Building a new speaker Part 1

Starting today, and going through the next three days, I'll be detailing the making of the new AN3 speaker. If you're not interested in learning about the development process I'd skip the next few days of posts. One of the reasons I wanted to spend time with this subject is its fleeting nature. Once the process is completed: the pain, sweat, angst, triumph, and failures along the way are lost—and to my way of thinking they are all part of a product's DNA as much as a young person's upbringing shapes their lives. As you read this, know that the AN3 prototypes are now bouncing along I-80 in the back of some truck on their way to Chicago for the Axpona show. The battlefield where engineers Darren Myers, Bob Stadther, and I (ably assisted by Jordan Kamper) devoted our days nights and weekends in service of making great music has been relegated to the inner canister of a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A look inside Music Room One would offer no clue of what occurred there: the building of a new kind of loudspeaker—a 4-way hybrid of ribbons and cones and analog and amplifiers and servos and DSP capturing the magic of Arnie Nudell's work and the bounty of music properly reproduced. I have filmed four videos to go along with each of the four parts of this saga. The first can be viewed here. In this opening video, I spend the entire 11 minutes explaining Arnie Nudell's reference system: what it is, why it works, what he tried to achieve and how. If you're familiar with that system, the one following his triumph of the IRSV and all that came afterward from Genesis Technologies while he was at the helm and me at his side, then wait until tomorrow to watch Part 2.