AKG Austria closes :(

[Tim Campbell]

http://www.psneurope.com/akg-vienna-austrian-audio/

 

[ruffrecords]

Harmon seems to be single handedly destroying the pro audio sector.

A sad day,

Ian

 

[wlinart]

Maybe it isn't completely a bad thing: there is a new Austrian company started out of the ashes from AKG, and akg probably continues to manufacture the same mics and headphones. Most of them were made in China anyway.

 

[TillM]

This is hard, but on the Austrian Audio Page there are already some pics of a D12.
Maybe they will reissue the old stuff.
It's sad for 650 workers.  I hope, that not everybody loses their job.

 

[Moby]

Yep, closed as far I know they moved to Hungary. If that's true, its acceptable ( Austro-Hungarian Empire), I really hope that their flagships will not be made by  China factories.

 

[dhammer]

https://www.austrian.audio/

 

[miscend]

Harmon seems to be single handedly destroying the pro audio sector.

A sad day,

Ian

Samsung bought Harmon about a month or so ago.

 

[Timjag]

Ah man ,

I work quite closely with the Harman companies here in the UK, the guys at Soundcraft AKG and Brook Sirens have gone over the odds to help me soooo many times. And Ed Jackson and Tom Williams at Harman Europe have been incredible, in terms of being great guys and great engineers. The trouble with Harman is that otd always been a victim of its boardroom.

They had a run of CEOs who were paid in bonuses I remember one time they made all the Soundcraft workers redundant - the guy skimmed over his bonus threshold,  collected his millions and buggered off. Leaving Soundcraft with stock that had been assembled badly in china and no one to put it together. This type of thing happened a number of time.

I have to say though on the AKG front, the guys at AKG did make some pretty stupid descisions all by themselves, and they were pre-Harman employees.

As Andy Brown at Soundcraft said to me once, people always blame the parent company for lowering quality but if Harman hadn't bought Soundcraft we'd have gone under. Graham Blythe remained chief designer and those runs of cheap small desks saved a great deal of jobs

What got these companies in the end was the financialised economy where stock is gambled on the international markets and companies are closed and 'restructured' to raise the share price then they're sold.

Stocks are bought with algorithms today bought sold and bought again many times a second in huge bulk Millions can be made or lost in a tenth of a second and company structures are altered to help the ripple purchase of stock.

It's a sad day that AKG only exists in name only. But the original spirit lives on... in you guys

And in all of us. AKG was started by electron-geeks and I'm proud to carry the tradition on!

Just remember is wasn't so long ago that the ck12 capsule was held up as an example of handmade engineering that couldn't be done today, but now thanks to people Like Tim Campbell above who wouldn't accept 'it can't be done' as a reasonable reply we now not only have his wonderful capsule but Ben Sneesby and Heiserman have both stepped up to the plate.

The future of quality microphones is DIY

God bless the lot of you
(not that I believe in that guy)

Tim

 

[MS Vienna]

Seems that psneurope is not the quickest with it´s "news"... That all happened almost four months ago!

June 2017 was the last month AKG existed and it was very sad. Lots of the company´s equipment was auctioned off to empty the building  as on July 1st AKG had to be out. Quite some stunning machines and tooling among that stuff.
I was there in the last week of June to look at the ruins of that legendary company. No fun.

The manufacturing of capsules was carried on until the very last days because of a substantial demand in Hungary. It sure took them a while to do them on their own.
Not a single AKG staff member moved over to Hungary and lots of the technical documentations were dumped as they were of course in german language.  So today´s "AKG" lacks most of the remaining Austrian Know-How and has no manufacturing experience, let alone development experience for AKG products. I bet they are struggling as hell.

The guys at Austrian Audio seem to be very committed to make new quality products. 100% exact reissues of historic AKG classics are not a working business model today and others have filled the need for functional affordable replicas anyway in  the meantime.
As far as I know they are working on innovative new products instead of doing existing stuff all over again. However the properties of the classic brass CK12 have been very closely inspected and measured already and the guys are pretty much aware of it´s stunning quality. I wish them all the best for taking it to the next level.

 

[Recording Engineer]

As far as I know they are working on innovative new products instead of doing existing stuff all over again.

This is what I'm most excited about! For years I've been hearing how AKG is not interested in recreating the past, but innovationg the future! Finally, a true chance now to do some things for the future!

 

[Moby]

I dont know the reason for closing fatory in Austria, but it's maybe better for the audio industry I believe that Austrian Audio guys will make great products.
Yes, all of the equipment is sold and I found on the auction one old, high temperature owen . I keep it like reliquia

 

[Brizco]

Harman/Samsung announced closing of Studer Engineering/Development department in Switzerland where the Company Studer was founded.


A wise man once said "Don't let Harman run your Company"...

 

[Timjag]

Yeah, I was just talking to someone at Soundcraft about this, 650 jobs shelved. I told him he and the other brains should do a management buy out, and go boutique.

He said that Studer tried to o that in 2011 and Harman absolutely refused.

Now it's become obvious that they think the name is worth more than the company.