Usher Audio Technology Factory Tour, Part I

John, head honcho of CMY Audio & Visual recently made a visit to Usher Audio Technology's speaker and electronics factory in Taiwan. He has kindly allowed me to share a view of the impressive factory with you, our dear readers, through the perspective of his camera view finder.

Usher's factory is predominantly a full fledged speaker manufacturer, making every part including the dynamic drivers in house, except for the wood work, which like most other speaker manufacturers have been out sourced to an external professional carpenter outfit operating in China.

As Usher also manufactures a range of high quality amplifiers and CD players, we get to see that side of the operations too, in the later parts of this factory tour. Last but not least, we will also get to know about Usher's R&D facilities, QC laboratory, and two acoustically treated listening theaters.

Let's start the tour!

The main office building and entrance of Usher Audio Technology.

The business like main foyer & reception area.

The admin and sales office area. 

Now comes the interesting part, the in house dynamic driver assembly area! This is where the speaker's magnet assembly is formed.

A closer look at the coiling of the magnet assembly.

The semi finished item is then put on an assembly line for further integration with the rest of the speaker parts. 

Such as the speaker's stamped spider/basket structure. 

This is where the magnet assembly is joined to the spider.

The computer aided assembly line continues.......

Assembly of the voice coil. Note the voice coil assembly at the bottom right of the picture.

Once the voice coil is formed and soldered, it's ready for.....

The speaker cone/suspension surround assembly.

The gluing process of the speaker cone/suspension assembly to spider/basket. Note the four glue tanks at the bottom of the assembly line, indicating and compound like glue formula for extra durability.

The finished drivers will be tested.

A batch of Usher's latest Diamond DMD tweeters also awaiting testing. 

Driver test station, note the smaller cut out on the right is for testing tweeters, while the bigger one on the left is for testing larger dynamic cones drivers.

The test sensor inside the mounting cut out.

I've been told that the driver's linearity, impedance, phase and sensitivity are tested here.

Tested drivers are then graded and placed on this tray, ready for use in the complete speaker assembly. Drivers that do not meet specifications are sent back to a reworking area, or to be discarded.

The tested drivers are put in to the speaker boxes in this assembly line.

Next, we continue our visit to Usher Audio Technology's anechoic chamber, R&D and QC laboratory. Stay tuned!