Willow Revisited: A Design Celebrating the Enthusiasm and the Creativity of the Builder

audioXpress December 2011 introduced readers to Willow, a “proof-of-concept” project featuring a PMBF4393 JFET and HA5002 buffered preamp, built as a companion to the author's 5002 power amp, and the first to use this typology. After considerable positive DIYer feedback, the Willow was revised and updated, and this article, Willow Revisited was published in February 2016.

This month, audioXpress features an updated version of the Willow amplifier, especially designed for the DIY community, and a three-way loudspeaker project with an external active crossover network. We visited Eighteen Sound in Italy, discuss experiments with Dolby Atmos, audio networking development based on Audinate’s Dante technology and learn how to measure Reverberation Time (RT). And if you are interested in recreations of the famous Fairchild compressor/limiters, rectifier tubes, and how to properly test tubes, don’t miss this month’s audioXpress.