Audio Precision APx500 Flex Audio Analyzer — Hands-On

Vance Dickason writes about the Audio Precision APx500 Flex Audio Analyzer and shares his hands-on experience with this latest affordable analyzer solution, designed to work with third-party USB audio recording interfaces. Dan Knighten, AP's VP of Product Development, and Michael Martin, AP's Product Marketing Manager, brought a complete system to Dickason's place and assisted him in performing a series of R&D type measurements on the same driver featured in a Test Bench column. Which means, readers can compare the readings and results directly! This article was originally published in Voice Coil, March 2020.

For this Test Bench, Vance Dickason characterizes the new WAN103.01 10" woofer from Italian OEM transducer manufacturer, LaVoce. All LaVoce products are designed at its headquarters in Potenza Picena, Italy, but with the logistic and price advantage of being manufactured at its purpose-built ISO 9001-certified production facility in China. The WAN103.01 is a high-sensitivity and high-power 10" driver, with a substantial feature set, which has been designed with line array and mid-bass applications in mind, using an elegant heavy duty die-cast basket and FEM optimized motor structure and suspensions.

This article focuses on another pro sound OEM new to Voice Coil’s Test Bench, Oberton of Bulgaria. For this characterization, Oberton supplied the recently released ND72CT/HB 1.4" compression driver along with the H-1464 1.4” cast aluminum 60° × 40° constant directivity horn. The ND72 has two iterations available - a cotton composite diaphragm with polycotton surround - The ND72CT - and an alternative dome, named the Hybrid Dome, using a combination of carbon composite diaphragm with a center cotton composite “patch” that reduces break-up modes - the ND72HB. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, January 2020.

The Motus UH25CTi 1" dome tweeter, from Motus Audio, a U.S. high-end driver OEM distributed by Solen.ca, was reviewed in Voice Coil December 2012 and the review appeared also in audioXpress February 2013. Motus Audio was founded in 2010 by Trevor Ryan, who also started Ryan Acoustics, a finished product speaker manufacturer from Riverside, California. "With his extensive experience in Asian sourcing and assembly of high-performance speakers, Ryan brings the high-end-manufacturing-in-China perspective to the OEM raw driver market," Vance Dickason wrote about the company.

This Test Bench characterizes a new BMS compression driver, the 1” 5530ND, introduced at Prolight+Sound 2019, as a new generation offering a compact physical package that is only 72 mm in diameter, ultra-low intermodulation distortion ring diaphragm, and very high efficiency. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, December 2019.

In this Test Bench, the focus is the Dayton Audio DMA58-4, a new 2" full-range line array/smart speaker from Dayton Audio. DMA stands for Dual Magnet Aluminum Cone and the series already includes five models of full-range drivers, all using a proprietary 12-spoke injection-molded frame. This frame is very open to reduce reflections back into the cone and also has a very generous mounting flange making multiple driver arrays cosmetically attractive and compact. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, December 2019.

For this edition of Test Bench we characterized the Punktkilde AUGDL0003-JN03, a 1” magnesium-lithium alloy dome tweeter. This transducer, from Eastech’s relatively new Punktkilde line of home hi-fi drivers built in China and designed in Denmark by Scan-Speak engineers, is a tweeter from its magnesium-lithium product line, which includes this AUGDL0003-JN03 tweeter plus 4” thru 8” magnesium-lithium alloy cone woofers. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, November 2019.

In this month’s Test Bench, we characterize Dayton Audio’s DMA80-4, a new 3” full-range line array/smart speaker driver. The Dayton Audio DMA80-4 is one of the transducers from the brand's new DMA Series, where DMA stands for Dual-Magnet Aluminum Cone and includes five models of full-range drivers, all with both 8 and 4 ohm versions. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, November 2019.

Want to know which of the topics and stories published online in 2019 were the most popular? We looked at the most-read articles of 2019 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!

Voice Coil January 2020 is now available in print and digital. This first edition of 2020 includes two valuable directories of headphone and headphone parts vendors. In Acoustic Patents, James Croft reviews two different ported tweeter design patents awarded to the same inventor. And Vance Dickason welcomes two new companies - LaVoce from Italy and Oberton from Bulgaria - to Test Bench. LaVoce submitted the 1” DF10.172K compression driver, while Oberton sent the ND72CT/HB 1.4” Hybrid Dome compression driver.