September 2020

From The Editor's Desk
'Cause Everything Changes
audioXpress' unique role in serving the industry.
Editorial By J. Martins

  My work with audioXpress magazine started seven years ago, and I still remember that one of the first lessons I learned from readers' messages and letters was that some readers were still complaining about things that happened 13 years before me. No matter the continuing efforts of the original publisher, tube enthusiasts were still expressing anger and dismay for the fact that they were "forced" to share a publication that also discussed solid-state audio circuits. Likewise, the Speaker Builder fans where expressing concern that their "unique" interests would fade away, submersed in a sea of meaningless magazine pages full of schematics and audio electronics.

No matter how much explaining Edward T. Dell Jr. — the publication's founder — offered, showing that in practice his quarterly titles — Audio Amateur/Audio Electronics, Glass Audio, and Speaker Builder— had merged into a larger, monthly publication, effectively serving more of everyone's interests. Once a niche, there's always something of that club feeling, and the DIY speaker building community still today laments the "disappearance" of Speaker Builder.

Unfortunately, Dell passed away in February 2013, and I never had the chance to discuss my plans for the publication with him. And how I intended to expand audioXpress even more from DIY into true R&D and more audio applications — which effectively was the only way to regain a much needed focus that had been somewhat lost since Dell retired in 2008.

For Dell, Speaker Builder was a part of audioXpress. For me, it remains an essential part of what audioXpress is today, and like our sister title Voice Coil — addressing the more specific needs of the loudspeaker industry professionals — I feel we have reinforced it and responded to the needs of the speaker design community.

The traditional Speaker Focus issue of audioXpress every September was already in place before my time in the magazine, but I don't remember any issues in these last seven years that didn't feature speaker-related articles. More recently, given the industry's level of activity in speaker components, with the dramatic expansion into microspeakers, MEMS speakers, and even completely new driver technologies, I decided to reinforce our editorial calendar with a dedicated Speaker Trends — Drivers and Transducers edition every January. Yes, audioXpress embraced audio applications that weren't yet recognized or even addressed by technical audio publications at all (e.g., portable speakers, smart speakers, or mobile audio). We extended the focus from living room stereo to installation and studio monitors to automotive audio speakers.

It's just a fresh way to look at speaker applications, from an innovation and product development Perspective — which is what audioXpress magazine is about now.

But yes, Speaker Builder and speaker DIY is very much alive in audioXpress, as we show this month with three completely different projects. One of those projects, Chris Biese's RSX speakers, took first place in the Dayton Audio category at the annual Midwest Audiofest (MWAF) Speaker Design Competition, promoted by Parts Express. audioXpress is truly proud to offer its creator the opportunity to share the build details with our readership.

Now, as speaker enthusiasts ourselves, we are aware that our readers and many thousands more speaker builders all share their passion on a daily basis in one of the countless Internet forums and social media groups. Our authors are there, we are there. So, I'm proud that in 2013, when I joined audioXpress, I decided to evolve the publication's format, in order to find a way to stay useful to our original DIY community and gain an expanded readership that was then — and still is today — looking for an expanded information source on design and development of all sorts of audio products.

In this Speaker Builder | Speaker Focus edition, we include a diversity of topics that I hope answer those needs — from how to do loudspeaker measurements at home, to using modeling, simulation, and even virtual reality tools in product development and provide a better understanding acoustic quality control at the end of the production line, among other equally diverse topics.

Increasingly, I have noticed that many speaker manufacturers have approached audioXpress because they recognize the publication's unique role in serving their side of the industry, while I noticed that hundreds of new threads in online discussion groups have been opened with a link to an audioXpress article.

J. Martins
Editor-in-Chief

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