The Story of aptX - An Epic Journey

Widely recognized as a high-quality audio compression algorithm, used in film sound to radio broadcast, studios and finally in Bluetooth, where its incorporated into billions of devices, the successful story of aptX technology is inextricably linked to the history of digital audio and a remarkable corporate journey, from APT to CSR and Qualcomm. This article offers an insider's overview of the aptX audio codec adoption and evolution, and how the technology was interlinked with the author's professional career for the past 28 years. This article was originally published in audioXpress, October 2022.

Over the course of three days and two nights, June 8–10, the Audio Engineering Society’s 2022 International Automotive Audio Conference in Dearborn, MI, served as a great event for everyone in the automotive audio community to reconnect. The event also featured a full track of sessions promoted by the AES Audio Product Education Institute (APEI). This report, written by Roger Shively, the AES Conference Chair, reviews the most important presentations topics discussed and the exciting demonstrations by companies such as Dolby, Fraunhofer, Dirac, Tymphany, and DSP Concepts, among many others.

Having reviewed previously one of the early Mayht Holding B.V. patents covering their general bipolar, interleaved multiple motor structure architecture, James Croft reviews the most recent US publication (2022). This one addresses the most dramatic claim for the Mayht transducer technology of the ability to provide a greater-than 10x reduction in enclosure volume, while maintaining the same efficiency and bandwidth as compared to the current state of the art. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, August 2022

Loudspeaker manufacturers need to multiply their efforts to make their supply chains more resilient, and it becomes important to know alternative suppliers in multiple regions of the world. Among the established alternatives in the Pacific region, The Philippines has been a long recognized location for reliable companies, including some of the world's leading OEM/ODM suppliers. The article, originally published in Voice Coil, August 2022, includes a small directory of audio factories in the Philippines.

The Chief Science Officer at AudioTelligence discusses the merits and challenges of using beamforming and blind source separation techniques to correctly process voice sources from the audio signals picked up by microphones in real-world situations. This article explains how these signal processing techniques can help deal with the noises that make it difficult to pick out and clearly hear voice, and how to obtain clean audio signals picked up by microphones contaminated with interference, noise, and reverberation. This article was originally published in audioXpress, November 2022.

This article describes a new workflow comprising the rendering of audio objects for the production and tuning process, as well as the implementation on resource-limited hardware, for immersive entertainment and personalized sound staging of automotive audio. Since the object-based audio is independent of the loudspeaker setup, this significantly reduces the complexity of the tuning processes for car manufacturers. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2022.

Longstanding audioXpress author Gary Galo reviews the latest Sumiko Olympia and Wellfleet phono cartridges, and RS78 78 rpm stylus. The new RS78 is Sumiko's first 78 rpm solution, meeting the needs of many vintage recording enthusiasts and can be installed on many of the brand's cartridges. In this review, Gary discusses the merits of these versatile and high-quality cartridges while exploring his personal collection of 78 rpm recordings. This article was originally published in audioXpress, October 2022.

James Croft explores patents granted to Mattias and Timothy Scheek, on behalf of Mayht Holding B.V. Our readers will recognize the name from the April 2022 announcement of the acquisition by Sonos of Mayht Holding BV, for "$100 million in existing cash on hand.” Having followed their work through a number of patent publications, Mayht's technology triggered Croft's curiosity, for its unconventional structural designs, appearing to represent fresh thinking. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, July 2022.

James Croft reviews another patent of a concept ignoring abundant prior art, which apparently wasn’t scrutinized by industry experts - as it should. The patent "Dynamic Acoustic Waveguide," was awarded to William Eugene Wheeler (High Ridge, MO) as inventor and assignee, and describes a “loudspeaker and a method of operation that allow for the production and emphasis of extremely low bass tones.

In this article, Zami Schwartzman shares his personal journey to design and perfect his own accelerometer-based motion feedback desktop subwoofers, including plate amplifiers with MFB control, crossover and voice coil thermal protection that can be matched with any low frequency MFB driver. The proof of concept demonstrated the ability to perfectly complement popular active nearfield monitors, mitigating the effects of room reflection. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2022.