| Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
May 29, 2008 - 8:05am
#1
This guy is an AUDIO pioneer...89 and running teh bigest
| Loudspeakers Amplification Digital Sources | |
Analog Sources Accessories Featured | |
Music Columns Retired Columns | |
Show Reports | |
Features Latest News Community | |
Resources Subscriptions |
© 2024 StereophileAVTech Media Americas Inc., USA
All rights reserved
Yep, and I got a piece of that history on my rack right now. I notice every time you post a bio on one of these legends that you can hear a pin drop in the room. That's because these losers don't know jack.
Or we are already aware or DUP is repeating himself yet again.
Pardon me for not caring when someone posts a fluffy bio about a guy who buys innovative companies and turns them into shadows of their former selves. He's better at making money than audio gear.
Post good biographies of people like Nelson Pass, Jim Thiel, Jim Winney, William Z. Johnson, John Curl, etc and I'll be interested.
John Curl...hahahaha, hardly in the same leauge Harman STARTED the hi fi revolution along with his original partner, Kardon like Fisher did, Hafler, Kloss,Vilchur, and a few more like them THOSE are pioneers. ARC is a dude who inovated nothing..Pass, how many companies has he gone through, pooof, Harman dude still in the business 55 years running one of the largest audio business out there, built it up from knowing how to organize it into an empire, if Pass, or any of them others coulda done that, why didn't they? JBL and AKG are hardly "shadows" of their former selves,(AKG c3000B still made in Austria, even it's shock mounts, not Chinese crap) neither is Crown....you are out of touch with anything realted to audio. AKG was part of Philips years ago, they sold it too Harman.....it's former self was always the same....the unknowing are really just that. Checkout the financials on Harman International, what a dope you are. Harman was gonna be merged into a yet even bigger operation, but it fell thorugh....man are you dopey!!! Nelson Pass, what a maroooon!!!!John Curl, hahahahaha, how much of his Chinese mfg'd crap, made by others, survived into anything called longetivity? Now you are funny, time to get an edumucation...BSS, DBX pro, Allen & Heath, yeah.....so many brands, so many things, kept going by Harman. http://www.harmaninternational.com/
Sure he's a great business man, I'm not disagreeing with that but other than empire building what has HE PERSONALLY created? Nothing! In my opinion designers are more important than guys that buy and sell things. Without great designers there would be no high-end audio. A company can be financially successful without being particularly innovative. I'd bet that the majority of Stereophile readers would rather know more about ANY of the people that I mentioned than Mr. Harman.
Harman didn't start the Hi-Fi revolution I believe that most would agree that honor goes to McIntosh with major assistance by Klipsh, Marants, Fisher, and Dynaco. Minor contributions by a host of others.
I don't appreciate being called a "dope" simply because I have a different perspective than yours. I've never resorted to name calling towards you or anyone else in this forum. No matter how much I disagree with nearly everything you say, I always do it with respect. I'd appreciate the same.
My bad. But what other word would describe the notion that Pass or Curl are anywhere near a Harman dude. Harman-Kardon where major influences in the early hi fi years, read some history Harman-Kardon stuff where primo products during the 50's etc. Citation 11 and 12 separates where top stuff. Harman was a desinger, mfg, not just a business dude, thus the term DOPE, since i don't think you know his history at all.
Did he do design work on components? If so I haven't found any evidence of that. Again brilliant businessman, but this forum isn't about business. It's about audio and sound.
Yes it is about SOUND, which is why Harman Kardon introduced the FIRST true hi fi receiver called the D1000 in like 1954. do I have to educate everyone? http://www.dyna-tronics.com/images/d1000/50thAnniversary.pdf
And read the entire article, of all the FIRSTS in hi fi from Harman Kardon Sidney Harman's original partner was Bernard Kardon, PIONEERS in hi fi, in the begining of it all. Now go put on the dope cap.
Dup:
Perhaps you mean to be humorous, and perhaps it does not come off that way - on this end.
But there comes a time when you push more people off the forum than you entertain..and then they'll have to pull the plug on you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sidney_Harman
....member of the Council on Foreign Relations...
Anyone involved with those guys seriously needs to have their head examined. I wouldn't trust that crew with a dead rat.
I proved HK was a pioneer in audio, he was telling me he was only a big buyer of other companies, he is not correct, are my FACTS that bothersome when they are correct? When that is considered not dopey, let me know. He obviously is un informed
He said Harman didn't start teh hi fi industry, but somehow they introduced the FIRST hi fi receiver, later first high current amplifer etc etc, pretty long lists of first for a company that didn't pioneer the stuff. Dynaco was a giant inovator of mortal priced high performance stuff. HK was not bargain priced stuff, upper end. Lotsa FIRSTS, Harman dude is amazing. checkout teh theatre he built in D.C.
Not sure why you are saying this, but if you are implying that Dr. Harman is engaged in some kind of war-mongering, then there is one thing you need to understand.
Dr. Harman is a Quaker.
Do you know what that means? Didn't think so. The Quakers settled in Pennsylvania, mostly around Philadelphia, where I am from. During the Viet Nam war, people of draft age were trying to avoid being sent there. One way to do this was to try to obtain "conscientious objector" status. Muhammad Ali tried to do this and failed. He went to jail instead. Most people who tried this failed. However, Quakers were granted this status virtually automatically. This is because of the religious beliefs of Quakers. To understand this, see this article on the peace testimony.
I think you should take your own advice. You are both ignorant and paranoid with respect to this issue.
I am quite well informed about the history of audio and you still haven't provided any evidence that Mr. Harman is anything more than a CEO. In fact I've done a lot of reading today to make sure that my opinion is well founded.
http://www.harman.com/about_harman/history.aspx
http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/harman/harman.html
http://www.ce.org/Events/Awards/489.htm
http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideap...PersonId=895329
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903579.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1154/is_n10_v76/ai_6700908
. . .and many, many others.
I still haven't found any evidence that he has been DIRECTLY involved in any innovations in the audio industry, other than one mention that he did some design work on public address systems for Bogen in 1939!
Are you asking if SH like sat down with a soldering iron and built the things? He pioneered the ideas, concepts product lines....his buddy Kardon is in fact an engineer...i bet they designed a few things in their time. Do you think David Hafler sat down and built everyuting Dynaco came out with that pioneered stuff in teh industry...smart designers and business people know how to get it rolling, and have people around him to also get it going. Hafler was a designer of coruse, but so where the peopel around him, the famous Dyna ST-400 was a Jame Bongiorno design, who went onto Sumo and some of his own brands. The ST-416 super amp was actually a VanAlstine idea, same as teh PAT-5 BiFET....not actually putting the thing together, doesn't mean the guys didn't pioneer the products. Again the FIRST hi fi receiver was the Harman Kardon D1000 from SH and BK...I think Avery Fisher may have had the first STEREO receiver, or something along them lines, I forget...Hafler didn't pioneer teh idea of electronic KITS, but he sure did pioneer the art of hi performance mortally priced stuff, that went on to be improved with his Hafler branded stuff. 30 years on Hafler DH500 and P500's still crank out the best sounding stuff from being brought up to date by another pioneer Frank VanAlstine...still making stuff going on 40 years... Harman is one of the greatest success stories in audio. Actually making some breat stuff, not just advertising heavily like some others, with popular names, and over hyped tv ads....
So if someone that working for Mr. Harman comes up a with a great ideas, Mr. HARMAN is the innovator. Sorry, I don't see it that way. His only involvement was possibly green lighting the idea and writing the pay checks. That's not CREATING innovation, at best it's recognizing the possibility FOR innovation. That makes him a great businessman. But that
Interestingly, Richard Nixon was a Quaker.
Apropos of nothing, just an interesting fact.
Yep, no patents.
http://www.google.com/patents?q="sidney+harman"&btnG=Search+Patents
That's why Nixon got us out of Vietnam debacle, We might need Quakers, to show us the way. And they have the best Oatmeal.
Lowry, you are most certainly not a "dope," as DUP so rudely posits. Like Nelson Pass, you are at least a "marooon."
DUP, I have taken some heat in the past for correcting the deathless prose of others. But one has to wonder about anyone who can't even spell "moron."
Harmon was a Quaker? As was Nixon? Hmmmmm. Verrrrrry interrresting. Harman went on to the CFR? Nixon went on to Watergate? I suppose that this speaks volumes about the dangers of repression during the formative years of great geniuses...
Peace to all (until I get the hell outta these bib overalls and hit the turnpike...THEN we'll see what's what!).
If you don't know what a ma-rooon is..then you don't understand. Do you know who bugs Bunny is?
No, DUP. I do not know who bugs Bunnies. Or buggers them. What a maroon I am, not to notice the obvious connection between innovation in High Fidelity and some 'toon rabbit.
Am I to infer that you think like a rabbit? I'll not only believe it, I'll second it.
Kindly detail the innovations in the first (stereo?) receiver that changed the future of High Fidelity. And don't forget Mr. Kardon. Did Harman invent the first solid-state op amp (along with its concomitant rasps and wheezes)? What a gift to future audio pilgrims!
DUP, you are talking directly to one of the only music lovers in existence who is old enough to have actually purchased and suffered this piece of audio shit that you extol. Other pioneers did better. Nelson Pass among them. Harman's amp was okay, but do not confuse "okay" with legendary inventive status.
Feel free to run out and buy the new Revel Salon models, and all the auxiliaries bearing the Harman name. 100 large or so would be a gesture of respect befitting such a legendary pioneer.
Don't forget to upgrade your cables...
There is a difference between nostalgia and inventive merit. Harman, as a few other respondants to this chain have noted, had a genius for corporate execution of business plans. He did NOT do the grunge work at the listening level. Like any other successful executive, he hired other ears and other brains to do the designs. Hail him for that.
Perhaps Bugs ought to write the 21st Century Primer concerning the history of audio morons -- er, marooons. I suspect you would be an early subscriber.
Bugs Bunny, the greatest cartoon before The Simpsons!!!! He was a satire on everything....he said it all, when we had freedom of speech in this country. What a maroooooon. Elmer Fudd, That's all Folks. Porky Pig , Bugs was the greatest character to be drawn, and the voices of one guy Mel Blanc. I have Bugs Bunny on vinyl!!! That's how it relates to audio, MelBlanc on LP.
Bugs on SACD sounds better.
I will seek it out!!! Correct. What's up DOC?