The book "High Quality Horn Loudspea
ker Systems" by Bjørn Kolbrek and Thomas Dunker was released in November 2019. This website will keep you up to date with availibility and distributors, and we also provide extra material and errata. The book is now in its second print run, and most of the errors from the first print run have been corrected.
Currently the book is available from Lean Business Audio and Parts Express.
After a long process, Parts Express is now stocking our book! The book has not quite arrived in their stock, but should be there soon, and you can already pre-order.
Mike Klasco has written a very positive review in audioXpress. (Please note that NTNU is in Norway, and that Bjørn started working for Celestion right after finishing his PhD.)
When we discussed the distribution of the book after it was printed, we settled on Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), as this would simplify the process, we thought. And we expected Amazon to know how to pack and ship books.
This turned out not to be the case. There have been several reports of books damaged in transport due to insufficient packaging. This is mainly for shipments to Germany and overseas. Unfortunately we are not able to influence how Amazon pack the books (when asking about if this was possible on the Amazon Seller Central forum, some people though it was quite hillarious...).
We have therefore decided to end our Amazon sales when the current stock at the Amazon warehouse runs out, and we are looking for other distributors. Especially in the US. (If you are interesed in becoming a distributor, you can contact us here). The problem of insufficient packaging is also one of the reasons we are not selling on Amazon.com.
In any case, the book will also be available from Lean Business Audio, and the list of distributors will be updated as they become available.
We apologize for the inconvenience - we know Amazon is quick and easy, and have cheap shipping. However, it looks like you get what you pay for.
First of all, we apologize for the issue.
If only the dust jacket is damaged, we will send you a new one for free, please contact us through Amazon. If the book is damaged, please organize a refund/return with Amazon, and we recommend to get a new copy from Lean instead.
The book is now finally available on Amazon! At the moment only on Amazon.co.uk.
It is also available from Lean Business Audio. If you buy from them from outside Europe, you should contact them to get an accurate shipping quote.
I have just returned from New York City and the AES Convention today. Bjørn and I gave a presentation called "Compression Driver DNA - Origin and Seeds of Progress" on Friday which was well received. It summarized some pre-history and history of the W.E. 555 and 594 drivers and presented some previously unseen documents from experimental work on these devices at the Bell Telephone Labs. We did two book signings (Wednesday and Friday afternoons) which attracted quite a few interesting people, many of them very excited about the book - and we sold the first 33 copies of the book at the Convention. We also anticipate two or three published reviews to result from this trip.
Certainly many of you will want to know what happens with the Amazon launch which was scheduled to be on the 15th of October. We are truly sorry to admit we did not quite make it to the 15th, because of Amazon logistics. They would simply not accept the delivery of our pallets of books until a scheduled time on the 28th of October. As the book is "self published" by first time book authors some such unexpected issues turn out to be inevitable.
It therefore looks like the sale on www.amazon.co.uk will not begin until the very end of October.
Meanwhile, we have been approached by a UK based speaker related web shop, Lean Business Audio, that also wants to sell our book. We are about to make arrangements for this, but it's doubtful that the book will be available for sale there much earlier than on amazon. Updates on this will follow once we know more.
The fourth print run has been delivered, and this time we managed to get it done before we ran out of stock, so hopefully nobody noticed. We now should have plenty stock for your Christmas shopping!
The books were actually delivered at the end of June, but due to a malware attack on this site we weren't able to publish it. We sincerely hope nobody were affected by the malware, our web host seems to have taken the site down fairly quickly. After a bit of work we managed to recreate everything, so the site should be safe now; the old install is completely gone.
The second print run recently sold out, but don't worry! A third print run is under way with delivery to the warehouse 16 May. For customers buying from Lean Business Audio the book should be available shortly after that, for Parts Express customers it will take a little longer as we need to ship stock over.
We have received the new batch of books from the printer, they are now currently in our warehouse, ready to be sent out to our distributors. Lean Business Audio is local and should be able to get books on short notice, so if they haven't updated their website, send them a message and let them know you want to buy a book. It will take a little longer to get stock to Parts Express as we need to ship overseas, but things are moving.
The corrected manuscript has been submitted to the printer, and we have received a proof of some of the pages to make sure the images print well. As some of you may have noticed, some of the pictures in the first printing were very dark, and this should hopefully now have been corrected.
The printer informed us that due to Brexit and Covid, some print companies have been forced to downsize or close, so there's currently a shortage of print capacity in the UK. CPI Print, which we use, also have an unprecedented volume of work. The lead time for the book is therefore longer than anticipated. It looks like production will not start up until mid or late January, with additional lead times in order to get the books out to Lean and Parts Express. We are sorry we weren't able to get the books ready for Christmas, but at least it's moving forward!
We will keep you updated.
The book is now nearly sold out. The last few copies are on their way to Parts Express now and should be available on their website soon.
Thanks to everyone who bought a copy!
The stock ran out quicker than expected, but don't worry: we plan to do a new print run soon. We wanted to correct some typos first, but these will just be minor corrections of mistakes. The content will be the same as the firt printing, and all important (factual and mathematical) corrections will be listed in the Errata section on this website.