Voice Coil February 2021 Focus on Cone Industry

The February 2021 edition of Voice Coil offers an overview of the Cone Industry in 2021, with an updated directory of loudspeaker cone, diaphragms and suppliers of relevant materials and components. Next up, James Croft reviews an interesting patent for a "Directional Loudspeaker," claimed by Dutch & Dutch BV, and Vance Dickason focuses his measurements on two small-sized drivers, typical of today's most popular consumer products. The first in Test Bench is the Wavecor FR070WA05, a 2.75" aluminum cone full-range driver, and the second is the AUGWL0006-JN01, a new 2.25" woofer from Eastech’s Punktkilde lineup.

On this Test Bench, Vance Dickason offers a characterization of the ODT29 fabric dome tweeter from Omega Audio, an OEM transducer manufacturer new to the pages of Voice Coil. The company, headquartered in Holon, Israel, was founded in 1978 when the founder of Omega Audio, Levi Mordechai left Morel. All of Omega Audio’s ODT line of tweeters, dome midranges are handmade in the company's facility, from dome coating to coil winding and motor assembly. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, October 2020.

This Test Bench article focuses on the Scan-Speak Ellipticor 21WE/4542T00 midrange woofer, an impressive looking driver. The motor design for the Ellipticor 21WE/4542T00 is again an AirCirc multi-magnet and patented SD design, using an elliptical two-layer voice coil wound with round copper wire on a titanium former. Motor parts include polished front and back plates for the neodymium magnets that incorporates a 12 mm diameter rear vent for additional cooling. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, October 2020.

We looked at the most-read articles of 2020 in audioXpress.com (which also includes selected articles from Voice Coil magazine), and we created this Top 10 list of news stories and online articles. 2020 was another record-breaking year for audioXpress.com, with visitors from all over the world returning often to read the more than 6,600 stories available. Which of the topics and stories published online in 2020 were the most popular? Here are the results!

In this Test Bench article, Vance Dickason focused on a home audio TeXtreme diaphragm tweeter from SB Acoustics' Satori line, the TW29TXN-B-4. What makes this tweeter so special is that it has a new TeXtreme diaphragm, a novel type of material that is used in applications that require a high degree of stiffness performance in combination with ultra-light weight. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, September 2020.

Keysight Technologies announced the new Infiniium 8-channel oscilloscope technology. Keysight's Infiniium EXR-Series Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes include eight models ranging from 500 MHz to 2.5 GHz and either 4 or 8 channels with wide-ranging upgradeability. The EXR-Series' waveform update rate is >200,000 waveforms/sec., allowing it to quickly build eye-diagrams capturing 5.7 Million UIs. Powerful and intuitive, the new oscilloscope series reduces test bench and workflow complexity.

For this Test Bench, Vance Dickason characterized the LT2 Ribbon Transducer and corresponding waveguide from Radian Audio Engineering. This is effectively a smaller version of the LT6 ribbon transducer reviewed in the July 2020 issue of Voice Coil, but offering much more diverse possibilities, as Vance Dickason discovers. And as the compact LT2 shows, this was designed to be more of a hi-fi or home theater substitute for any high frequency driver. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, August 2020.

This Test Bench edition characterizes the 140FCD 1" compression driver from REDCATT, a relatively new OEM pro sound driver manufacturer - a privately held, international company established in 2014 and based in FuMing Industrial City, DongGuan, China. The core management team at REDCATT has been sourcing and building transducer components, sub-assemblies and systems in China for more than 25 years, and its team members have been working around the world for the biggest companies in the audio market with direct R&D and manufacturing experience. This article was published originally in Voice Coil, August 2020.

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.

In this edition of Test Bench, Vance Dickason characterizes the recently announced SEAS L19RNX1 woofer from the company's new Prestige Titan Series. The L19RNX1 is the second woofer in this new 19 cm series of SEAS woofers, the first being the W19NX001 Excel Graphene-coated magnesium cone woofer. The L19RNX1 7” woofer uses a frame that is completely open beneath the spider mounting shelf, and with a small 12 mm diameter pole vent, so substantial air can be pumped past the voice coil and over the front plate. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, July 2020.