CBT

E-mail update 11-18-2010:  My e-mail address has changed.  The new address is montekay at gmail.com .    Suddenlink has decided to disallow access from outside the US in an effort to protect their customers.  This is a decision I personally disagree with but so be it.  I'm learning that your ISP is not the place to obtain your e-mail address.  As I travel internationally 80 ~ 90% of the time, I need to have something I can access from anywhere and I think gmail will be my solution.

So many speaker projects...so little time!

My regular job in the semiconductor equipment industry keeps me on the go all the time!   Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, China, Germany, France...  just to name a few!   This leaves me little time for speaker building or little choice but to build a system inside my Taiwan hotel room!  What a mess! 

On my rare and short trips home to Austin, TX I will, when ever possible, make measurements on various drivers and add the data to this site.   I will also feature various projects, that is if I ever have time to build and test them so I can feature them. 

My primary interest these days lean away from conventional, "box" design systems.  The best box is no box at all!   This eliminates a lot of problems such as box resonance and non-uniform polar response.   The concept of an "open baffle" may seem strange to experienced speaker designers but a little research and some listening to a properly designed open baffle system may have you throwing everything you ever thought you knew about speaker design out the window.

The Audio Artistry, "Beethoven" is a perfect example of what an open baffle system can do.   As the younger brother of Audio Artistry president, Marshall Kay, I may be somewhat bias about this but if you have a listen, I think you will agree with Stereophile's  Shannon Dickson when he wrote concerning the Beethoven, "The single most impressive audio component I have yet encountered"  Stereophile Nov. 1997

The theory behind the open baffle or, "dynamic dipole" is well explained by Siegfried Linkwitz on his site, linkwitzlab.com.    Mr. Linkwitz will carry you through this in great detail in easy to understand terms.  He also provides you the knowledge and resources to build a world class loudspeaker system the, "Orion" which I highly recommend. 

3-18-08:  Here is another interesting dipole site.  http://www.musicanddesign.com/  There are a number of interesting articles here one of which argues that dipoles may not be effective below the fundamental resonance of the room.  This hypothesis is disputed here...  http://www.landtime.com/perm/smallroomdipolebass.htm   At some point I will need to investigate this myself and will post the results.