their sound really matters.

NTi Audio confirmed the release of Data Explorer, a new PC reporting software for precision-grade noise measurements. With a design inspired by users of the XL2 Acoustic Analyzer, the Data Explorer is an ideal sound level meter companion offering clear visualization, fast data analysis and professional reporting of environmental noise measurements.

At Prolight+Sound 2014 in Frankfurt, Italian manufacturer Powersoft launched the Powersoft X amplifier Series, which the company describes as “a real evolution in pro-audio amplification, much as the seminal K Series did back in 1995 when technologies such as Power Factor Correction (PFC) and switch-mode amplification were introduced for the first time into the professional audio industry”.

This month’s audioXpress reviews the different approaches in microphone placement techniques for capturing and recording unamplified acoustic music, particularly classical music. A recent study and AES presentation has reignited this issue and our author Gary Galo decided an historical perspective was needed in his article “Stereophonic Recording: What Do Listeners Prefer?”