In the middle and late 1990s, when the famous American Harman International Company reorganized Harman Kardon Company, it decided to position JBL products as home audio. When JBL's civilian products flocked to the global market, the real JBL kingdom gradually disappeared. JBL(JBL PRO), which once created miracles of 4343, 4344, 4425 and K2, is gone. These products have become the treasures of global audio enthusiasts because they are out of print. When we bid farewell to expert JBL, we should write a eulogy for it to celebrate its past.
Throughout the 1970s and 1990s, almost no brand of speakers could really match it.
JBL's production base is in California, USA, and all the units are developed and produced by ourselves. The founder of JBL is James Barrow Lansing, a famous American sound master, who was born in Illinois, USA. 1902. I worked as a technician in radio station in my early years, and started to produce 5-inch and 6.5-inch speakers for radio station in 1927.
1933 At the invitation of MGM Film Company, the first cinema speaker system ICONIC was developed.
JBL Company was established in Los Angeles from 65438 to 0946, mainly developing and producing advanced speaker units. In 1960s, we mainly developed and produced D series advanced household speakers, especially stereo.
1963 began to produce LANCER series advanced venue speaker system, supporting transistor power amplifier;
197 1 year, JBL published the first recording studio monitor 43 10, and since then, it has been in full swing and started to March into the cutting-edge field;
1975, JBL published 43 15 monitor speaker system, which used to make program speakers for 70% of the radio stations in the world.
At 198 1, JBL released the 4330 field monitoring system. From then on, recording and monitoring speakers are divided into two categories: production monitoring and on-site monitoring. This is a brand-new concept, which makes JBL become the super authority of the global recording monitoring system.
1982, JBL published "Speaker Emperor" 4344, which is a huge on-site monitoring system. The sound is relaxed and elegant, and the frequency band is extremely wide. After listening to 4344, whether the ear will be "poisoned" is uncertain for other speaker systems. Up to now, there are five pairs of 4344 in Shanghai, two of which are in Shanghai Radio Station. However, 1992, one of them was burned, and 1 pair changed hands in private hands. 1 pair was sung in Shanghai company, and 1 pair is still on sale in Luomei city, with a price of 654.38+ten thousand yuan.
In 1982, JBL also published the standard recording production monitoring series 44 10, including 44 10, 4410 and 44 12. Throughout the 1990s, almost all radio stations and record companies in the world used 44 10 series as the first recording monitor.
1985, JBL released the epoch-making titanium dome tweeter and 4425 live monitoring system. 4425 once dominated the global audio fever market 15 years, and became the reference system of global audio fever, its two round horns. Become a symbol that enthusiasts will never forget.
1986, JBL published the standard live monitoring speaker 43 12, which was widely used by radio stations and record companies at or above the provincial level all over the world, including China, to make a synthetic monitoring system.
In 1989, JBL announced a "dumbbell" on-site monitoring speaker system K2. This is a brand-new production concept, which is still imitated by many civil speakers. Two bass and one treble in the middle form a virtual point sound source. There are many models of K2, the most famous of which is K2 S5500 published by 1992. This system sold for 30,000 yuan in Shanghai 1995, and now there is a couple waiting for customers in Luomei, asking for 60,000 yuan.
1992, JBL released the last on-site monitoring systems 4206 and 4208, which refreshed the new era of speaker production with a brand-new production concept of curved sound insulation board. The arc-shaped sound insulation board makes the voice coils of all units on a horizontal plane, which minimizes the phase distortion and makes the stereo effect more complete. The design concept of 4200 series is placed on both sides of the mixer, so the sound engineer can listen at close range, so it is also the most suitable for advanced civil use in JBL monitoring family. 4206 and 4208 are still sold in Shanghai, but in the past 10 years, the price has increased by 30%. Now the price of Shanghai bookshelf 4208 has reached 5200 yuan per pair.
1997, JBL decided to gradually stop producing professional speaker systems and enter the civilian product market. The profit of civilian products is too high. Although JBL's professional speakers are widely used by professional audio units all over the world, the profits obtained are less than 1/3 of the European civil market. JBL handed over the professional market, and German, Swiss and Japanese brands began to replace JBL, competing to create advanced products.
The name of JBL Company comes from the acronym J.B.L of its founder James Bloch Lansing. This obsessive genius who may suffer from bipolar disorder has created almost everything he can imagine, even his name.
Lansing was born in June 1902 65438+ 10/4 in Machuping County, Illinois, USA. His parents were Henry Martini and Grace James Martini respectively. Located in the north of St. Louis, Machuping County is the hometown of agriculture and mining, and Henry Martini is a mining engineer.
The Martini family has *** 14 children, and James ranks ninth, which is very similar to his father's personality. Engineering and machinery fascinated young James. It is said that he made a small transmitter at the age of 12, and the signal strength was enough to interfere with local radio stations.
James finished junior high school and high school in Springfield, Illinois, and later studied in a small local business school, but never got a formal engineering degree. Shortly after he became an adult, he added his middle name Bullough and changed his surname to Lansing.
In the early 1920s, he became an automobile mechanic. 1After her mother died at the end of 924, Lansing moved to Salt Lake City. The city is obviously full of opportunities for this ambitious and enterprising young man. Knowing and loving electric motors, he soon became an engineer in a local radio station.
However, Lansing is not satisfied with this. Shortly after coming to Salt Lake City, he set up Lansing Manufacturing Company to produce radio speakers. Before long, Lansing hired an entrepreneur named Ken Decker to manage the financial and marketing affairs of the enterprise, so that he could concentrate on the technical field.
However, the electronics manufacturing center in the southwestern United States at that time was not Salt Lake City, but Los Angeles. Lansing then moved the company to Los Angeles at the beginning of 1927.
Welcome to Hollywood
Lansing just caught up with an opportunity. 192710/On October 6th, Warner Bros. Film Company released its first audio film Jazz Singer. This movie caused a sensation. Suddenly, all studios in Hollywood need to use audio equipment in the shooting stage and the movie network they own.
Unfortunately, the technology of talking movies that just started is very elementary. For Douglas Shearer, MGM's chief sound engineer, this technology is even more fragile and embarrassing. MGM is the largest and most prestigious studio in Hollywood, specializing in producing various musicals and other films that need a lot of sound reproduction.
After a professional introduction, Shearer learned that James Lansing was the best person to improve the sound effect of the film. From 1933 to 1935, Shiller cooperated with Bluestar to develop a loudspeaker system to improve the sound effect of the cinema. This system developed by Shearer and Lansing has excellent performance. In 1936, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded it the technical excellence award.
get into trouble
Lansing Manufacturing Company developed rapidly until Ken Dacker died in a plane crash. Dacker was a reserve officer of the US Army Air Force and was killed in the air operation of 1939.
Lansing Manufacturing Company is teetering because it has lost the assistance of a business genius like Dacker. By 194 1, the founder Lansing could only continue to operate by selling the company.
Altec Services is a company that provides maintenance and repair for cinema audio systems. At that time, I needed a source of parts, so I bought Lansing Manufacturing Company in February of 194 165438, and the disclosed price was 50,000 USD (about 730,000 USD in 2009).
Altak came to the rescue.
The new company was renamed Altec Lansing Corporation, and James Lansing served as the vice president of the engineering department, thus freeing up hands to develop new technologies. Lansing and his engineering team developed a series of products, including A-4 speaker system, which later became the standard for cinemas.
However, Lansing is used to running the enterprise in his own way, which conflicts with the management mode of Altec Lansing. His contract was five years, and after the contract expired, he left the company.
1 946 65438+1October1,Lansing established Lansing Audio Co., Ltd. Altec Lansing is quite dissatisfied with this, and the company thinks that the word Lansing obviously violates Altec Lansing's rights to this word. Soon, LSI printed the name of the founder on the new logo, and the company was finally renamed James B Lansing Audio Co., Ltd.
JBL
Soon after, Lansing began to develop speakers for cinemas. His first batch of parts were completely copied according to his research results in Altec Bluestar, and even the model name was not changed.
Lansing is an outstanding engineer with an eye for design and material innovation, but his enterprise management ability is very lacking. His company continued to lose money, and by the end of 1949, the accumulated liabilities had reached about $20,000 (about180,000 in 2009).
Under the impact of several consecutive economic depressions, Lansing witnessed the continuous decline of his beloved career, and his heart was completely desperate, so the founder of JBL chose to commit suicide on September 24, 1949.
JBL after death
Before committing suicide, Lansing bought a life insurance policy worth $65,438+00,000, of which one third was left to his wife and the other two thirds to the company. The company's financial director used this fund (about 60,000 US dollars in 2009) to gradually make the company pay off its debts. In the early 1950s, Thomas bought shares in the company inherited by Mrs Lansing and became the sole owner of the company.
Thomas knew that he had a huge fortune, and that was the reputation of James Lansing. Although Lansing is heavily in debt, he still has high prestige in developing first-class audio and electronic equipment. Thomas launched a series of speakers with James Lansing's signature, aiming at creating excellent design and manufacturing brands.
However, a series of speakers alone is not enough to keep the company running. Altec Lansing has issued a statement against Thomas using the valuable name Lansing. After a long negotiation, Thomas finally agreed to stop using this word. Since then, James B Lansing Audio Company has called himself and his products JBL.
Consumer and professional fields
Thomas tried to keep his company up to date. After adding stereo to the cinema, Thomas signed a contract with the cinema audio manufacturers Ampex and Westrex, and JBL designed new components for them.
In the early 1950s, high-quality consumer audio equipment was born. The word "hi-fi" began to appear in American vocabulary, and some popular magazines began to set up picture columns about this new record player. In order to develop this new market, Thomas hired William Hartsfield, an industrial designer, who developed a speaker, and naturally named it Hartsfield. This loudspeaker has been a great success, and JBL has become a heavyweight in the field of home audio.
1957, engineer Richard Ranger and designer Arnold Wolf *** developed an excellent sound system Paragon. Paragon is placed in an elegant solid wood cabinet, which is not only a superior record player, but also a fashionable living room furniture, and is favored by consumers. Paragon has sold well for 25 years, which is enough to prove the public's love for it. With the increasing strength of the company in the field of home speakers and other components, JBL has extended its tentacles to the so-called professional audio field. In 1950s, Leo Fender, the pioneer of electric guitar, declared that JBL's D 130 speaker was the ideal choice for his own creation. Therefore, guitarists all over the world have inserted D 130 speakers into their guitars.
A few years later, in the early 1960s, JBL began to cooperate with Congressional Records (the birthplace of the Beatles and Boy Band on the Beach) to develop monitors for recording studios. The developed 4320 system is very successful. Today, JBL's professional audio department is still developing parts for recording studios around the world.
Driven by these successes, William Thomas formally established JBL Professional Audio Department in the late 1960s, which operated as an independent department of the company. The consumer audio department continues to exist, referred to as JBL.
JBL and Harman join hands.
Sidney harman is the founder of Harman Kardon (the other founder is Bernard Kardon). The company is as innovative as JBL; For example, Harman Kardon once developed the first stereo radio.
However, Harman hopes to become more powerful in the field of sound. After years of accumulation, Harman Kardon has a strong economic strength, which led Harman to acquire jervis Company, a small group company. Jervis made an offer to JBL.
After 20 years of building, JBL has become one of the most successful companies in the audio field, and William Thomas is also willing to sell JBL in his hand. The transaction was completed on 1969. Now, JBL belongs to jervis, which eventually changed its name to Harman International Industrial Company. Arnold Wolf, the designer of Paragon (and JBL logo), is the president of JBL.
Prosperous years
Under Harman's leadership, JBL has gradually taken shape: an audio manufacturer that applies the expertise in the field of cinema and studio audio systems to the field of home audio. 1969, the company applied its 43 10 and 431display (popular in the recording studio) technology to the L 100 speaker of the home system. L 100 was a great success, with sales reaching more than 100000 sets in 1970s.
In addition to using the existing technology, JBL made a series of innovations in 1970s and 1980s. For example, in the mid-1970s, JBL engineers developed Symmetric Field Geometry, which is a loudspeaker device that can reduce sound wave distortion. A few years later, the company's engineers developed Bi-radial &; Reg speaker technology can improve the sound effect of multiple frequencies.
At the same time, the global network established by Harman International helped JBL acquire customers who might not have bought JBL products at all before. The company's expansion in Japan is particularly strong. For example, since the 1980s, the prestigious K2, the powerful indoor leading product Everest DD6600 and other ultra-high-end speakers have been highly respected in Japanese audio magazines and have also achieved good sales in Japanese stores.
The present situation and future of JBL
For decades, sidney harman has been leading the development of Harman International Industry. In May 2007, just before his 88th birthday, Harman hired Dinesh Paliwal as the CEO of Harman International.
Paliwal is an engineer with degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Miami, Ohio. Before joining Harman International, he was the president of ABB Limited, a global leader in power and automation technology. About a year later, Palival succeeded sidney harman as the chairman of the company.
Engineers, executives and other employees of JBL are watching these changes with great interest, but these changes have never changed their focus-producing excellent audio products. JBL cooperated with Roxy, a sportswear manufacturer, to produce color headphones, which created a new fashion trend. JBL has been designing speakers and players for new entertainment products, such as HDTV, Blu-ray Disc technology and Apple's latest iPod and iPhone models. Not only that, JBL has been paying attention to various other new opportunities.
What exactly do these opportunities mean? We can't disclose it here (this is the confidential information of the company after all), but it is clear that JBL has long been famous for its high-quality technology and technological innovation, and its employees have also inherited this tradition. We firmly believe that James Lansing will be proud of us.