audioXpress.com: The Most Popular Stories Of 2017

This year we thought our readers would like to know which of the topics and stories published online in 2017 were the most popular for our community. We looked at the most-read articles of 2017 in audioXpress.com (which also includes selected articles from Voice Coil magazine), and we created this Top 10 list of news stories and online articles. Here are the results!

On March 2003, Edward T. Dell, Jr., audioXpress founder, published a complete build project for the SEAS Froy Mk3, an improved version of the original Froy kit, designed by Murray Zeligman, who also designed the original FROY kit. The Froy Mk3 kit uses two W15CY001 woofers and a single T25CF002 "Millennium" tweeter mounted in a D'Appolito configuration. In the subsequent April 2003 edition, audioXpress published a complete review of the Froy Mk3, with measurements by Joseph D’Appolito, and listening evaluation from Dennis Colin.

The phase nonlinearity of most second- and higher-order speaker crossovers is illustrated with the step response of cascaded all-pass networks. Audibility issues are discussed. The audibility threshold depends on many factors; reports vary from about 100μS to 2mS. A sufficient amount, though, is certainly audible. This article was originally published in audioXpress, November 2007.

This article shows that in the digital domain, you can implement phase corrections in a very straightforward way, although there is still an approximation involved. My focus here is on compensating for phase nonlinearities in the driver. This article illustrates the problem for the midrange driver in a three-way system, which will be crossed over to a woofer on the low end and a tweeter on the high-end. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2011.

This versatile control circuit is pure Class A analog, allowing control over the ultra-high transparency SACD (Direct Stream Digital) or DVD-A multichannel surround formats with up to six power amp channels. As the author wrote when he experienced multichannel music in SACD, “With a good recording, this transparent naturalness extends to an enveloping soundfield that - at its best - can make you think you’ve been listening from just outside the concert hall doorway, and now you’ve walked inside!”

Three audio experts discuss the role of distortion levels in what we hear. The debate was caused by an article titled “Amplifier Musicality - A Study of Amplifier Harmonic Distortion Spectrum Analysis” by Jean Hiraga, which originated comments by Jan Didden, Dennis Colin and a subsequent response by Jean Hiraga. The original article appeared in audioXpress March 2004 and the resulting conversation was published in audioXpress October 2005.