Tech Preview

Founded by Mark Kaltman in 2006, Kaltman Creations was never about doing things the usual way or creating “me-too” knockoffs. But perhaps that’s the way of many innovators who shape the direction of an industry. Now his latest product, RF-ResQ™ continues Kaltman’s tradition of coming up with something that redefines the way many of us will work in the future, just as he did with earlier inventions, like the Invisible Waves RF Command Center, the RF-id SOLO and Station, RF-intermodPro and RF-Vue.

Developments in loudspeaker technology don’t seem to come along very often. Yet every day we witness new products, new materials and new approaches advancing the art and science of loudspeaker design. A good example of that kind of forward-thinking comes in the form of the Trinity system from Calgary, Canada-based PK Sound. (The system is pictured here in use at the Safe in Sound festival at Club Cinema in Pompano Beach, FL).

Adamson Systems Engineering has been on a high technology roll over the past few years. The jump kicked off with its flagship E-Series E15 large-format line array system, with its twin 15-inch neodymium woofers flanking the innovative E-Capsule section housing the mid/high components: two 7-inch Kevlar cone mid drivers and two 1.5-inch exit compression drivers mounted on a Co-Linear Drive Module. This was later followed by the smaller, double-12 E12 system, which shared the E15’s voicing, but in a more compact enclosure.

The rumors had been circulating for months, but on the cusp of last month’s NAB and Musikmesse / Prolight + Sound shows, Avid made the first public showing of its new flagship Avid VENUE | S6L, a large-format live consoles with a touch-based interface Ethernet AVB, Dante, MADI and Thunderbolt support, Pro Tools integration, industry-standard plug-ins, over 300 total processing channels and a new Stage 64 I/O rack with high performance preamps and versatile input/output options.

In a global economy, companies seem to come from out of nowhere. For me, Powersoft was that company. Little did I know that its new X-Series amplifiers are the result of 19 years of Class-D amplifier experience. In that time, there were nine previous models, several still in production, plus custom OEM versions, so there’s even a chance your system may have Powersoft modules under the hood.

It’s been a while since Avid has made a major change or product launch in its highly successful line of live sound consoles. Now, just before InfoComm, Avid has introduced the new S3L, which delivers the sound quality, performance and features of Avid live audio systems in an all-new modular, networked design, supporting Ethernet AVB and EuCon open network standards for professional live sound reinforcement mixing and recording.

I’ve long been fascinated by audio history, which since the earliest days, has borne witness to sweeping changes. Yet one area of that audio chronology which has been the most resistant to change seems to be loudspeakers. In fact, if you look at E.C. Wente and A.L. Thuras’ 1926 patent for the first compression driver (#1,707,544) —which became the Western Electric 555w, you’ll see it used a thin, lightweight aluminum dome diaphragm with a corrugated surround, a phase plug and a threaded mount that allows it be to interchanged on a variety of horns. And the story isn’t much different with Chester Rice and Edward W. Kellogg’s 1925 development of the dynamic loudspeaker, which had a round paper cone (with butyl surround!) and a voice coil that moved within a magnetic gap. Today, some 90 years later, things haven’t really changed that much; we still have voice coils, magnets, cones or diaphragms, so when something truly different comes along, it’s time to take notice.