audioXpress October 2021 Home Theater Edition Now Available

The October 2021 edition of audioXpress is now available in print and digital. This edition offers a balanced mix of content, starting with our annual market update report on home theater, and associated residential technologies. Brent Butterworth reviews a MEMS earphone design from USound, Geoff Hill completes his Tetrahedral Test Chamber Story, and Bruce Heran writes about refurbishing Altec Lansing Vintage Speakers. Diving into audio electronics, Morgan Jones writes about Ultra-Linear Design; Morty Tarr discusses Cascodes and Folded Cascodes; and Richard Honeycutt talks about the Effects of Negative Feedback. Jump right in!

Sumiko announced three new phono cartridges and one new stylus, extending the company’s high-end audio collection with enhancements for any turntable system. The brand debuted the Blue Point No. 3 High and Low output phono cartridges that replace the venerable Blue Point No. 2. The new limited-edition Celebration 40 phono cartridge is so named in honor of Sumiko’s fortieth anniversary. The new RS78 RPM stylus answers a long-time request from vintage record enthusiasts.

Lifestyle audio brand JAM Audio is expanding their powerhouse collection of fun, affordable Bluetooth speakers with the release of their Retro series, three speakers designed to bring a vintage look together with modern features and big sound. In a market highly saturated with competitive products in all price ranges, in a category that still struggles to gain consumer's confidence like Bluetooth speakers, an appealing vintage design is one way to generate impulsive buying. And these designs certainly appeal to those impulses.

Harman International, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, introduced the JBL L82 Classic, a modern bookshelf version of the all-time best-selling JBL L100 loudspeaker. As with the legendary L100 3-way bookshelf loudspeaker released in 1970, itself a consumer version of the popular JBL 4310 Pro Studio Monitor, the new L82 Classic follows on the heels of a long line of industry-leading success.

Wavesfactory, a creative Spanish developer of software audio tools, has announced Cassette, an audio plug-in that faithfully emulates the sound of vintage cassette tapes and decks in excruciating detail. According to the company, the plug-in has been carefully modeled after exhaustive analysis of audio examples recorded into real tapes, allowing anyone to obtain the same awful sound and unpredictable behavior of the original media. For whatever that might be worth.

At CES 2019, Harman introduced the JBL 4312G studio monitor, another modern take on the classic JBL loudspeaker line - which seems to be the trend for the consumer side of the brand in the last two years. Crafted in the mold of the legendary 4310/4311 family, and the more recent 70th Anniversary 4312SE, the 4312G is said to deliver “thundering, clear bass, with crystalline and precise highs, even at the highest listening levels.” We are not sure those would be the arguments that would persuade us to invest in the vintage concept of this high-performance studio monitor.

Antique tube radios are some of the most coveted vintage electronics any audio enthusiast can acquire. They sound absolutely great, both as for what they are intended - to work as a good old analog radio - but also as an amplifier for external audio sources, including any digital source. In this audioXpress article, from May 2012, Bill Reeve shares how to approach such projects and provides excellent advice.

Vintage analog audio studio equipment specialists, Heritage Audio, made a surprising but very interesting announcement for wireless audio integration in studios. The company unveiled the latest addition to their growing lineup of 500 Series products, the BT-500 streaming module, designed to connect mobile devices using the latest generation of audio specific Bluetooth technology and state-of-the-art D/A converters.

Jensen Musical Instrument Speakers announced the newest additions to the Jensen Vintage reissue series of speakers - the P6V and the C6V. Both new speakers - now the smallest on Jensen’s Vintage range - are 6 inch and rated at 20 watts. Both are great options for compact guitar amplifiers systems.

Three new Eminence guitar speakers, models CV-75, GA SC64, and Legend EM-12, acknowledge increasing interest in the MI market for vintage sounds and classic tones from the past. The CV-75, in particular, aims to improve upon what hand-made British speakers from 20 to 30 years ago used to sound like.