Damark Industries
Trading company based in Chatsworth, California USA, and founded in 1967, later in Camarillo, California. Originally I believe the company was mostly occupied with distributing hi-fi and radio products (via mail order ?) but in the latter half of the 70's it started marketing products under their own Vector Research brand, these were noticeably better than most such branding exercises especially in the first few years, in particular the Kyocera sourced CD players and cassette recorders, video recorders sourced from NEC (by far the best OEM supplier of such at the time) and the receivers which were sourced from the Japanese and Taiwanese factories that at the same time were supplying Rotel and Nad Electronics with their USA models, these receiver models usually not sold in Europe, and these are the exact same units as provided by the aforementioned companies except for the front facia. Noticeably VR was selling the receivers at lower prices than the competition and thus gained something of a reputation as a supplier of quality budget hi-fi, but the company was by no means tied to the low end, the most expensive receiver model from the company at the time retailed for around 1000 USD, the loudspeakers and record players from the company were disappointing however. The company was almost exclusively distributed in the southern part of the USA although for a time their products were sold as far away as Australia but notably the company did only own the trdemark rights to VR in the US, the quality of their products also took a downturn in the latter half of the 80's in tune with the market and the last products I have been able to find stamped with the VR brand were an inexpensive sub/satellite combination from the early 90's. Getting accurate information on the company itself has not been without problems but it does appear to have gone out of business in 1992/3, however the Vector Research trademark was transferred to a company of the same name and a very similar address to the last one that Damark had at that time but no products manufactured under the VR name have been found that have been attributed to the latter company and last traces of it disappear from official documentation in 2004. Be warned that there sprung up a number of companies called Damark after 1993, including a telemarketer based in Minnesota that is notorious for charging peoples credit cards without their consent, but there was also at the least a couple of companies that were called Vector Research at a similar time, including a a tiny relay manufacturer.
DataPlay Inc.
Company founded in 1998 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Announced it's intention to manufacture a tiny WORM optical disk capable of storing 500 MB with the target market being handheld digital devices such as cameras and PDA's, but this format generated a large amount of interest amongst the larger USA based record companies since most CD's out there would fit onto a DataPlay Discs disk in an unchanged or only slightly shortened form. Company announced in early 2001 that it had reached agreements with a number of the aforementioned companies to release pre-recorded music disks in the format pending a release of a secure version, in July the same year it announced that it had reached an agreement with Imation to commence manufacture of blank and prerecorded media later that year and in August Dataplay announced that it had partnered with InterTrust to create what was practically a secure music specific variant of the format that would integrate a digital rights management system designed by Intertrust. This effectively created not only the only secure music carrier out there outside of pure SACD but more interestingly the only officially sanctioned compressed music carrier at the time. The emphasis that the company put on the disk as an audio format was a bit odd since the main financial backers of the company came from the imaging and photography businesses and in fact when Dataplay finally shipped a product in the form of a drive for MP3 players in 2002 the delay that the added inclusion of an DRM had meant to the actual shipping date (almost a year) meant that the company had no revenues in 2001 so that it required additional financing to stay alive, none was forthcoming from it's original backers and as DataPlay Inc. did not manage to secure any additional funding elsewhere despite finally having a shipping product it was forced to lay off half of their staff in the summer of 2002 to save cost and sent the rest on an unpaid hiatus in September the same year and finally closed it's door on the 15th of October 2002.
Dayton Wright
One of the pioneering manufacturers of electrostatic loudspeakers. Originally based in the USA and know as Wright/St.George Laboratories Inc., but later in Canada under the Dayton Wright name, the history of the company and it's products is documented on the homepage. Official homepage.
DEIL See --> Electrohome
Delphi Design
Small hi-fi manufacturer based in Chatsworth, California, USA. Made mostly loudspeakers but also amplification and DAC's, disappeared from view sometime in mid 2002.
Diatone
A subdivision of Mitshubishi that manufactured loudspeaker drivers in addition to home and studio loudspeaker systems, started in 1941 to manufacture monitors for N.H.K. (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) but closed down in 1999 and apparently stooped making drivers even earlier than that, the full range drivers derived from the original NHK designs are absolutely revered by the Japanese audio elite.
DiscoVision Associates
Company formed by MCA and IBM in the latter half of the 70's to manufacture optical disks for the computer and CE industries based on a pool of patents owned by the parent companies and Philips. The company pressed their first Laserdisc in 1977 and this format became the mainstay of the company but there were manufacturing problems from the start and although the pressing quality improved in the mid 80's they were for some reason never able to archive the quality that the Philips pressing plants were archiving in Europe. Sold to Pioneer in the 1980's and became the USA optical division of that company, Pioneer subsequently opened a very successful pressing plant in Japan based around technology from DiscoVision but despite pouring money into the USA plant there were always some problems with the pressings that originated there although in the latter years this became markedly improved. The name of the company comes from the original name that MCA had trademarked for use with the Laserdisc.
Discwasher
Innovative USA based maker of audio and AV accessories, went out of business in 1991 with the trademarks and some product lines being sold to Recoton later that same year.
Dominion Electrohome See --> Electrohome
Dormitzer Electric and Mfg. Co.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., USA this was a well know manufacturer of synchronised electronic flash equipment for cameras from the 1930's into the early 50's, these were considered considerably better than the competition in quality and were especially applauded at the time for the brightness that was due to a superior reflector design. Made a tape recorder in or around 1950 but disappear from view shortly thereafter.
DRG
French manufacturer of high end amplification started by Mr. Guillaudeau formerly of AudioAnalyse and later of Siemel, appears to have been fairly shot lived.
Dunlavy Audio Labs
Company based in Colorado Springs, USA, manufactured loudspeakers, cables and related products. Founded in 1992 by loudspeaker designer and ex-US Army communication engineer John Dunlavy and was sold to Wybron, Inc in 2001 only do be closed down the year after for reasons unknown. You can read an interview with Mr, Dunlavy here.
Dyna Company
Founded by David Hafler and Ed Laurent in 1955 as a manufacturer of audio transformers and based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Started manufacturing audio amplifier kits in 1956 and fully assembled variants shortly thereafter and the company was by the early 60's the best known supplier of high quality audio kits in the USA. Later that decade the company expanded into the then burgeoning loudspeaker market by distributing SEAS loudspeakers under the it's own name in the USA, one of those models the A-25 received particular praise in the USA hi-fi and CE press and went on to become one of the best selling loudspeakers ever made. The company was taken over by Tyco in 1969 and the decade that followed the takeower was the really the heyday of Dynaco, with unpreceded sales of greatly expanded product lines of electronics and loudspeakers. Mr. Hafler left the company in 1974 to join Ortofon and in a similar time frame Dynaco moved to Blackwood in New Jersey. In the latter half of the 70's the company however started to feel the pinch from Japanese competition on their margins despite rising sales, although they tried to counter this by moving the manufacture of some of their fully built products to Japan. After having had serious cash flow problems for a couple of years the company was sold to ESS in 1979 and was closed down the year after. The product lines of the company where sold to Sound Valves who produced a reduced range of amplifiers until the early 90's and sold them mostly as kits while the Dynaco brand was later offloaded to Panor Corp.. Note that the company's products where sold both under the Dyna and Dynaco brands depending on time frame and country, early kits where branded Dynakit. For more info on the company and it's products wisit the Dynaco Homepage.
Dyna-Empire See --> Empire Scientific
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