harman/kardon is a division of Harman International Industries

Harman International Industries

Harman International Industries is an American-based international audio and infotainment equipment company. The company designs, manufactures and markets audio and infotainment products for the car, the home, theatres and venues, as well as electronics for audio professionals...

 and manufactures home and car audio equipment

Audio equipment

A piece of audio equipment is any device designed principally to reproduce, record or process sound. This includes microphones, radio receivers, AV receivers, CD players, tape recorders, amplifiers, mixing consoles, effects units and loudspeakers....

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Founded in 1953 by Dr. Sidney Harman

Sidney Harman

Sidney Harman was an American businessman active in education, government, industry, and publishing. He was the Chairman Emeritus of Harman International Industries, Inc. Harman served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce in 1977 and 1978. As of August 2010 Harman was also the publisher of...

 and Bernard Kardon — two men with a deep interest in music and the arts — the company helped create the high-fidelity audio industry. Their first product was an FM

Frequency modulation

In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...

 tuner. One year after its founding, Harman Kardon introduced the world's first true high-fidelity receiver, the Festival D1000. This monaural

Monaural

Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...

 unit was not only aimed at non-technical consumers but also incorporated many now-familiar features such as a tuner, component control unit and amplifier on a single chassis. In 1958, Harman Kardon introduced the world's first stereo receiver, the Festival TA230, once again aimed at non-technical users in an attempt to make high-fidelity widely available. Stereo sound was achieved by using one channel from the AM band, and one channel from the FM band. The first true FM Multiplex Stereo Receiver was sold by HH Scott in 1961 with introduction of the Model 350 tuner.

In 2010, Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

 began equipping selected versions of their Mini and Satellite notebooks with Harman Kardon speakers built-in.

Citation XX

In the late 1970s, the Harman Kardon Citation XX power amplifier was called "the world's best-sounding power amplifier" by the editors of The Audio Critic, a magazine published in the USA. The amplifier was designed by Dr. Matti Otala who discovered transient intermodulation distortion (TIM) in 1970 and worked to mitigate its effects in the following years. The Citation XX was an at-any-cost project with the single goal of the best possible measurements of output signal, and the best perceived sound.

SoundSticks

The Harman Kardon iSub 2000 Subwoofer and SoundSticks were originally introduced at the July 2000 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Harman Kardon partnered with Apple to design and manufacture the Harman Kardon iSub 2000 Subwoofer and SoundSticks.

Apple undertook the industrial design and mechanical engineering with the goal of having the product look like part of the Apple product family. This product won an Industrial Design Excellence Awards

Industrial Design Excellence Awards

The International Design Excellence Awards is an award program previously co-sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine, and in 2010 Fast Company magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America...

 gold award and was featured on the cover of I.D. magazine

I.D. (magazine)

I.D. was a magazine covering the art, business and culture of design. It was published eight times a year by F+W Media....

. The SoundSticks II were a minor upgrade, with the addition of capacitive volume control buttons and a 3.5mm mini-jack input replacing the previous USB input. The SoundSticks III were a further update changing the styling slightly using black highlights and white lighting to match the new iMacs, instead of green and blue of previous models (original SoundSticks and SoundSticks II respectively).

Car Audio

Harman Kardon is a supplier of audio equipment to a variety of vehicle manufacturers including, BMW

BMW

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...

, Land Rover

Land Rover

Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...

, Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...

, MINI

MINI (BMW)

Mini is a British automotive marque owned by BMW which specialises in small cars.Mini originated as a specific vehicle, a small car originally known as the Morris Mini-Minor and the Austin Seven, launched by the British Motor Corporation in 1959, and developed into a brand encompassing a range of...

, Saab

Saab

Saab AB is a Swedish aerospace and defence company, founded in 1937. From 1947 to 1990 it was the parent company of automobile manufacturer Saab Automobile, and between 1968 and 1995 the company was in a merger with commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania, known as Saab-Scania.-History:"Svenska...

, Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...

 and Subaru

Subaru

; is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries .Subaru is internationally known for their use of the boxer engine layout popularized in cars by the Volkswagen Beetle and Porsche 911, in most of their vehicles above 1500 cc as well as...

. Harman also market in car entertainment under the Mark Levinson

Mark Levinson

The company Mark Levinson, now owned by Madrigal Audio Laboratories specializes in high-end digital audio processors, integrated amplifiers, power amplifiers, pre amplifiers, and CD players...

 brand for Lexus

Lexus

is the luxury vehicle division of Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation. First introduced in 1989 in the United States, Lexus is now sold globally and has become Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. The Lexus marque is marketed in over 70 countries and territories worldwide, and has...

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