audioXpress Magazine November 2026

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audioXpress Magazine November 2026

audioXpress remains the authority on audio and reproduced sound by connecting manufacturers and distributors with developers, buyers and consultants around the globe! It's readers are the audio product designers, consultants, integrators, DIY enthusiasts, opinion leaders and your best customers. All of them agree that the coverage of trending topics, unique in the audio industry, make audioXpress a must read.

Every month, audioXpress combines the best educational articles on topic such audio electronics, speaker and headphone design, amplifiers (from tube to Class D), acoustics, practical test and measurement, audio engineering praxis, and standards. audioXpress provides inside stories on new audio developments, on R&D Stories, the most complete objective reviews of innovative products and software, and selects some of the best DIY audio projects from worldwide experts.

The Audio DSP Universe Expanded
Today's leading platforms are evolving beyond fixed audio DSP into fully adaptive computational audio systems.
Editorial By J. Martins
For a magazine with roots in do-it-yourself audio and inspiration from self-made entrepreneurs and inventors, looking at how modern audio product development teams actually work can change our perspective on products—and on what constitutes good design. And now that perspective is changing again. No matter how tightly engineering and design teams are integrated, audio product development involves multiple disciplines, each with its own priorities and its own definition of "high quality." Those definitions work well enough within each domain—until the pieces are brought together. Then every design decision has to be considered in terms of its effect on the complete system. Most audio products today are developed by cross-functional program teams, not by a single "audio engineering" group. A complex system such as a modern soundbar requires a systems lead or technical program manager to coordinate acoustics, electronics, RF, embedded software, mechanical engineering, industrial design, test, quality, sourcing, and manufacturing. And none of those teams defines the relevant "quality" parameters on their own.
---> The Audio DSP Universe Expanded.

5 Supporting Companies

Signal Processing
8 Upmixing: From Stereo To Adaptive Spatial Listening
By Jacky Mas
This article examines upmixing as a real-time playbackside
process to enhance the reproduction of existing
stereo content on modern systems. The goal is to
create a more immersive and stable three-dimensional
sound scene, moving beyond the narrow sweet spot of
conventional stereo reproduction.

Automated Speaker Calibration
18 Improving Speed And Simplicity Of Multichannel In-Room Calibration Techniques
By Timothy Brault
As televisions, soundbars, smart speakers, and home
theaters continue adding immersive channels, delivering
consistent sound quality has become increasingly
difficult. Speaker placement, room geometry,
reflections, and background noise can all undermine
the performance intended by product designers. This
article examines how Total Cal simplifies and accelerates
automated in-room calibration for increasingly complex
multichannel audio systems.

Fresh From The Bench
26 Sennheiser HD 480 Pro Headphones
Closing the Gap on Closed-Back
By Philipp Paul Klose
The perfect headphone does not exist and will probably
never exist. Has that ever stopped anyone in the audio
world from trying to get closer to it? It certainly did not
stop Sennheiser's Pro division. "Let us make the best
closed headphone at a reasonable price point!" That was
probably the mission statement when development of
the HD 480 Pro began. Let's see if they succeeded.

You Can DIY!
32 High-End Active Acceleration Controlled Loudspeaker
Part 2—Simulation and Crossovers
By Reinhold Lutz
This article demonstrates how to systematically design
and realize an active loudspeaker with acceleration
control with Doppler compensation. In Part 2, we finalize
the specification and the selection of components and
modules. A mathematical simulation provides answers
to the detailed design and the final performance of the
product. We will also dive into crossover filters to be
realized in the proposed digital audio processor (DAP)
covering two-way and three-way systems.

Interview
40 Mark Gander And The Engineering Of JBL's Professional Era
Part 2—From Loudspeaker Components to
Complete Systems
By Scott Leslie
As JBL celebrates 80 years in 2026, audioXpress is proud to
publish a historical interview with Mark Gander, JBL's resident
historian, former Director of Technology, VP Marketing,
and VP Engineering. Presented in three parts, the interview
minimizes editorial commentary to preserve the original
perspective, celebrating his 40-year career with the company
and highlighting key milestones in JBL's history.

Simulation Technics
52 Deep Neural Network Apps
By René Christensen
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) can serve as fast surrogate
models for COMSOL Multiphysics apps when full finite-element
simulations are too slow. This article walks through data
generation, training, and validation, and shows examples.

R&D Stories
58 Designing The Dynaco ST-70 Series 3—
Where the Rubber Hits the Road
By Dan Fraser
Having created a new version of the Dynaco ST-70
Series 3 amplifier, Dan Fraser's reward is writing this series
of technical articles. This concluding installment of his series
is about the power output stage that drives the speaker
terminals. The part of the amplifier that makes the music.

Hollow-State Electronics
63 Loctal Tubes
The Vibration-Resistant Locking Base
By Richard Honeycutt
Before vacuum tubes became standardized, their bases and
pin arrangements varied widely, creating practical challenges
for designers and service technicians. This article traces the
history of Sylvania's loctal—or "loktal"—tube base, designed to
resist vibration and accidental disconnection.