Providing The Highest Quality & Ongoing Innovation In The World Of Music.
AKG, founded in Vienna by Dr. Rudolf Goerike and Ernst Pless, soon became one of the biggest players in the world of sound. Today AKG is synonymous with good sound, stands for passion in music providing the highest quality and ongoing innovation in the world of music. The company was founded in 1947 and within months, the first AKG microphones were being used in radio stations, theatres and Jazz-Clubs. The products (the AKG DYN Series) were at that time manufactured by hand by five workers. In 1949, the first AKG headphones came on the market. Then, in the early fifties AKG made a breakthrough with several new products: Totally new technologies like the world’s first high quality condenser microphone, the D 12 with its cardioid characteristics, the world’s first remote-controlled multi-pattern capacitor microphone, the C 12 and the D 36 made acoustic history. One of the first customers of the famous C 12 microphone was the BBC in London.
Worldwide AKG Expansion.
The seventies: AKG Innovations Around The Clock.
AKG Goes Public.
With its growing success, AKG also expanded geographically with a German subsidiary founded in 1955. By the end of the fifties, AKG’s worldwide distribution network had grown to other parts of Europe and abroad. In the sixties AKG successfully started exporting into former East block countries and Latin America. Concerned with technological quality, AKG focused on what it did best: high-quality audio transducers. The results were first-rate products in all categories. In the following years, AKG launched the world's first two-way cardioid microphones (D 202, D 224) and developed the CMS modular condenser microphone system.
The seventies began like the sixties ended at AKG: with continuous innovations. The company started in the seventies with the presentation of the BX 20, the world's first, truly portable studio reverberation unit. In 1972 a special stamp by the British Post Office commemorating the 50th anniversary of the BBC showed historical microphones along with models from the AKG catalog. One year later AKG was granted its 1000th patent. At the same time the company presented the K 140 "integrated open" headphones. These were followed by more innovations like the AKG Transversal Suspension (TS) system, the world’s first two-way headphones, and the true vocal microphone line that firmed the high-quality international reputation of the AKG products.
In 1984 AKG went public and started a new phase of enormous growth. In 1985 the US subsidiary of AKG was founded, followed by other expansions such as the acquisition of dbx Professional Products in 1989. The expansion continued through the beginning of the nineties with acquisitions in Great Britain, Germany and other countries. Expansion was also a key strategy with AKG products: In the beginning of the nineties AKG took to the stars when the “Audimir” space project used AKG products for room simulation in outer space. AKG continued its product expansion and success with the new generation of headphones called the K Series, the ergonomically-shaped, triangular-section Tri-Power Series dynamic musicians' microphones, the AKG Blue Line Series modular microphone system, the new C 547 boundary microphone and C 621, C 647 "slim-line" gooseneck microphones for stage and installed system use.