Xpress Speaker DIY

X-onken Xpress -1 The Road to Fidelity The Road Map Setting out on any journey at a minimum would call for mapping out our route. Travel, I believe, is not just about getting from point A to point B. Every journey is a 'trip' into many things -- getting to know places, people and stuff on the way, how they tackle life in umpteen situations, and how we could often benefit from their 'out-of-the-box' approaches... the plusses are as varied as the curves on the road, and like the road itself virtually endless. It is no different here too. So, what are the options before us? Which route to take? Surveying the field would take us to the conclusion that, broadly speaking, there are three types of speakers (No,we surely haven't forgotten the electro-statics. How could one forget that timeless 'grande dame' of lifelike 'fi', the Quad electro-static; nor are we pretending to ignore the heroine of planar magnetics, the Magnepan. Just that our 'xpress' ...

XPRESS DIY-2 If you are a music enthusiast, the only option open to you to enjoy good music-- unless you sing or play an instrument or two, or is married to a musician! -- is to have a hi-fi music system. This, as we all know, comprises three basic units-- a source, an amplifier and a pair of 'stereo' speakers. Speakers, as most of us have found out, have a personality of their own and are as different as individuals; or shall we say as different as their designers! Though when we look at it from a tech angle, not much has changed from the 'electro-dynamic' speaker designed by Kellog and Rice at General Electric Company back in 1925. Their 'baby' was a nearly two-foot diameter moving coil speaker with a field coil to provide the driving magnetic force. The following decades saw 'express' developments in the audio field overall, and speaker driver development in particular. Very soon as permanent magnets became stronger and cheaper to produce, there emer...

XPRESS DIY-1 Renaissance Ahoy! Isn't that a wake-up call ?? Sure it is!! This blog, started sometime back chiefly to fire up the enthusiasm of rookie young hobbyists with simple and 'FAST' projects that could be accomplished by virtually any interested individual with a modicum of skills and a minimum of tools, has now elected to assume a new avatar. The target audience is the young  (and young at heart!) audio DIY experimenter who has till now steered clear of that royal waster of time -- speaker building. Speaker DIY as most of us know and accept, is more a black art than science, though various greats and gurus have attempted sincerely to impart a scientific temper to design approaches. As the name suggests, here the focus is on Xpress or speed DIY. Quick actions leading to quick results so that experiments need not wait too much in the queue. To meet that need for speed, build concepts and approaches have been simplified, if not over-simplified at times. As for costs, t...