Join us for the 2013 Annual Speaker Design Competition located in Springboro Ohio during the Midwest Audiofest hosted by Dayton Audio & Parts Express! The Speaker Design Competition will be held at the same location as last year (). Pontecorvo is only seconds away from Parts Express and we look forward to being back at that location!
The official Meet-N-Greet for the competition will be held on Friday, July 12th, from 5PM-7PM at Pontecorvo. The Open Unlimited Event will follow the Meet-N-Greet. All entrants in the Speaker Design Competition are invited! Beverages and snacks will be provided by Dayton Audio & Parts Express. This is a great opportunity to be able to interact with your fellow audio enthusiasts! We will have music playing and some new products on display from Dayton Audio & Parts Express.
Registration will take place at the Meet-N-Greet on Friday, July 12th, from 5PM-7PM. For those who will be unable to attend the Meet-N-Greet, we will have open registration Saturday morning, July 13th, from 7AM-8:30AM at Pontecorvo, located at 20 Commercial Way Springboro, OH 45066. In order for us to plan for this event, please pre-register your speaker(s) on our competition page www.midwestaudiofest.com
Multiple contest submissions by a single designer are allowed - however the number of entries from a single designer may be trimmed due to the limited amount of judging time we have. Should this occur, we will give the designer the option at selecting the entry(s) being judged. Please bring your speaker entries, and a short, one page overview of the system and components used in its construction. You will also be given an official event t-shirt at that time which will allow you to enter the tent sale.
*By entering my speaker project, I authorize Parts Express unrestricted right to use and publish photographs of my project(s) and/or images of the event in which I may be included.
Registered participants of the Speaker Design Competition will have early entry into the Tent Sale at Parts Express Saturday morning from 7AM-8AM. In order to get into the Tent Sale, you must wear the Speaker Design Competition shirt given to you at the Meet-N-Greet on Friday.
Due to time constraints, we had to move the Open Unlimited Event to Friday this year. The Open Unlimited Event will take place Friday, July 12th, from 7PM-8PM.
The Speaker Design Competition will take place Saturday, July 13th, from 9AM-4PM. There will be a 1 hour lunch break from 12PM-1PM with a guest speaker. We will do our best to end on time at 4PM and winners will be announced at 4:30PM.
Having roots in the DIY hobby himself, Jerry holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University. As most young DIY'ers experience, studying took a backseat as he found himself more often in the garage building cabinets and systems rather than the Auburn Library. He built his first speaker project, a DIY Subwoofer, from an article in a magazine back in 1984 using a 12" McGee Radio driver that was manufactured by Eminence. He considers this time of speaker building as preparing him for a career in the audio industry. Professionally, he's been involved in creating OEM drivers for Ford, Honda, and Chrysler. For over a decade, Jerry has had a successful career as a Design Engineer working on speakers manufactured by world-renowned Eminence Speaker LLC located in scenic Eminence, Kentucky.
Udo Wohlgemuth has been involved with music for over 60 years and has been an enthusiastic loudspeaker developer for over 30 years. Udo was born into a musical family and started to play the piano at a young age. Even as a child, Udo heard his grandfather play the violin, zither, harp, guitar and piano almost every day. And at family music sessions on weekends, Udo always listened to his uncle and aunts as they played the piano, bass, guitar and sang.
Udo's career led him to earn a teaching certificate and he became a math teacher at a classical Gymnasium high school.
By the age of twenty seven, he ventured back toward his passion for music and founded his own loudspeaker development lab and loudspeaker retail store. Several years later, he joined the loudspeaker development department at Intertechnik and developed the Seas assembly-kit line as well as the concept for the NoFerro tweeter. Due to Udo's experience and knowledge in the loudspeaker industry, Udo joined the editorial team as a technical editor.
In 2007, Intertechnik set itself a groundbreaking new task – founding, supporting and editing the free web magazine and portal Loudspeakerbuilding.com. Following his conviction and passion, Udo could now develop loudspeakers as he saw fit, without pressure from advertisers.
Udo has also developed the Eton loudspeaker "Duetta (remastered)", loudspeaker assembly kits for major brands at www.Loudspeakerbuilding.com, Dayton Audio assembly-kit line, and the SB Acoustics loudspeaker assembly kits.
There is no end in sight for Udo! He still has plenty of creative ideas for loudspeakers to be published.
Thilo Stompler is co-owner of TC Sounds in San Diego. Thilo has been interested in audio since he was 13 years old and was fascinated by a Plasma tweeter at a German Hi-Fi Store. Working part-time at a high-end audio retail store, while studying mechanical engineering at UCSD, turned this interest into a vocation and passion. Since loudspeaker transducers are the weakest link in the chain, they offer the biggest challenges. The first break came when making drivers for Bob Carver's Sunfire. Thereafter TC Sounds also made drivers for Eclipse, Wisdom Audio, SVS, Tannoy, Aerial Acoustics, Krell, and BMW, and Sony recording studios, in addition to consulting for many manufacturers ranging from Bluetooth speakers to Planar headphones.
Speaker project must use at least one Dayton Audio driver in the project design. Any dollar amount or size.
Projects Less than $200 per pair to build ($ limit for drivers only). Speaker project can include any brand drivers.
Projects greater than $200 per pair to build ($ limit for drivers only). Speaker project can include any brand drivers.
Speaker Projects that are active or cannot be categorized in the other 2 areas.
There will be 3 winners for each category, 3rd place, 2nd place, and 1st place winner.
The judges will be using a form which will include the following areas that will be used to determine the winners of the Speaker Competition contest:
- Craftsmanship (visual)
- Originality / Design (visual)
- Tonal Balance (audio)
- Clarity (audio)
- Imaging (audio)
Each speaker will be evaluated and rated by the judges, then tabulated and results entered into a spreadsheet. These votes will be added with the project submitter votes to achieve winners in the categories listed above. From this sheet, total point winners will be selected in the categories listed above.
Judging sheets will be sent by mail to the designer's home address following the event. In the event of a tie within a class, judging will move to a head to head format with the ultimate winner selected by a show of hands.
Judging will be open to the public. Time permitting there will be an opportunity for some free listening after the judging is over.
* Please note:
Parts Express and Dayton Audio cannot be responsible for lost or stolen speakers however, every measure will be taken to protect your speakers from damage or theft.
Winning entries will be evaluated to be the possible featured project in an upcoming Parts Express flyer.
Entries will be returned to the owner by providing the speaker project's tag entry ticket.
If the speaker design has been entered in the open unlimited category, the same design without active components cannot be entered into any other category.
1st Place In Each Category Receives - $250 PE Bucks, a trophy, and a one-year subscription to audioXPRESS magazine provided by Audio Amateur
2nd Place In Each Category Receives - $100 PE Bucks
3rd Place In Each Category Receives - $50 PE Bucks
