OHIO Speaker Design Competition 2024

[a4eaudio]

Did you who were there have a good time? Any highlights?

In general I think most people that go have a great time. There are a lot of "regulars" who go every year. Basically a bunch of speaker nerds hanging out and talking with other speaker nerds and listening to speakers.

But where is the classical music with lots of dynamics and instruments in the orchestra?

There has been classical music in the past. From my understanding, the judges submit several tracks that they like and the organizers then choose which ones to use and in which categories. There are some tracks that have been used more than once, as Jerry McNutt and Vance Dickason are almost always judges and have some clear favorites.

The classical track I remember was Respighi's Pines of Rome.

 

[a4eaudio]

You who visit these DIY events. What was used to get the speakers going? Any common thread? Is it like at commercial HiFi fairs where the exhibitors are rigidly conservative with vinyl and tube amplifiers in abundance?
Or are the demonstrators more modern at these DIY fairs and plug in lossless streaming/files together with class D amplifier that power up the speakers?

I understand that record players and tube amplifiers are used at commercial HiFi fairs from a purely... commercial perspective. There are quite a few visitors who are willing to spend a good chunk of money on such things. BUT the commercial dynamic is not present at a DIY fair, hence my question above.

So a couple of points.

There are several DIY events per year. Most of these are put on by DIY people in the local city and use whatever amp and front end they have/prefer. I recently saw that there are events in Arizona and Washington state, but these are very far from the Midwest and east coast. In the Midwest there are usually annual events in Fort Wayne, Indiana (late April), Detroit, Michigan (in mid to late September, sponsored by CSS, which is owned by DIY guys), and Iowa (October). There are infrequently events in South Dakota and Kentucky. At these events it is just a bunch of speaker people listening to speakers. The event usually has 5 minutes of "house tracks" for a baseline to compare all the speakers and people are welcome to bring 5 minutes of their own demo tracks. The event in Indiana has an annual "theme" competition that is a pretty informal competition that takes about an hour and a half of the weekend, voting is by a show of hands, and the "theme" is some sort of challenge to speaker designers rather than just the best speaker.

The Speaker Design Competition (SDC)(formerly Midwest Audio Fest) is sponsored by Parts Express and held in Springboro, Ohio (outside of Dayton, about an hour north of Cincinnati). This is not a get together to just listen to speakers with a little competition sprinkled in, but rather the whole event is the speaker competition. They use an Emotiva amp, but I'm not sure what else. Parts Express does a great job hosting the event, brining it pizza, and all of the employees are pretty friendly Midwesterners. However, it is not all altruistic. The aim of course is to promote the hobby of speaker building so that Parts Express can sell more stuff and make money. The winning speakers are often featured in their catalog and they encourage people to post their builds in the "Project Gallery" on the PE website. This is also why they include the categories regarding craftsmanship and originality, whereas the other DIY events often have plenty of speakers in raw, unfinished MDF cabinets - because at those it is just about sound quality and hanging out.

Most people that go to SDC are also going to hang out and enjoy speakers. If you win, it is "nice", but most people are not overly invested in winning the competition. (Although, as you can imagine, there are a few exceptions.)