There was one feature on the Sonic Impact t-amp and
cardbaord speakers which I'm glad to report was a rave up.

This makes me wonder if I should truly let my subscription lapse.

I wind up coming back when I've done it before.

There are damned few contruction articles though. If the magazine
is going to continue to be little more than a pamphlet, then the
subscription price should drop. That _and_ go bi-monthly or
something with a better representation of the speakerbuilding
hobby. After all Speakerbuilder was my entry point for the
present publication.

I'd have to say that last time I renewed my subscription on faith
and as a gesture of support.

But I don't see me subscribing for that reason year after year
indefinately.

I always thought they should do something similar to what we did in the Group Build forum with Guinevere. Start with a very basic design (amp, pre or speaker), build and analyze to the nth degree - go through all the math, parts selection and layout. I suspect there are a lot of wanna-be builders (myself included) that would benefit from this type of approach.......Colin

They began discussing drivers and parameters.. one being that
standard boards would be used for ease of contruction.

The FE127e by Fostex was selected and (though I have not read the
whole thread) several projects were built going through all the
steps of testing and construction. Completed designs.. and the
final one I think... is a backhorn fairly compact and using
standard board widths.

Through it's long history, AudioXpress has likely shown all
the possible workwork techniques and so on for it's various
stories in the magazine. But no one has all 30 years worth
of them.

Some features like Darcey Skaggs tweaks for dvd players and
tv sets to improve performance are interesting. Bill Fitzmaurice's
projects are always fascinating to view (but daunting to build.)

The Nelson Pass 'kleinhorn' seemed like an exotic excersize with
no practicality at all.

to answer your question, I do not recall that an actual step by step
use of testing software like the CLIO setup was ever actually
fully done.

A nice noob version of "How To Measure Speaker Paramameters With
Cheap Gear and a Computer" would be good.

I heard a good quote that may apply here. Tt was in reference to
NSA snooping using the vacuum cleaner approach of spying on everyone:
"The logic of this approach to finding a needle in a haystack is to add more hay."

Though there may be ways to 'google' the best way to learn something
like speaker testing and that seems to be the panacea whenever
a novice question is brought up I no longer have any trust or faith
in doing web searches to solve problems. There is plenty of hay out there. :-/

But I've maintained the inerest through groups like this and
Full Range Driver Forum and AudioDIY (much less so with that one.)

From the early days of Usenet and email I always felt there was the
possibility of community with these computing devices. I was not
disappointed in the early days for having found a few Usenet
innovators, one of whome makde a newsgroup called alt.fifty-plus.friends. I cite that because there was genuine community there-- and of an international nature. For the
ones in extreme age and housebound it was and is their
virtual home. I have lost touch with that but it's still there.

Far as hard information goes, if it weren't for streaming audio
to listen to www.pacifica.org, Democracy Now and Flashpoints
I would feel truly deprived and thrown back into the netherworld
of network news rather than alternate views which give a broader
picture of opinion.

But to your point, I care nothing for so-called blogs. The
information I seek comes from actual authors at the sources
mentioned and also the Progressive press.

Here at ART and a few other spots the topic stays focussed
pretty much and the casual discussions that develop around
these 'general and music' topics are quite often a way of learning
something new.

Regards search engines, what is needed is an open source coded
search program not involved with the adwords concept of
Google which allow a more legitimate and time consuming and
visually fatiguing way of getting answers to things.
It works pretty well in speaker discussions. But in Linux...
don't get me started.

Just wondering if you've heard one of the T-amps yet and if you have what you thought of it?

They have the Super T-amp now which provides better connectors and a more solid case at $139 bucks.

http://www.si-technologies.com/frontEnd/cm_productDetail.jsp?productID=35

That "herd instinct". Is it sort of like those SET guys ;-).

I hope Christmas was good.

Grant.