The Audio Industry Mourns the Loss of George Krampera

KV2 Audio has confirmed the news of the passing of its founder and industry pioneer George Krampera Sr. A true sound reinforcement visionary, Krampera devoted the last decades of his life to the professional audio company he founded in Milevsko, Czech Republic. But his name will be also remembered for his pioneering work with RCF, from where he left to work at B&C Speakers, and later to create Fussion, a new company in partnership with Marcelo Vercelli, which was eventually bought by Mackie, which subsequently also bought RCF.

Engineered for applications in subwoofers or as bass drivers in two- or three-way loudspeaker designs and large-format arrays for sound reinforcement, Celestion's Ten Squared (TSQ) Series launched in 2024 is now expanded with two large-sized woofers. Celestion announced the availability of both the 21" TSQ2145 and 18" TSQ1845 models of aluminum-chassis neodymium magnet low-frequency loudspeakers.

SEAS launched a new DIY kit to highlight the qualities of its state-of-the-art Metamodal TPCD coaxial drivers, allowing everyone to build a working speaker for evaluation and enjoyment. An evolution of the popular SEAS Joy kit that the speaker manufacturer already offered with a single coaxial driver, the new Toy DIY speaker is an enjoyable design that truly highlights the benefits of state-of-the-art Metamodal TPCD technology.

audioXpress March 2025, focused on Test and Measurement and audio electronics, explains how to test Power Amplifiers, and how to measure HDMI Audio. Explore the possibilities of George Ntanavaras' SL-100 Sound Level Adjuster and Tom Perazella's Reinforced Speaker Protection solution. Read the interview with Mike Engelhardt, explaining everything about audio THD with QPSICE circuit simulation. Brian Lowe concludes its article on Op-Amp for Phono Preamps, and much more.

Following the launch of its Utopia Main studio monitors, French manufacturer Focal transitioned to Integrated Systems Europe 2025 to introduce Utopia Cinema, a range designed for private cinema rooms of up to 2153 sq ft (200m²). Focal Utopia Cinema includes the Cinema LCR 3-way loudspeaker and the Cinema SUB subwoofer. According to Focal, these new Utopia products are the result of a meticulous and extensive development phase, in an effort to deliver an unprecedented level of performance and to create a complete modular solution for custom systems.

Because of the movement of its membrane, even a perfectly linear loudspeaker produces Doppler distortion, a.k.a. Phase Modulation, and second distortions from the Nonlinear Amplitude Modulation. This article, originally published in audioXpress, October 2024, characterizes and shows how to eliminate Doppler distortion for a good listening experience.

The 2025 trade show season is in full force, and Lavoce Italiana is crossing the Atlantic after attending the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA, and now moving closer to home, for Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona, Spain. There, the company will be introducing three neodymium magnet HF compression driver models: DN07.10LTF with 0.75” exit and low Fs, DN10.20 with 1” exit, and DN20.30TK with 2” exit. These compression drivers join the recently announced CAF series ferrite common magnet coaxials and other new models.

The eagerly awaited Purifi Audio PTT10.0X04-NAB-01 10" Midbass Woofer is the sixth Purifi driver to be examined in Test Bench. This 4Ω woofer features extensive proprietary technology that includes the constant Sd surround, cone edge stiffening ring, and low magnetic hysteresis motor design. The PTT10.0X04-NAB-01 exhibits some very unique engineering that can be finally characterized.

The fifth article by Claus Futtrup in his series about loudspeaker bass reflex alignments explores the concept of transitional alignments, which is helpful in bridging between filter types. The example details a transitional alignment between Butterworth B4 and Linkwitz-Riley LR4. This article series started in May 2024 with “Computation of Bass Reflex Alignments," the series expanded with classical alignments such as the B4, the LR4, the IB4, and most recently, the CD4 vented alignment, in the August 2024 issue.

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.