Harman

The parent company of half your favorite audio brands

Harman International isn't a brand you listen to — it's the empire behind half the brands you already love. JBL, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, AKG, Infinity, Revel, Lexicon, Crown — all of them live under the Harman roof. Sidney Harman didn't just build a company; he built a constellation of audio legends, and in doing so shaped more of what the world hears than any single person in the history of sound reproduction.

History

Sidney Harman was not your typical audio entrepreneur. He was an industrialist, a diplomat (he served as Deputy Secretary of Commerce under Jimmy Carter), a philanthropist, and the owner of Newsweek magazine. But before all of that, he was an engineer who believed that high-fidelity sound reproduction was not a luxury but a fundamental enhancement to human life. In 1953, he and Bernard Kardon — a fellow engineer with whom he'd worked at the David Bogen Company — founded Harman Kardon with a simple mission: build audio equipment that regular people could afford and that actually sounded good.

The first Harman Kardon product, the Festival D1000, was the world's first high-fidelity receiver. Before the D1000, serious audio enthusiasts assembled their systems from separate components — a tuner here, a preamplifier there, a power amplifier in the corner. Harman and Kardon integrated these functions into a single chassis without sacrificing audio quality, essentially inventing the modern receiver category. It was a democratizing act, making high-fidelity sound accessible to people who didn't want to become electrical engineers just to listen to music.

Bernard Kardon left the company early on, but Sidney Harman's ambition only grew. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Harman Kardon built a reputation for elegant, well-engineered products that punched well above their price class. The Citation series of amplifiers and preamplifiers, designed by Stewart Hegeman, achieved near-legendary status among audiophiles. These were beautifully built, conservatively rated amplifiers that could drive virtually any loudspeaker with grace and authority.

But Harman's true genius was strategic. He understood that the audio industry was fragmented — dozens of small, excellent companies, each brilliant in their niche but lacking the resources to compete globally. Beginning in the 1970s, Harman began acquiring these companies, building a portfolio that reads like a hall of fame of audio engineering. JBL, the legendary professional and consumer loudspeaker company, came aboard in 1969. Infinity Systems, pioneers of planar magnetic and EMIT tweeter technology, followed. AKG, the Austrian microphone and headphone manufacturer, brought European engineering prestige. And Mark Levinson, the ultra-high-end electronics brand, gave Harman a presence at the absolute summit of audiophile aspiration.

The acquisition strategy was shrewd in another way: Harman generally allowed its subsidiaries to maintain their distinct engineering cultures and brand identities. JBL continued to be JBL — bold, dynamic, professional. Mark Levinson continued to be Mark Levinson — meticulous, uncompromising, expensive. AKG continued to be AKG — precise, analytical, Austrian. The parent company provided manufacturing scale, global distribution, and research resources, while the individual brands retained the soul that made them special.

Harman's research division deserves particular mention. Under the leadership of Dr. Floyd Toole, Harman International conducted some of the most rigorous and influential psychoacoustic research in the history of audio. Toole's work on loudspeaker measurement, room acoustics, and listener preference testing didn't just improve Harman's products — it fundamentally changed how the entire industry understands what makes a speaker sound good. His research proved, through thousands of controlled blind listening tests, that listeners consistently prefer speakers with smooth, flat on-axis response and well-controlled directivity. This wasn't opinion. It was science, and it gave every Harman subsidiary a shared foundation of acoustic truth.

Samsung acquired Harman International in 2017 for $8 billion, recognizing that the future of automotive and consumer electronics would be defined by audio and connectivity. The Harman portfolio — now including connected car systems, professional audio for venues and cinemas, and a vast range of consumer products — touches more human ears than perhaps any other audio organization on earth.

Notable Products

Harman Kardon Citation Series

The Citation amplifiers and preamplifiers, designed by Stewart Hegeman in the 1960s, were among the first products to prove that Harman Kardon could compete with the most prestigious names in high-end audio. The Citation II power amplifier, a vacuum tube design, delivered 60 watts per channel with distortion figures that solid-state amplifiers of the era couldn't match. But it was the sound that mattered — warm, authoritative, spacious, with a midrange purity that tube enthusiasts still rhapsodize about. The Citation series established the template for Harman Kardon's design philosophy: engineering substance wrapped in visual elegance.

The Harman Research Program

This isn't a product you can buy, but it may be the most important thing Harman ever created. Dr. Floyd Toole's research program, conducted over decades at Harman's facilities in Northridge, California, produced a body of knowledge about loudspeaker performance and listener preference that transformed the industry. The "Harman curve" — a target frequency response derived from thousands of blind listening tests — became the reference standard for headphone tuning across the industry, used by companies that have nothing to do with Harman. When you read a headphone review that mentions the Harman target, you're seeing the long shadow of Sidney Harman's investment in understanding why things sound good, not just how to make them.

JBL and Revel Under the Harman Umbrella

While JBL and Revel deserve their own complete histories, their development within Harman illustrates the company's unique strength. JBL, acquired in 1969, gained access to Harman's research and manufacturing infrastructure while retaining its identity as the go-to brand for professional sound reinforcement and dynamic home audio. Revel, created in-house as Harman's statement loudspeaker brand, was built from the ground up on Toole's research — every Revel speaker is designed to meet the psychoacoustic performance criteria that Harman's blind testing identified as ideal. The Revel Salon2, in particular, is widely regarded as one of the most scientifically optimized loudspeakers ever produced. This is what happens when a parent company brings resources and research to brands that already have talent and vision.

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Audio Equipment

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