Speaker Measurements: Replacing IEC 60268-5 (Part 1) - What Comes Next and Why

Geoff Hill, the inventor of the Tetrahedral Test Chamber (TTC), a member of the international Electrotechnical Commission’s standards 60268-21-2018 and 60268-22-2020, and part of the IEC Working Group TC 100/TA 20/PT 60268-22 on electrical and mechanical measurements on transducers, summarizes the progress happening on loudspeaker measurement standards. This is the first of two articles, appealing directly to all loudspeaker designers and manufacturers. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2022.

This article looks at the practical test and measurement of bone conduction technology, as used in product development for headsets and in-ear devices. It showcases new possibilities for manufacturers to better evaluate device performance, since no appropriate test equipment and methods were commercially available until now. The approach, complements a Head-and-Torso Simulator (HATS) with an actuator capable of generating structure-borne sound in the artificial ear. This way, a realistic simulation of the human structure-borne voice signal for in-ear headsets is possible.. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2023.

The Røde NTH-100 headphones are a late but refined entrance from the Australian company into the product segment. The headphones are engineered to be durable as pro audio products need to be. All the important components are also user-replaceable and can be removed and swapped out in seconds. The fully adjustable headband with a unique FitLok locking system is a very distinctive feature that will be appreciated over time. Find out how the NTH-100 stacks up to the competition. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2022.

Automotive systems expert Philipp Paul Klose writes about the vital topic of Evaluation of Automotive Audio Energy Efficiency. This important article addresses an approach to measure energy consumption and efficiency of car audio systems as an essential method for an industry investing in ever more sophisticated technologies and applications. More importantly, the author proposes practical approaches, including standardized test procedures. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2022

The patent reviewed here was granted to inventors Robert G. Johnston (Amprior Ontario, CA), and Sanford M.Gross (Owings Mills, MD), respectively the head of engineering of GoldenEar Technology, and one of its co-founders. The patent describes a subwoofer with two drivers on each side plus one passive radiator facing up and one passive radiator facing down. The passive radiator facing down effectively couples acoustic energy at very low frequencies into the floor.

Widely recognized as a high-quality audio compression algorithm, used in film sound to radio broadcast, studios and finally in Bluetooth, where its incorporated into billions of devices, the successful story of aptX technology is inextricably linked to the history of digital audio and a remarkable corporate journey, from APT to CSR and Qualcomm. This article offers an insider's overview of the aptX audio codec adoption and evolution, and how the technology was interlinked with the author's professional career for the past 28 years. This article was originally published in audioXpress, October 2022.

Over the course of three days and two nights, June 8–10, the Audio Engineering Society’s 2022 International Automotive Audio Conference in Dearborn, MI, served as a great event for everyone in the automotive audio community to reconnect. The event also featured a full track of sessions promoted by the AES Audio Product Education Institute (APEI). This report, written by Roger Shively, the AES Conference Chair, reviews the most important presentations topics discussed and the exciting demonstrations by companies such as Dolby, Fraunhofer, Dirac, Tymphany, and DSP Concepts, among many others.

Having reviewed previously one of the early Mayht Holding B.V. patents covering their general bipolar, interleaved multiple motor structure architecture, James Croft reviews the most recent US publication (2022). This one addresses the most dramatic claim for the Mayht transducer technology of the ability to provide a greater-than 10x reduction in enclosure volume, while maintaining the same efficiency and bandwidth as compared to the current state of the art. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, August 2022

Loudspeaker manufacturers need to multiply their efforts to make their supply chains more resilient, and it becomes important to know alternative suppliers in multiple regions of the world. Among the established alternatives in the Pacific region, The Philippines has been a long recognized location for reliable companies, including some of the world's leading OEM/ODM suppliers. The article, originally published in Voice Coil, August 2022, includes a small directory of audio factories in the Philippines.

The Chief Science Officer at AudioTelligence discusses the merits and challenges of using beamforming and blind source separation techniques to correctly process voice sources from the audio signals picked up by microphones in real-world situations. This article explains how these signal processing techniques can help deal with the noises that make it difficult to pick out and clearly hear voice, and how to obtain clean audio signals picked up by microphones contaminated with interference, noise, and reverberation. This article was originally published in audioXpress, November 2022.