Audio Xpress is a magazine with articles about DIY audio projects. They are starting to publish digitally, and making the new digital issues available for free for a period of time, I don't know how long. Good articles and good ads for vendors catering to DIY audiophiles.
Check it out:
http://www.audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax/issue/310/
Last month's is available as well
http://www.audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax210/
Great Idea they should do well.
charles
April issues out today. Spring is almost here! :thumb:
http://www.audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax/issue/410/
May, 2010
http://www.audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax/issue/510/
checked it out. Love the mag. Thanks.
charles
Nice layout too and the adds are a nice addition because they are full of tweaks for geeks!
The ads are always my favorite part.
Quote from: richidoo on April 22, 2010, 05:03:20 AM
The ads are always my favorite part.
No, I think "free" is the best part. :D
All kidding aside, This is a nicely written, professionally done publication. I am very happy to see something of this caliber being done on the net. I am afraid that something like this will be the only long term future for the high end audio press. The set up costs for small press runs are huge and as people in the hobby start jumping ship for other hobbies (like Home Theater?) and readership shrinks, print magazine could soon end up at the point where putting out a paper magazine becomes cost prohibitive. Online publications may soon be all we have left. But as with most online business models, the biggest challenge is to develop enough cash flow to keep the operation going. With all the ads these guys seem to have figured this part out. It is also nice to see an online publication that is obviously being run my some people with significant experience in the publishing business. So many of the online publications you see out there are amateur operations being done by hobbyists. Not that there is anything wrong with a hobbyist publication from a journalistic point of view, but many of them fade away when the original pubishers find that they are no longer fun to play with. What excites me the most about Audio Xpress is that they seem to have put together a viable business plan that can hopefully a)set them up for long term success and b) provide a model for others to successfully enter the online publishing arena with more high end audio mags, thus insuring us as audiophiles with long term alternatives for getting information on our hobby. :thumb:
Quote from: tmazz on April 22, 2010, 05:53:20 AM
Quote from: richidoo on April 22, 2010, 05:03:20 AM
The ads are always my favorite part.
No, I think "free" is the best part. :D
... snip
Not sure it's supposed to be "Free". I was looking through the April issue...
http://www.audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax/issue/410/
and noticed an add on page 18 that mentioned subscriptions are $25. I checked the link...
http://www.audioxpress.com/magsdirx/ax/axsub.htm
and sure enough paper is $37/year and digital is $25/year.
Nice mag just the same.
I get the print mag, have subscribed for a few years. They also do speaker builder, voice coil, and another one I can't remember, along with a lot of books, software and PCBs. They've seen around forever, almost literally.
They took a big hit in the recent collapse of consumer confidence in our dear leader. The magazine used to be 70+ pages, now barely 40. Mostly big advertisers are left, a lot of the small timers have split. I think the online thing is a cost saving measure, since print and distribution is so expensive. And it also allows new readers to discover, and maybe subscribe. I would like to believe that they are the model for the future, but i fear they are heading in the opposite direction. Issues are still getting smaller each month, and this months articles were pretty boring compared to the usual.
Sensible Sound is another magazine that bit the dust last year. They were supposed to have merges with AudioXpress, but the size of Xpress doesn't seem to indicate that. Sensible Sound website is still up, so who knows. They aren't returning emails. I liked that one even better. I used to buy it on the newsstand until 2 years ago. I hope they all make a strong comeback.
Bummer, I mistakenly thought this was a new gig. :(
They seem to be trying to hang in there, still being creative and making new content and publishing every month. So let's hope it's all up from here!
If there is a bright side to the current economic conditions, it's that people will begin to emote again, making better music, leading to people wanting to hear it better... and the hifi industry will re-emerge quickly with lots of cool products to offer. It'll be a while but maybe worth the wait. And who knows, maybe some lessons will be learned about greedy lawyers running the US... nah, that's just crazy talk. ;)
June!
http://audioamateurinc.com/digital/ax/issue/610/