You Can DIY! The Live-Edge Dipoles

For the speaker builders, Perry Marshall details everything there is to know about his beautiful Live-Edge Dipoles project. A design that was inspired by two slabs of birch the author brought home, allowing to finally bring to fruition his idea to build these dipoles. Marshall reveals all the specifics of the driver choices, radiation pattern, and crossovers, while explaining the effects of the obtained radiation pattern and how the speakers behave in practice. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2021.

Open baffle loudspeakers are extremely popular for good reason. They can be fitted with large low frequency drivers and they sound "real," in part because open baffles play with room reflections and sound good even off-axis. A big concern though, is control over the bass response, where the size of the baffle, as well as the choice of the bass drivers are critical. And that is why the engineering team at SB Audience decided to launch new woofers designed for enthusiasts of open baffle applications.

In this classic speaker from Speaker Builder, the author proposes a complete project of a speaker design with a pyramid-shaped cabinet. The fact that its nonparallel walls minimize standing-wave effects, and the slanted front improves the time adjustment of the dri­vers, added by the fact that the front is wide enough at the base to accommodate a larger woofer, and narrow at the top, where the tweeter is located, were the fundamental considerations. This article was originally published in Speaker Builder magazine, March 1998.

Celestion offers a DIY cabinet reference design made specifically for the F12-X200 Full Range Live Response Loudspeaker. The F12-X200 combines Celestion’s expertise in guitar speakers and pro audio speakers into one transducer, designed especially for use with profiling amps, modeling software, impulse responses, and all technology for emulating guitar amps and speaker cabinets. The reference design will allow anyone to build a custom 1x12 cabinet for the F12-X200.

Our always popular loudspeaker edition is now available online and in print! audioXpress' Speaker Builder, Speaker Focus edition covers loudspeaker building, design, and testing with a balanced amount of DIY, speaker history, theory, R&D, and manufacturing articles. Read two articles about speaker history, a review of the Magnepan LRS, explore the details of two amazing speaker builds, and learn how to do loudspeaker measurements at home. And there's much more in speaker research and development, measurement, and production!

One of the most important audio events for the speaker building and DIY audio communities, the Midwest Audiofest (MWAF) is held in Springboro, OH, in July every year. Sponsored by an impressive group of vendors and hosted by Parts Express, this event combines several activities including a huge tent sale at Parts Express. For Thomas Perazella the highlight of the event is the Speaker Design Competition, for which he was again one of the competition judges. This article was originally published in audioXpress, October 2019.

Celestion announced the availability of Celestion driver-specific cabinet designs for DIY builders, including crossover schematic and complete woodworking plans. With these designs, now DIYers can build their own full-range, high-quality, Celestion-driven P.A. cabinets by following the company’s CKT-TF1525e and CKT-TF1225 speaker designs, as well as the double-duty CKT-TF1020, which can serve as both a satellite speaker and a floor-wedge monitor.

Parts Express will hold its annual Midwest AudioFest from July 14–15, 2017 at Parts Express’ headquarters in Springboro (Dayton), OH. The event includes the Parts Express Warehouse Tent Sale, an Audio Swap Meet, a Mobile Electronics Competition Association (MECA) sponsored Auto Sound Competition, and the highlight of the event — the DIY Speaker Design Competition.