KLH Audio is an American audio electronics company based in Noblesville, Indiana. Originally founded in 1957 as KLH Research and Development Corporation in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

, the company takes its name from the initials of its founders: Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and

Josef Anton Hofmann Josef Anton Hofmann (July 22, 1924 – November 12, 2010) was a London-born American audio engineer and speaker-system designer. He is known for Hofmann’s Iron Law, and was a son of pianist Josef Hofmann. Biography Hofmann was born in London ...

History

The original aim of the company was to design and produce

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

s in speaker enclosures. KLH had sales of $17 million, employed over 500 people and sold over 30,000 speakers a year before it was sold to

Singer Corporation Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of consumer sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Singer, Isaac M. Singer with New York lawyer Edward Cabot Clark, Edward C. Clark. Best known for its sewing mac ...

in 1964. In 1970, KLH became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Electro Audio Dynamics (EAD) of Great Neck, New York. EAD moved KLH's headquarters to

Canoga Park, Los Angeles Canoga Park is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. Before the Mexican–American War, the district was part of a rancho, and after the American victory it was converted into wheat farms and ...

, in 1980. Japanese conglomerate Kyocera acquired KLH in 1982, and production was shifted overseas. Kyocera later decided to stop manufacturing audio products, and sought a buyer for the KLH brand. In 1989, KLH was acquired by Wald Sound of Sun Valley, Los Angeles. In 2003,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

filed a lawsuit against KLH (then Lavcon, Inc., trading as KLH Audio Systems) asserting

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...

of a Sony home theater system. In January 2017, Kelley Global Brands bought the company and renamed it to KLH Audio. The company makes premium high-end speakers.

References

External links

* Loudspeaker manufacturers Electronics companies established in 1957 1957 establishments in Massachusetts Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States Privately held companies based in Indiana {{US-manufacturing-company-stub