InfoComm 2018 Sets New Records for Size, Attendance in Las Vegas

The Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association lowered the curtain on its first InfoComm show in North America as AVIXA. The InfoComm 2018 event kicked off with a record-setting TIDE conference and concluded with a trade show exhibition that attracted nearly 43,000 registered attendees, 10 percent more than the last time InfoComm was held in Las Vegas, in 2016. A promising prelude to next year's edition in Orlando, Florida.

With InfoComm 2018 already behind us, it's time to look forward, when the very first edition of the Association of Loudspeaker Manufacturing & Acoustics International (ALMA International) Symposium & Expo (AISE 2019), will take place June 9 & 10, 2019, at the Double Tree by Hilton Universal, concurrent with InfoComm 2019, which will be held June 8-14, 2019, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Precisely because of that, we thought it would be fit to properly remember AISE 2018, the last edition which was held this year for the last time in Las Vegas, just before CES.

The 2018 Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook (LIS) is now available! In the best tradition, the LIS 2018 edition contains so much more than the listings - You will find a complete series of must-read articles for anyone in the audio industry. Combining the editorial resources of our monthly publications, audioXpress and Voice Coil, LIS 2018 contains cutting-edge articles from some of the finest industry leaders, interviews with audio professionals on trending industry topics, and our annual industry reports about the state of the industry.

Bayz Audio from Budapest, Hungary, will be premiering Curante, an omnidirectional, full range loudspeaker, at the 2018 High End show in Munich. The Curante represents a complete re-thinking of traditional speakers by utilizing the patented Bay Radial Speaker (BRS), a unique “radial tweeter” design by Zoltán Bay, CEO and Chief Engineer, in collaboration with Frank Nielsen of Danesian Audio, and András Voloscsuk of Composite Project Kft.

This month, in Voice Coil, read our AISE 2018 Report, Christopher Struck discusses "Efficiency Bandwidth Product for Loudspeaker Drivers," and James Croft reviews a patent originally claimed in 2013 on a Double Coil Speaker design, now granted to Friedrich Reining (Vienna, Austria), on behalf of Sound Solutions International from China. In this month's Test Bench, Dickason examines two 1" compression drivers: a new PEEK diaphragm compression driver from Precision Devices, the PD.CD1N, and the Peerless by Tymphany DFM-2544R00-08. Download your copy now.

At the 33rd Annual NAMM Technical Excellence and Creativity Awards (TEC Awards), eight products and technologies inspired by a series of global sound pioneers will find their place in audio history when they are inducted into NAMM’s prestigious TECnology Hall of Fame. The precursor to the phonograph (Phonautograph), joins products from Shure, Eventide, Deane Jensen, L-Acoustics, and Solid State Logic. The ceremony, and later the awards show, will take place Saturday, January 27, as part of The 2018 NAMM Show.

Voice Coil is gearing up for another exciting edition of the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA, and this January 2018 edition features one of our most exciting Voice Coil directories, focusing on recent announcements about Headphone Measurement solutions. James Croft discusses a patent for an innovative flat speaker concept from Pioneer, while Vance Dickason characterizes a new 12” coaxial pro audio design from B&C Speakers. Download your Voice Coil now!

Don't miss Mike Klasco's overview of the latest trends in Audio Digital Signal Processing, a review of a new "knurled diaphragm," patent for planar magnetic drivers, and a User Report on LOUDSOFT's FINE R+D Analyzer, which, from 2018, will be implemented into the Test Bench measurement protocol. In Test Bench, learn more about a bass-midrange driver, and a woofer, from Eton and Volt, respectively.

Simulation software for speaker design has been around since the 1970s. With the introduction of the IBM PC and DOS operating system in the early 1980s, Thiele-Small (T-S) simulation software for enclosure design became a must-have for speaker system designers. For the most sophisticated design efforts, there are now magnetic circuit design software and finite element analysis (FEA) cone and thermal prediction simulation software. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, March 2017.

ALMA International will promote the 2018 edition of its annual International Symposium & Expo 2018 (AISE), in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 6 – 7. The theme for AISE 2018 will be "The Revolution of the Audio Signal Chain," and ALMA is already picking up steam with its most dynamic seminar program ever. This two-day gathering, just prior to the largest consumer electronics industry trade show (CES), has to be high on the priorities for any loudspeaker industry professional.