The Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook (LIS) - www.loudspeakerindustrysourcebook.com - is a fundamental resource for the industry and - as it happens every year - our team is already busy working on the listing updates (time to update your entries will end soon) and getting some of the unique content for this annual publication.

Every year, the Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook provides a comprehensive guide of global manufacturers and suppliers, their products and services, not only with its annual printed publication, but also through its dedicated, always-online directory available. In addition to serving as a great resource for products and services in the audio industry, LIS also features some timely and informative articles.

For the previous 2022 edition of our Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook I was tasked with the sizable responsibility to write an overview of the loudspeaker industry, identifying trends and making some predictions. I am used to doing these topical market reports for audioXpress, and I like to think that those are of enormous value to our magazine readers, given that they provide a much more accurate perspective of the market than anything that I see out there being promoted by fake market research firms (which lately seem to have multiplied, even obscuring the most reputable, established names) and analysts from respectable firms that only look at our small industry occasionally.

In my LIS 2022 report I pointed to the "ups and downs" faced by many industries during the pandemic period, particularly in consumer electronics, when we witnessed a veritable rollercoaster on demand and inverting product trends. Obviously, the audio industry was not able to readjust and launch products that suited that new reality, and only at the end of 2021 some pandemic-age products had started to reach the market. In 2023, some of those trends are already inverting dangerously as consumers got back to travel and socializing. And the live entertainment industry had such a spectacular recovery that the professional audio industry is struggling to keep up with demand - considering that supply chain constraints, component shortages, raising transportation costs, etc., are all major factors conditioning their sales.

It's always insightful to contrast these notes and many more of what I reported last year (the report is freely available online) with some of topics that I am addressing for the LIS 2023 report this year. Among the facts I have noted to explore this year, Apple's surprising return of the HomePod is undoubtedly top on my list, as well as Sonos' new Era speakers that were just announced.

The return of the infamous HomePod, packed with more sensors, a better processor, less drivers, improved Siri features, and Matter-compatible smart home capabilities, has not been fully understood until now by the industry - and I'm afraid much less by consumers. It's a general opinion among those that have evaluated it, that the HomePod Gen2 could sound way better than it does. But that might not be the designers’ fault and simply the result of fact that, as impressive as the HomePod is, the updated model is now compared directly with other more recent speakers. And those have also been designed by teams who were very much motivated by the original HomePod and its smart, room sensing adaptive technology. In other words, speakers in this "sort of smart" category are all sounding much better (the amps are getting way better, and the DSP guys are all doing great work).

And it is important to note that most speakers introduced in this more compact class in the last 12 months have been mainly focused on completing multiroom home systems (Bluesound with the Pulse M Wireless is an example, and the Devialet Mania is another), while everything else we've seen are essentially slightly bigger Bluetooth speakers for the home. They all have smart features, but we would struggle to call those Smart Speakers.

The main story with the HomePod Gen2 is that it comes with a variety of (much needed) updated technologies, including Bluetooth 5, UWB, Airplay 2, and the same smart, adaptive listening experience. But that is not reason enough for consumers to rush to buy a product that looks exactly like the old one - unless you are one of those poor souls that buys into the whole Spatial-Audio-from-a-single-source immersive experience "thing."

As I wrote, it's good to know that Apple's audio engineering team continued to work on perfecting its iconic HomePod speaker. The original was discontinued in March 2021, but Gen2 is essentially "The Same Design but Better." The HomePod Gen2, like the HomePod mini, basically enhances the "smart speaker" features, and offers convenient new ways to manage everyday tasks and control the smart home. But that's precisely the concept that currently is in urgent need of a big consumer reboot, since Amazon and Google have run out of ideas.

Then we have the more recent announcement from Sonos, which debuted the Era 300 and the Sonos Era 100 next generation of connected, home audio speakers that also have smart features. More than anything else, these pave the way for a whole new chapter in sound and design innovation from the brand. Both are great designs that have received rave reviews so far for their sound performance. This, even though the new Sonos Era 300 is a completely new design that is supposed to deliver some form of "spatial audio," which seems to be basically a tie-in to Apple's push of the Dolby Atmos Music content.

The new Sonos Era 300 sounds impressive for a single compact speaker. It boasts six powerful drivers that direct sound left, right, forward, and upward, all with the intent of maximizing the performance as a single speaker and being able to deliver a different experience with Dolby Atmos source material, movies, or music. Still, as the marketing departments mandate these days, the nonsense continues regarding the ability to generate "spatial audio" from a single speaker.

This is obviously not the same as a full Dolby Atmos multichannel immersive theater since it just originates from one speaker. And with music signals (even those remixed for Dolby Atmos Music), it sounds basically as an omnidirectional speaker would, removing the stage and enhancing the tridimensional "bling" - which raises other questions of how exactly should reproduced music sound (an endless topic). And the reason why the "spatial" effect is little more than "bling" should be obvious from the acoustic design. No matter how ingenious and how much processing is added, nothing beats two speakers present in a space. And if we truly have tri-dimensional sound elements, and particularly 3D moving elements, then we enter the realm of multichannel, multi-speaker configurations, where no established "standards" exist for the music reproduction in the home, as we have for movies, television series, and even for games.

That's why it is important that the Sonos Era 300 is the brand’s first speaker that is also designed to be part of a multichannel surround sound setup, when used as home theater rear speakers. Users can pair two speakers with the Sonos Arc or Beam (Gen 2) soundbars and a Sonos Sub to create a surround sound system that correctly decodes the Dolby Atmos soundtrack into what can basically be described as a 4.1 system - or 5.1 at best. Dolby Atmos requires additional ceiling or height speakers. Sonos says some of the drivers on the Era 300 do act as upfiring height channels - but the result will depend greatly on the room size and ceiling materials.

With all the spatial audio nonsense, Sonos is not really helping to highlight the real merits of the Era 300. And even worse, the simultaneous launch of the Era 100 is kind of unfair. The more compact Era 100 redefines the Sonos One concept with a more advanced design. Being slightly larger than its predecessor Sonos One, the new Sonos Era 100 features all-new hardware and software, with next-gen acoustics and a design that delivers improved stereo sound and can also be used as surround rears.

These two references sideline a core feature that has so far defined the "smart speaker" category, which is the voice interface and access to interaction with a voice assistant - at least as defined earlier by Amazon and Google. And that's precisely something I noted already in my report for LIS 2022 when I pointed out how quickly the whole "smart speaker" buzz faded away. From 2021 to 2022 - a time when people spent more time at home than they ever did at any point in human history - the voice assistant did not thrive and instead stalled. Coincidence?

Was this because of the lack of progress in voice assistants and the fading novelty factor? Obviously, people cared less about asking Alexa for the weather when they had to remain at home... Or is it possible that people don't interact so much with Alexa when they are with other members of the family? Or is just because they had nothing they needed from those assistants that they couldn't do for themselves - like pressing a switch?

For Apple and Siri, the use case was always more about simple voice control than a real voice assistant like Alexa or Google, where more complex "social" interactions were encouraged. Apple actually supports Siri voice interactions on all its products, not just the HomePods. And it is obvious that these voice interfaces were always intended to be an extension of the smart home - an area that is now on the verge of rampant evolution. But that doesn't explain the lack of progress and consumer interest in voice assistants, and consequently in smart speaker progress.

Looking at the absence of announcements from Amazon, Google, and even Facebook, which just last year had extremely ambitious plans for the category - including for the smart home space - it would be easy to conclude that the cause would have something to do with the lack of progress in voice recognition and voice interfaces.

I wrote before and I truly believe that this is not the case. Anyone involved in the voice space knows that the technology is in its infancy - and that the problem was the over-promise of conversational abilities or multi-language support, and extreme dependence on cloud connectivity to search any queries.

Meanwhile, voice continues to make significant progress, this time in a simpler - and more effective version - at the edge, and for mobile devices, including wearables, earbuds, and appliances. And with Generative AI and relatively light trained models available, voice interactions are about to get a whole lot better.

So, voice is not dead, not even close. The victims for now are actually just smart speakers. Specifically, the very low price devices that Amazon and Google were pushing to the market as a way to expand their ecosystem - for which in reality they never had a very clear strategy. Amazon and Google have even tried to evolve from compact smart speakers to smart displays, which in Facebook's case were actually very good smart speakers matched with a display - a strategy the company has discontinued for now. For Apple, the story is slightly different, because it never depended upon smart speakers. And that is why the HomePod and HomePod mini strategy is so relevant for Apple in 2023 and going forward.

Of note, both new Sonos Era speakers work simply with the new Sonos Voice Control system, which the company introduced in May 2022, and is essentially used for fast, accurate hands-free control of music. Aware of the growing concerns about digital assistants from the major companies, Sonos introduced its own voice experience created purely for complete command of a Sonos system using only voice. A development effort that was boosted with the strategic acquisition of Snips in 2019. And because of those concerned with voice recognition features and loss of privacy, Sonos has even added a switch on both new designs, which should reassure users that the microphones are off. This way, it didn't need to add a separate non-voice model as it did with the Sonos One SL.

I guess in the near future we will see better speakers from other brands, including more traditional audio companies becoming smart by gaining sensors, voice interfaces, and smart home hub features. Harman is an example of a company that has explored the concept, like others did. The difference is that personal voice assistants as we once projected, are going to be on hold for now, until edge AI gains more capabilities. Both will coexist in future systems. But reliance on cloud connectivity will be minimal for most use cases. As for the smart features on these speakers, I believe those are going to continue to expand.

It has not gone unnoticed that Amazon has remained very quiet since September 2020, when it announced its Echo family of devices for 2020, including the new Echo 4th Generation smart speaker. In September 2022, Amazon announced a few improvements to its fifth generation Echo Dot, which gained a new temperature sensor, eero built-in Wi-Fi mesh, and a slightly improved audio experience. More significant, the Echo Studio flagship was improved with a focus on spatial audio processing and upgraded drivers to do what it promised to do when it was launched four years before.

As I noted in 2022 - and I'm quoting myself - we can say confidently that the whole smart speaker hype pretty much deflated during the pandemic, as no significant new products were launched. Explanations include the fact that Google and Amazon saturated the market with below-cost smart speakers that didn't need replacing, the fact that consumers already understood the limitations of voice assistants and are not exactly enthusiastic about it, or most important, the fact that no company was able to sustain the furious pace of production and market flooding that was the norm until 2019. In that regard, by focusing on their language market, Chinese companies have been more consistent, even if their smart products and Chinese smart assistants basically serve completely different market needs, and, together with smartphones, serve to overcome very specific internal UI/language barriers to extend the (state promoted) digital transformation taking place.

In the "Rising Speaker Categories" of the LIS 2022, I already noted that in home audio-oriented speakers we have a much more powerful set of digital signal processing technologies, both on the hardware and software components, complemented with a growing integration of the electronics, efficient amplifiers, feed-forward protection circuits, and even built-in sensors. And the new trend, both in the consumer and professional audio segments, is that the combination of those technologies is not necessarily only for home smart speakers, as it was assumed just three years ago.

Fully active speaker designs with DSP enable much more efficient applications. In this case, it's not just the product per se that is superior or more efficient. It's the actual behavior of that speaker in its working environment that becomes much more consistent. And that's even before we add emerging technologies in active, real-time acoustic compensation and multiple arrays, which will soon be the key for really effective immersive audio installations. That trend is visible in professional audio, and it will soon be noted also in the consumer space.

Another important factor to consider in the evolution of transducers and the overall speaker industry, also has to do with emerging use cases that are changing designers’ priorities and industry volumes. The first outstanding example being voice applications - not necessarily only to support voice interfaces and voice assistants in smart speakers or smart home products, but generically to deliver high-quality voice reproduction, such as in speakerphones, conferencing systems, and even hearing assist products.

Voice is inspiring many new loudspeaker manufacturers to consider alternative approaches in transducers and speaker design that wouldn't simply be viable in other traditional applications. This is benefiting those new speaker companies that are exploring planar magnetic, balanced mode radiator, flat core, and other topologies currently available.

From 2022, the list of companies I mentioned to illustrate these trends have changed and grown. And probably the most important note was that the number of speakers sold every year continues to increase - considering all sizes and topologies. Something I believe continues to be true in 2023 and going forward. If you want to understand why, you'll have to read the State of the Loudspeaker Industry article in LIS 2023.

In this two-part series, Ethan Winer examines current practices and methods for designing four-layer printed circuit boards using surface-mounted components (SMDs). The first article gave a general overview of board design and examined current practices and methods. This second part explains specific strategies and related issues to deal with the design and production of great quality PCBs. An article that will certainly be appreciated by our DIY readers and by many developers who often are faced with the need to build and test their projects on a properly designed, prototype printed circuit board. This article was originally published in audioXpress, March 2023. Read the Full Article Now Available Here

The PTT6.5M08-NFA-01 6.5" Midrange is the fourth woofer from Purifi Audio to be examined in Test Bench (see Voice Coil July 2021 for the 6.5” PTT6.5X04-NFA-01; the November 2021 issue for the 4” PTT4.0X04-NFA-01 woofer; and October 2022 issue for the 5.25” PTT5.25X04-NFA-01). The PTT6.5M08-NFA-01 midrange is pretty much identical to the previously examined PTT6.5X and PTT4.0X woofers, and includes the same constant Sd surround, cone edge stiffening ring, and low magnetic hysteresis motor design. However, the PTT6.5M08-NFA-01 is optimized to have higher efficiency (91dB at 2.83V8/1m) for use with multiple woofer three-way design configurations. The feature set for the PTT6.5M midrange includes a proprietary eight-spoke cast-aluminum frame, completely open below the spider mounting shelf for cooling, with additional cooling provided by 12 oval-shaped vents surrounding the cone neck joint beneath the dust cap, with no pole vent. The slightly curvilinear profile paper cone made with a proprietary fiber mix is reinforced with a V-shaped edge ring. Compliance is provided by the now-familiar Purifi NBR surround, with a combination of alternating sections of both reverse roll and positive roll, plus some interesting undulations within the alternating sections. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, January 2023.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here