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Klark Teknik is a company that designs and develops professional
signal processing
Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as sound, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniques are used to optimize transmissions, ...
and
audio equipment. Located in
Kidderminster
Kidderminster is a large market and historic minster town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Birmingham and north of Worcester. Located north of the River Stour and east of the River Severn, in the 2011 census, it ha ...
, Worcestershire, UK, the company was founded in 1974 by brothers Terence and Phillip Clarke. It developed a number of new types of equipment in the audio field, winning a
Queen's Awards for Enterprise
The Queen's Awards for Enterprise is an awards programme for British businesses and other organizations who excel at international trade, innovation, sustainable development or promoting opportunity (through social mobility). They are the highest ...
in 1986. It is now owned by
Music Tribe
Music Tribe, formerly Music Group, is a holding company based in the City of Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is chaired by Uli Behringer, founder of Behringer. Music Tribe's portfolio includes Behringer, Cool Audio, Midas, Turbosound, TC ...
.
History
Precursors
In 1971, the brothers were running a company known as “Klark Equipment”, producing garage forecourt equipment: vending style
vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum or a hoover, is a device that causes suction in order to remove dirt from floors, upholstery, draperies, and other surfaces. It is generally electrically driven.
The dirt is collected by either a ...
s,
space heaters and other similar products.
Phillip was the
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...
having previously run a clothing business in Australia. Terry was the engineer: he had worked for
Decca Decca may refer to:
Music
* Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label
* Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group
* Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label
* Decca Studios, a recording facility in W ...
and was also an active local musician. With this background, the company soon branched into professional audio, at first upgrading and customising Decca multi-track tape recorders and later producing a very high quality ¼ inch 2-track tape machine of their own, the SM2. This tape machine was sold to the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and independent broadcasting companies under the brand name “Teknik”.
Terry also started to develop signal processing hardware including compressor/limiters and small
graphic equaliser
Equalization, or simply EQ, in sound recording and reproduction is the process of adjusting the volume of different frequency bands within an audio signal. The circuit or equipment used to achieve this is called an equalizer.
Most hi-fi e ...
s. These were produced in very low quantities and sold to (mostly local) recording studios to complement the relatively simple
audio mixing
Audio mixing is the process by which multiple sounds are combined into one or more channels. In the process, a source's volume level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated or enhanced. This practical, aesthetic ...
console of the day. The graphic equalisers developed during 1973 onwards were called Teknik 7S and 9S, with seven and nine bands respectively, plus a stereo 11+11S with eleven bands of EQ.
Klark Teknik
In 1974 the brand name “Klark Teknik” came into being. 1976 saw the first KT product produced in real volume, the DN27 (later DN27A and previously DN27S). Approximately 6500 units shipped between 1977 and 1985.
In 1980 the company moved to its current purpose built premises at Walter Nash Road, Kidderminster. Up until this point the business had been run out of an old
Nissen hut
A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure for military use, especially as barracks, made from a half-cylindrical skin of Corrugated galvanised iron, corrugated iron. Designed during the First World War by the American-born, Canadian-British ...
in a back corner of the Summerfield MOD solid fuel rocket motor factory with only 15 employees.
Klark Teknik PLC was formed in 1985. In the following year Klark Teknik acquired the Hounslow-based studio mixing company DDA and subsequently moved the manufacturing to Kidderminster. The company further diversified by developing active studio monitors under the brand “Klark Acoustic”, winning a
Queen's Award Queen's Award can refer to:
* Queen's Awards for Enterprise, formerly The Queens Awards to Industry
* Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, an annual award given to groups in the voluntary sector of the United Kingdom
* Queen's Award for Forestry
T ...
for export. It also launched the DN772, a seven-second
profanity delay with innovative time re-setting technology without pitch shifting artefacts, which featured in the BBC programme ''
Tomorrow's World
''Tomorrow's World'' is a former British television series about contemporary developments in science and technology. First transmitted on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003. The ''Tomorro ...
''.
Subsequent mergers
Klark Teknik purchased
Midas Audio Systems Ltd in 1987. In 1992, the Clarke brothers sold Klark Teknik Group to Mark IV Audio. Two years later, Terry Clarke went on to set up MC2 Audio Ltd with co-founder Ian McCarthy, producing high quality power amplifiers for the commercial market.
In 1998, Mark IV Audio sold their holdings of
EVI Audio (owners of Klark Teknik) and Telex Communications to venture capitalists Greenwich Street Partners, who merged the companies into a single corporation called
Telex Communications
Telex Communications, originally Telex Corporation, was a Burnsville, Minnesota-based manufacturer of hearing aids and audio equipment. Founded in 1936 as a maker of hearing aids, it entered the computer peripherals businesses in the 1960s. Telex ...
. On 1 September 2006, Greenwich sold Telex Communications to the
Bosch Group
Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch (stylised as BOSCH), is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 94 ...
. In December 2009, Midas and Klark Teknik were acquired by
Music Group
A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform Instrumental music, instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely ...
, a holding company chaired by Uli Behringer. The parent company has since been rebranded as Music Tribe.
Products
Klark Teknik landmark products:
* DN27 Graphic equaliser (1976)
* DN36 Stereo Analogue Time Processor (1977)
* DN70 Digital Time Processor (1979)
* DN60 the world's first rackable
spectrum analyser (1980)
* DN700 the first high-quality
digital delay line A digital delay line is a discrete element in digital filter theory, which allows a signal to be delayed by a number of samples. If the delay is an integer multiple of samples, digital delay lines are often implemented as circular buffers. This mea ...
(1983)
* DN360 dual graphic equaliser (1984)
* DN780 digital
reverb
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abs ...
unit (1985)
* DN1248 active
microphone splitter (2000)
* DN9848 speaker processor (2000)
* Square ONE range (2005)
References
{{reflist
External links
Midas WebsiteKlark Teknik Website
Audio engineering
1974 establishments in the United Kingdom
Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom