AKG Acoustics surround headphones manual AKG history, 1969, 1947, 1953, 1978 1987 1991, 2004

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AKG history

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“Pioneering spirit” best characterizes the ambitious work of AKG founders Dr. Rudolf Görike and Ing. Ernst Pless. After the war, people went to the movies seeking distraction from the stress of post-war life, so Rudolf Görike built movie projectors and loudspeakers, while Ernst Pless used his rucksack and bicycle to deliver the goods to constantly growing numbers of customers. Their very first customer was unable to pay in cash so he settled the bill in food, fresh from the black market.

When AKG was established in 1947, the company headquarters were located in a basement in the suburbs of Vienna. Before long, many AKG microphones were in use, mainly at radio stations, in the-

aters, on small stages, and at jazz clubs.

In the early 1950s, the two founders of AKG made their business breakthrough with completely new technologies. The micro- phones of that era had a strangely shrill and

hollow sound, and AKG technology added warmth and fullness to microphone’s sound.

In 1953, the first AKG dynamic microphone in the world became an interna- tional success, and the first large-diaphragm condenser microphone with re- motely selectable polar patterns set new standards for professional micro- phones. Almost every major radio or recording studio including BBC London, one of the first buyers, used these microphones.

The following years saw numerous new developments. Many innovations of that period are still in use today. The K 10 headphones used by the European Parliament are but one example.

AKG research engineers have always loved exotic challenges. One of those was a real-life test of hydrophones for the Austrian deep-sea scientist Hans Hass and AKG designers were happy to spend days swimming and diving at the “Di- ana Bad” indoor pool in downtown Vienna that was very popular in those days. The AKG team also fulfilled the very special wishes of Herbert von Karajan. They had to hide all the microphones at the first post-

war Salzburg Festival because the maestro had decreed that the audio equip- ment must be totally invisible to the audience.

The company expanded and patents were applied for in rapid succession. AKG supplied microphones to major tape recorder manufacturers including Philips, Grundig, Uher, Loewe and others. Portable reverberation units created a new market in the 1960s and 1970s. Telephone transducers soon became a rapidly growing product line. This period also saw the advent of digital tech- nology and AKG made its successful “digital debut” at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

As early as 1974, AKG built the first wireless headphones. At that time, con- sumers were skeptical and many felt the new technology was too complicated. In the late 1980s, AKG launched the K 1000 headphones that were a dramatic improvement over all earlier attempts at creating a natural, binaural headphone sound. The audio community was full of praise. The new results of psychoa- coustic research were presented in exhibitions at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Kunst Museum of Bonn, and even used by the “Audimir” space flight project. The crew on board the “MIR” performed several tests to exam- ine the meaning of sound source localization for the humans in space.

The new AKG wireless microphone systems launched in 1996 used a new, revolutionary technology that was widely acclaimed in the marketplace. Big name pop artists such as Rod Steward, Peter Gabriel, and Simply Red used the systems on their tours and AKG became the preferred brand for many other famous musicians.

At the turn of the millennium, AKG engineers came up with the latest genera- tion of the HEARO Family, a new line of wireless headphone systems using the latest surround technology.

And the story goes on …

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