Now available, Linear Audio Volume 10 is the 11th issue of Jan Didden’s series of printed bookzines dedicated to technical audio and perception. It features a great team of contributing authors and a strong collection of enjoyable articles, with a diversified and refreshingly divergent collection of personal takes on great audio topics.As Jan Didden explains, Linear Audio is a vehicle for publishing technical information, developments and the state of the art of audio from a technical perspective - a technical audio resource for those interested. In this new edition, the editor of Linear Audio - and also audioXpress’s technical editor - muses why, despite the technical shortcomings, he also re-discovered the pleasure of playing vinyl.
And vinyl is just the subject of the book review by Gary Galo on this volume of Linear Audio. In this edition, Galo reviews “Vinyl – The Analog Record in a Digital Age” by Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward and doesn’t necessarily likes what he finds; Morgan Jones reviews the 5th edition of “Grounding and Shielding, Circuits and Interference” by Ralph Morrison, finding it a mixed bag.
Following on the topic of vinyl, writing about perception, Mike Uwins researched another angle of the Analogue Hearts, Digital Minds dichotomy and found there’s more to vinyl than meets the ear. And this bookzine features also a great tutorial by Hannes Allmaier, explaining all about The Ins and Outs of turntable dynamics - and how they mess up your vinyl playback.
Also on Tutorials, Hans Polak builds on earlier work by Muncy and Whitlock in Pin 1 revisited, adding OEO to an accepted rule. Not satisfied with designing some of the best analog phono preamplifiers in the world, Scott Wurcer applied himself to emulate RIAA correction in the digital domain, complementing his article with extensive online support.
For those interested in circuit design, Jacques Exbrayat has a single transistor handling the audio, relegating voltage and current control to the periphery and ended up with a minimal structure high-performance voltage follower / amplifier.
Mark Johnson extensively researched transformer and rectifier ringing and found that Soft Recovery Diodes Lower Transformer Ringing by 10-20X. Merlin Blencowe got to the bottom of Partition Noise and the ‘BestPentode’ Revisited. After a series of Experiments in Low Voltage Tube Audio Amplifier Circuits, Ronald Quan came up with high performance tube circuits running off 45 V ‘high voltage’.
Focusing on loudspeaker design, Tomasz Nowak, the winner of the AES Student Design Competition, Graduate category, explains his tapped horn subwoofer system. Finally, Stan Curtis reviews power supply issues and finds that sometimes power does not corrupt.
This printed bookzine of about 200 pages is sold online for €23,90 (full printed volume) through www.linearaudio.net.
