La Dolce Audio

05/07/2026

LDA's first flat packs. This is a flat pack open baffles for the HL2 design as shown at Axpona and CAF. These are built to be easy and strong to get the most from the pair of 18" drivers mounted in the baffle. The large format horn/lens sit on top and the 360 degree radial on top of that. Soon to come will be crossovers, although they are very simple, nothing on the woofers, and one capactor each on the midrange and the tweeter, with an lpad on the midrange. For those that want to make their own baffles the design of the baffles are on the HL2 page, "baffles with horns."

We are a small company that prizes innovation above most everything else, if someone else does it better then unless we did it first we are not going to make and sell a product. We have enough repetition in this industry. We also cherish honesty, we won’t sell something that doesn’t make a sonic...

04/12/2026

These are our Horn Level 2 DIY loudspeaker designs. With two slot loaded 18" woofers reached down to 23hz, and two midrange horns covering from 500hz to 10k, they have a lambynth horn lens creating wider dispersion like a domed horn driver. And finally the 360 degree radial horn which makes use of the room to create layered images on the soundstage. Both the midrange lens and the radial tweeter are adjustable, so you can change their frequency profile. All three drivers make use of acoustical mechanical crossover aspects, so all that we have for a passive electronic crossover is a 30uF cap on the midrange horn, and a 2.2uF cap on the tweeter. Essentially between the electronic and acoustical mechanical it is a 2nd order crossover in the design. Oh and the 112dbs sensitive midrange is level matched with an lpad.

04/12/2026

Day two of Axpona 2026! Man, is there a lot of people here.

03/04/2026

I don't know how we did this it wasn't intentional sonically, but probably it is because of two things, minimal crossover and highly sensitive drivers. But between the LDA Babies, Compact Baffles/HL1's, and the HL2's, the main difference in sound has to do with the relaxed easiness of the presentation. It is minimally but there with the Babies, it pretty solid with the Compacts/HL2s, and at a very high level with the HL2s.

We sort of dialed this all in so that the detail retrieval is not that different, although that increases as well, but not all that much. At this point and I think it has to do with the sub woofer in the current Baby baffle configuration, the Babies seem to work better than the Compacts on a single 3 watt amplifiers. The drivers are 93dbs w/m sensitive, but the slot really increases their sensitivity to the range of +97dbs w/m. The 10" coaxial seems to respond even better to slot loading than the 15" coax driver.

The only other difference between the three baffle systems is the presentation, or soundstage and imaging. At this point, the babies are the king, because every seat in the listening area is sweet spot, and their soundstage is uber deep. But they do not seem to have the same soundstage. Although if that is a desire then the horn/lens provides that, and also a little more balance in the sound.

This week I will be working on different chokes and caps and values to see what is possible. I think different caps because of how they work damp how much power gets through to the tweeter. But when using the Deuland 2.2uF caps there is NO need for an lpad, if anything there could be a need for an Lpad on the 10" driver. We reduced the size of the cap because the 10" coaxial reaches much higher in response than the 15" coaxial driver, so this helps take some of this off the tweeter.

Still the most balance of the three speaker systems is the Compact/HL1 speakers. Probably because it is also the most conservative. The other two systems are more extreme in areas but offer more in specific things in the sonic landscape. We will be discontuing the Baby Bottoms in favor of the use of a single LDA18. Also the Babies in the new baffle design Dan made copying the HL2's with the wings reaches down to 40hz solid so there isn't a huge need for the LDA18 woofer, but it sure helps make a full range system. As usual if you have a subwoofer that will reach up to 100hz you could use that, but there might be a discontiunity in the sound.

02/08/2026

“The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.”

James Dyson

01/02/2026

This is our 360 degree radial horn, a pair costs around $500.00, the 1" compression driver screws into the top firing down, but has an open back as well. So on the horizontal axis the sound radiates 360 degrees, spreading sound in an omnidirectional way. The top reflects off the ceiling giving added imaging effects. In the past, a ceiling boundary reflex technology was developed, and you see it in the Atmos tech, but it has been around for a long time.
with ,
Using compression drivers allows us to make and provide the DIY community drivers that will work with practically any amplifier no matter how small the wattage. This allows greater dynamics, lower power compression, and more detail and less distortion caused by higher cone excursions like intermodulation distortion. This is all made possible by 3D printing technology. This omnidirectionala horn presents the sound in such a way that the listener can echo locate the images, giving greater separation and more space between images on the soundstage that is imbedded in the recording. Nothing is artificially created but retrieved from the original recording.

For information on echo location in human hearing and how open baffles make use of that in a room, see YouTube videos on Seigfried Linkwitz's talks. Linkwitz is considered the grandfather of open baffle speakers; he pioneered how they worked and developed the philosophies that all open baffle speakers are based upon today. There are various methods of approaching open baffles, and each manufacturer and developers of open baffles have their own design philosophy and methods. Because we develop DIY drivers and provide free designs for the drivers we design and make, we try to provide the greatest flexibility. We ma,e the drivers and designs, you make the baffles, then if you need more or less of anything, with our support means we can help you get what you need/want sonically.

01/02/2026

We use open back compression horn drivers of medium to low compression. They are designed to operate this way to where without backs they operate linearly, not all compression drivers can do this. This for open baffles helps match the other drivers, and get the soundstage effects what open baffles are known for.

For many years, box speaker manufacturers have known that having a rear-firing tweeter helps with imaging and soundstage. Open baffles as well as other planar speaker do this as well. The only difference with open baffles is that, with careful design, we can control the front and back waves, in where they cancel and how, and how much SPL comes out of each side. These variables give different effects, you can control the width and depth of the soundstage.

Using rear wings makes the front portion smaller but the driver acts as if the baffle were bigger lowering the frequency response. If you build your wings on hinges this helps you chose the cancelation points which also controls the way the speaker interacts with the room. Open baffles literally use the room to produce the sound, they make the entire room the speaker. So rather than fighting the room they use it so acoustic treatment is completely different with open baffles.

Similarly the lenses on the horns do these very same things. By experimenting and carefully tuning your open baffles to your room you can attain exactly the soundstage(depth/width) and image focus you desire. It also allows the end user to be able to tune the tone of their baffles, but there is a learning curve it takes a while to fully figure out what various adjustments make. But these DIY designs sound better than average if set up as the design dictates, then the end user can adjust things and dial things in specific sonic ways later.

12/30/2025

Well enough people have experienced these horns, that we can now say that it isn't just the room, and it isn't amps or drivers, but the lens that is producing this very interesting imaging effect. And it isn't just me, I thought it must be my hearing or all in my head, as I had never heard it before.

We have two lenses one for 1" compression horn drivers, and another for 2". The formula is simple. Do not mount them on a baffle but keep them open sitting on top of a baffle. Hang the lens louvers over the front edge of the baffle. And it helps to use as low noise of an amplifier as possible, and other speaker parts so you can have the least parts in the crossover as possible, or simply go with an active crossover of good enough quality.

The imaging effect we are talking about is sound coming from behind you. As of yet the images come from behind and slightly off to one side, or directly behind one shoulder. I haven't heard any images come from directly behind but slightly off to one side. Also on some songs a wave of sound rushes from the front of the room to behind the listening position. I am not sure if this is suppose to happen with many recordings, but it does. Also you can hear echos coming off the ceiling and distant walls on each side. As of yet the echo effect hasn't come from behind the listening position. You truly get a sense that you are in a large hall at times. This was not an intention of these horn lens designs but somehow they do it, and I have not heard it from other types of speakers yet, but I am sure it is possible. It is interesting parlor trick but doesn't add anything to the performance or the tone of the speaker/system.

11/28/2025

A video we made with AI based upon an AES paper. We make current-drive single ended class A pentode tube amplifiers. And we make current drive friendly open baffle speakers/designs for the DIY community. Make our speakers, buy our amplifiers, and you have a combination few experience. Here in this video is the technology that makes this possible.

This video explains how and why Current-Drive of loudspeakers can be better. We also sell DIY open baffle speakers that pair well with current drive amplifi...

11/23/2025