Voice Coil January 2021 Is Now Available in Print and Digital!

Looking forward to serving the loudspeaker industry for another year, Voice Coil starts strong with a focus on Headphone OEM Devices and Parts, and a Spotlight article on speaker design, written by Brian Cho, the CEO of Resonado Labs. In his first Acoustic Patents column for 2021, James Croft writes about a signal processing system, allowing users to control a lower frequency acoustic range of a loudspeaker system, and Vance Dickason kicks off his Test Bench characterizations with the new Bold North Audio BWX-6502 Midbass, and the Wavecor TW022WA09 22mm textile dome tweeter.

Scan-Speak has saved some last minutes surprises to end the year of the company's 50th anniversary in full force. The Danish engineering team just unveiled a new Ellipticor driver, expanding the rapidly growing family with the new Ellipticor D2404/552000 dome tweeter. This latest addition offers an impressive set of specifications according to the released datasheet, and should strongly motivate many speaker designers targeting high-end designs.

Voice Coil December 2020 offers a diverse set of articles for loudspeaker professionals and anyone in the audio industry. Mike Klasco writes about MEMS Drivers and related hot technologies for 2021. Next up, James Croft discusses a new patent granted in October 2020 to inventor Eric Jay Alexander, and in Test Bench, Vance Dickason characterizes the recent BWX-6501 Midbass driver and the BDT-2901 Silk Dome Tweeter, both from MISCO’s Bold North Audio Line. Now Available in Print and Download!

This Test Bench article addresses an interesting home audio tweeter from Creative Sound Solutions (CSS). The company sent Voice Coil its latest high-end tweeter, the LD25X, a special driver with a unique dual-gap patented XBL2 motor. CSS licenses the XBL2 technology from inventor Dan Wiggins for two of their woofers and for the LD25X tweeter. The XBL2 motor features a short voice coil traveling between two gaps, allowing for a higher Xmax than most conventional motors can provide. The LD25X tweeter features a 25mm silk dome diaphragm and flat silk surround, in a 73 mm diameter six screw cast-aluminum faceplate anodized semi-flat black. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, July 2020.

Voice Coil October includes an updated directory of speaker-focused electronics, amps, and DSP vendors. And an insider's perspective about Nuvoton’s new smart amps, featuring Klippel's Controlled Sound (KCS) technology. This month's Acoustic Patents article discusses a Planar Loudspeaker Manifold patent granted to Dolby Laboratories, and Vance Dickason's Test Bench characterizes the latest Scan-Speak Ellipticor 21WE/4542T00 midrange, followed by the ODT29 fabric dome tweeter from Omega Audio. Now available online and in print!

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.

For several years, Mike Klasco and Steve Tatarunis wrote a series of articles under the header Parts is Parts where they have explored loudspeaker drivers, how they work, and all the different parts and components. In this specific article, the two audio industry experts provide an excellent introduction to high frequency drivers, revisiting some key historical designs. This article was originally published in audioXpress, January 2013.

Scan-Speak announced two new drivers, each one strategically filling a gap in one of the brand's driver families. On the higher frequency range, Scans-Speak launched the Revelator 19 mm Dome Tweeter, D2104/712000, featuring the company's patented Symmetrical Drive (SD-2) motor, with a neodymium ring magnet system with double vent and coated textile diaphragm. The other driver is a brand new 15 cm midwoofer, the 15W/8534T00, expanding the established Classic line.

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.

The transducer characterized in this Test Bench is from Eastech's Punktkilde line of home hi-fi drivers built in China and designed in Denmark by Scan-Speak engineers. The FSA044010-0802 is a recently released Punktkilde tweeter, featuring a 1” damped titanium dome diaphragm, dual magnet neodymium motor, a cast-aluminum anodized red faceplate (other colors are available), and an 8 ohm voice coil. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, September 2019.