There are a lot of things going on, and here's a small list.

• Great Plains Audio Community Meeting - Saturday, November 8th, starting at 2:00pm. This will be held at Mark Margiotta's house, and directions and a proper announcement are at the link.

• Comparitive study for T/S measurement techniques - Dr. Akhilesh Bajaj and I did a series of measurements in order to compare various techniques. We have the data points; Now all I have to do is to compile them. We measured using both the sealed box method and the added mass method, and we gathered data using a calibrated oscilloscope and two handheld DVM's. So the results can be averaged to give greater confidence in the data; Data can also be compared to get an idea of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each method and measuring device.

  Actually, this was done to obtain T/S specs for some Stephens drivers that Akhilesh plans to build single-driver systems around. Poor guy had to sit with me while I did everything three times just to get the datasets to do comparisons by. We "killed two birds with one stone" - Akhilesh wanted assistance finding T/S parameters for his drivers, and I had been planning to do this comparitive study, so we decided to do them together. But these drivers were produced earlier than the 50's, so I'd like to do the same thing with a pair of Eminence and/or JBL drivers sometime. That would allow us to compare a handful of datasets we've measured with those provided by a trusted manufacturer. What do you say, Akhilesh? Up for another measurement session sometime? Anyway, I'll publish this data as soon as I have time to compile it.

• Qms virtual circuit calculator - Chris Richmond wrote an excellent little applet that calculates the virtual circuit components that represent Qms. Sorry, Chris, I just blew your anonymity on that deal. But I think it's pretty neat and I'll probably use your program instead of doing 'em by the seat of the pants. Hopefully Chris will have time to post it in the next few days.

Midrange horns - I'm working on midrange horns that will be added as standard options in the π product line. They're along the lines of what Jeremy and I discussed yesterday. Actually, I'm pressed for time and I haven't been working on the designs so much as I have a set of requirements that I plan to solve for. Many times over the years, I've used a direct radiating midrange driver with a horn loaded tweeter and a cornerhorn loaded woofer; This configuration lends itself to passive crossover solutions that must deliver flat response performance over the entire bandwidth. But horn-loaded midrange systems have always been popular in prosound use where active crossovers are commonplace. The designs I have in mind will be ideally suited for high-end home sound systems or live sound. Should have something by the first of the year.

• Top Secret - A bunch of other stuff is going on too, and I'd rather allude to it than say. But read between the lines every chance you get; There's fun stuff going on behind the scenes, ready to spill over in the next few months.

It looks to me like 2004 is going to be an exciting year.