Polk has new owners

didnt Masimo pay $1 billion?

yeah, so I just heard.

Talk about a conglomerate!
... and Samsung owns Harman.

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Let's not forget sound united killed of Classé.
Honestly it cannot be any worse than Masimo. I hope!

Classe was on borrowed time to begin with but would likely still be around were it for Masimo and the piss-poor management of the consumer portfolio.

Here's my big question... does this put the life of this forum on the clock? I think it does. Probably a longer clock. Like at least two years. But I'd imagine we'll see an end to this forum. Or possibly a full erase and reset, which is what they did with a lot of the pro brands in the past.

I think being owned by a very large electronics company that specializes in AV equipment and personal devices is much better than being owned by a medical device company that only wanted to get it's hands on some patents that Sound United held.
Time will tell if Samsung and Harmon let Polk do their own thing or not. Hopefully they do.

Can we store all the info from this forum in the wayback machine?

I think Masimo had little to do with the product Polk brought to market.

I agree with this as well. The legend and Reserve line I feel were well under way before Masimo became the title holder.

VR3 wrote: »

I think the reserve series has performed admirably

The Legends have performed well too, but Masimo knew nothing about how to run an audio company.

I think the L800 kind of tied their hands a bit on the cabinet… I agree on that

The manufacturing model of Sandy gross, which imo, is very successful given his success in the industry and it's common sense nature is why drivers are still made for the old models.

Polk made decades of products using the same suite of drivers in different configurations. This is rarely done in this world of complete redesigns every 5 years or so.

The only brands I have seen do this on that scale is definitive and golden ear.

Dead thread walking...

So... there's a recent post at (ahem) another hifi forum musing about the fates of the JBL and Polk brands in their current corporate structure. Not sure why they didn't broach the same question here but I thought it was worthy of mention (if only barely). Nothing too interesting posted to it yet, though.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/first-jbl-and-now-polk.1097878/

Polk has put out some extremely solid products and are well known, hard to imagine them going away.

I do think the days of legend priced gear could be over

Unlike a lot of other speaker companies, Polk Audio came with patented intellectual property as well.

But, the thing is, go ask your non-audiophile friends to name a speaker company that isn't Bose. They will come back with JBL or Polk or Infinity or Klipsch.

Why?

Because they all offer low-cost, high performing options as well as several stages of lines up the prestige ladder. Not only are they attainable for the average joe but they offer growth paths and support.

Ask a non-audiophile friend who Carver is. Or Wilson Audio. Or Vandersteen. Or Magico. They might just think you are making up names. They might recognize some names like Mark Levinson, Martin Logan, Focal or Sonus Faber because they spend money on advertising outside of the audio world or partner with other companies like car manufacturers or boat makers but when they see the price tags, they immediately shut them out.

But a Polk sound bar that has actual surround effects that do not rely on reflective surfaces can be had for a few hundred bucks and it works with your TV, your computer, your tablet or your phone in a variety of homes where performance isn't dependent on room features offering a better overall experience. Especially if you're a young family living in an apartment, condo or townhome and lack space for the immersive family viewing experience. You don't even need a receiver and you have a home theater that doubles as a capable stereo in a very tiny and unassuming footprint.

If you want a full-on home theater, JBL, Klipsch and Infinity all have capable HTiB systems for under a thousand bucks that will also integrate with pretty much everything in your house that can send media programming over networks. Polk has HTiB's too although they can be a bit pricey compared to some of the competition's offerings but they do out-perform the competition at their price point and above as well. But that's always been a hallmark of Polk Audio, punching above it's weight class.

So why would a company like Harmon International that hasn't even scrapped it's own Harmon Kardon name despite owning probably half of the audio equipment market share now want to get rid of marquee names like Polk Audio or JBL?

People who talk like those yahoos on AK have very little insight in to anything. They are just navel gazing and making up scenarios that have little chance of panning out because they make zero business sense and aren't based in actual reality at all. Most have no idea how corporate cost structures work or even what Harmon International's idea of success and acceptable profit margins are.

I can see HQ's being consolidated and manufacturing being consolidated, even materials sourcing being consolidated but brand names? Especially with market recognition like Polk Audio and JBL? Doubtful they won't be capitalized on in some way.

Besides that, audio will not survive without competition. You can't buy up all the competitors just to shut them down and erase them from existence. Even if you did, at some point, someone, somewhere would get tired of the craptacular standard issue from the Harmon International conglomerate and start making a competing product that people will buy solely because it's a choice that doesn't support the greedy corporate overlord at the minimum.

It's just like cars. People have a need to be better than the next guy and they use their choices they make to prove it. "My Chevy is better than your Ford so that makes you a big dumb dumb head! Oh yeah?! Well you can keep your stupid Chevy, Mr. Bose man! I have a set of JBLs that will knock your socks off, if you're not too dumb and unsophisticated to appreciate it!" Can't be better than the next guy if everyone has the same JBL speakers. BUT! One guy goes and makes his own speaker company that nobody has ever heard of and it could be complete garbage like Bang and Olufsen but, because it looks different and needs to be "appreciated" to find an ownership circle it feeds that deep seated need for most people to be exceptional despite being anything but.

Besides, Harmon International isn't even owned by Harmon International anymore. They are all Samsung now and Samsung is a massive, Korean, multi-national, monopolistic conglomerate that has at least 15% or more of the total global market for every technology space they are in. They get that market share not just through growth but by buying the competition and maintaining the perception that the competition is still competing. That works because the vast majority of people out there would rather talk out their aft regions about anything and everything they know nothing about instead of researching for a couple minutes with the fancy thinkin' box in their pocket and business models like Samsung's THRIVE by exploiting that.

If you don't think that's true then just understand this. Samsung Electronics Ltd started out as a monitor company that was spun off as an industrial arm of an agricultural products company making fertilizers, supplying seeds and making sweeteners. The electronics arm started making low-cost computer monitors. Samsung still makes computer monitors under the Samsung name. They also make them under the Tizen name and the Odyssey name. All of which are often sitting on shelves right next to each other with slightly varying price points. You can get a Samsung monitor that uses the exact same display technology as a TOTL Odyssey monitor for pennies on the dollar compared to the Odyssey line and you'll be missing some inputs and some tech features but the picture quality will be the same. But those looking to feed that need to be exceptional will needlessly spring for the Odyssey monitor just because of the perception that it's "better" and not labeled "Samsung". Either way, 3 "different" options, a customer that couldn't dream of being caught dead with a down market Samsung monitor buys the Odyssey monitor personally secure in the thought that he has avoided the social stigma of having a budget monitor and Samsung hasn't gotten his money! Even though he just gave Samsung 3 times as much money to buy the Odyssey badges for his new Samsung monitor. Stooge.