Addax Sound Company
Founded in 1995 in Northbrook, Illinois, USA. Sold mostly low end consumer audio products in the form of headphones, headsets and suchlike, also sold headphone components, audio connectors and wire assemblies, related electronic components and small speaker drivers but seems to have found most success as an OEM provider of headsets for multimedia purposes (the noise cancelling headsets IBM provided with OS/2 Warp 4 and Viavoice were bought from Addax for instance), although professional grade headsets were provided as well. Much of their product line appears to have been sourced from the Far East although the company had a assembly operation in the USA that could handle small runs. Was taken over by Koss on May the first, 2003 and it appears that the company was in some sort of trouble at the time since Koss only paid just under 20k shares of their own stock for the entire operation.

Adrian Acoustics
A hi-fi furniture company registered in New York but operating from West Haven and later Bridgeport in Connecticut, USA. Took over the business run by Adrian Cabinet Arts Corp. but focused on the manufacture of furniture rather than cabinets, aquired the Alón speaker line from Acarian Systems but appears to never have made the speakers. Founded in 2004 by Humberto Adrian and dissolved in 2011, business taken over by Adrian Lifestyles Furnishings.

Adrian Cabinet Arts Corp.
Company based in Queens, New York, USA and founded by Humberto Adrian in 1973. Althoug primarily a woodworking shop they got quite well known in the audio world for providing cabinetry for a number of high end loudspeaker design for NY based loudspeaker companies such as Advent, Dahlquist and Acarian Systems, in fact if you find you have speakers with the phrase Adrian Cabinets stamped on the inside this is the company that made them, cheaper cabinets were usually supplied by companies such as Stylemasters. The company moved to West Haven in Connecticut and was dissolved in 2004 with the production being taken over by Adrian Acoustics.

Advanced Ribbon Technologies (Hybrid ribbon/dynamic speakers) See --> North Creek Music Systems

ADX See --> Analog Digital Technology

AEG See --> AEG

Agfa
Founded in 1867 as the Berlin branch of the Friedr. Bayer et comp. company which was a pioneering manufacturer of synthetic dyes better know today as just Bayer. The branch started to use the Agfa brand name for their photographic products in 1897 and was merged into I. G. Farben in 1926 along with the rest of Bayer and re-established as in independent operation in 1952, although fully owned by Bayer. Started manufacturing audio tape later that decade, merged with Belgian company Gevaert in 1964 to found Agfa - Gevaert, thereby creating one of the worlds biggest manufacturer of photographic products, and moved their headquarters from Germany to Mortsel in Belgium. A-G was one of the leaders in the development of audio tape especially in the late 60's and early 70's when they produced what was arguably the best professional open reel tape on the market and managed to seriously erode the market share of BASF, Ampex and 3M without a lot of publicity, but the company was also noticeable in particular for the stance they took on tape erosion.

In the early 80's it became apparent that large amounts of professional grade tapes manufactured in the preceding decades were becoming unplayable due to a number of factors mostly chemical instability in the ferrite layer (Agfa et al) or the tape itself had a tendency to hydrate (Ampex etc.), BASF had been aware of this problem for some time prior to this after doing research on tape lifetimes and had taken appropriate action but most other companies were caught unawares and some, noticeably Ampex, choose to ignore the issue altogether and even continued manufacturing the affected formulations. Agfa on the other hand started an R&D program that not only set out to ensure that new tapes had extended lifetimes but more importantly they developed chemical compounds that allowed you to play back tapes that otherwise were unplayable due to flaking, this meant that a number of classic albums were transferred to high quality masters in the 1980's that would otherwise only exist as duplication copies or even record transcripts. The company decided in the late 1980's to change direction from media supply to media technologies and sold the magnetic recording division to BASF in 1990. The more interesting tape formulations and/or updated variations thereof are still available from RMGI.
Homepage: http://www.agfa.com

Agon AS
Norwegian company based in Lysaker, in the municipality of Bærum, that is basically an Oslo suburb these days. Founded by brothers Eigil & Geir Spiten in 1986 as an electronics importer and distributor. Was by the mid 90’s starting to expand their distribution network slightly into Sweden and Iceland and in 1996 started to sell primarily Asian sourced budget televisions and video recorders under their own Elfunk brand, in 2006 they expanded the range of televisions greatly as their Asian suppliers got into the LCD game in a big way and the company had its biggest year with a turnover of 172 million NEK.

The year after however the company starts to lose some of their imported brands, their website stops being updated and by 2010 they are no more, but we have actually not been able to find out what happened.

Ahrens Audio
Based in Freigericht, in Hessen, Germany. Run by and named after husband and wife team of Christine & Lothar Ahrens and operated as a dealer in vintage audio and parts, was well known in the latter half of the 90’s especially for having large stocks of hard to find NOS thermionic valves and was one of the first such dealers to take advantage of the internet and E-Bay when it came to sales of vintage hi-fi but apparently had been trading in one form or another since 1980 or thereabouts.

Introduced a line of valve based amplifiers in late 2001 that included a stereo integrated plus 3 monoblocks, the biggest of which was the Ba-amp model I that had no less than 30 valves, all of their models took advantage of the owners stocks of NOS valves with them being built out of primarily vintage AEG models which set them apart from the usual. By 2004 the company had some financial problems apparently due to the split-up of Christine & Lothar, with Lothar running the business on his own after that, there followed complaints about non-shipments of pre-paid orders, the company lost their E-Bay account presumably for the same reasons and their website disappeared for a time, in 2005 the website re-appeared and the company again started selling on E-Bay under new user names, but they were taken down one after another and there were persistent complaints on audio discussion groups during the following year with allegations of non-shipments and even outright fraud and the company disappears altogether in 2007. The manufacture of amplifiers appears to have stopped in late 2003 or early 2004 and as far as we know the re-started company never shipped any new amps despite claiming to be able to do so.

Air Audio Designs Limited
UK based business originally founded in 2008 by Alex Fletcher (ex-Dixons buyer) and was based in the London Docklands. The company started selling iPod docking systems in late 2009 that were specified by Mr Fletcher and reflected his experience in the CE retail industry since the company only sold their products to larger retail chains and ignored the smaller dealers completely.

The company only delivered two products in the form of the Indigo and Indigo Travel iPod speaker docks, both are a similar design featuring an oval shape made out of brushed aluminium, feature full-range drivers with Neodymium magnets, an external 3.5mm input and can be run from the mains power supply or from batteries.The bigger Indigo had an RRP of 79.95 UKP, featured 60mm drivers and typically retailing for 10 quid less, that model actually got quite decent reviews for its basic sound quality in comparison with similarly priced and featured models at the time but in todays market would probably be considered as something of a disappointment.

The smaller Indigo travel had an RRP of 39.99 UKP, featured 30mm drivers and to be frank did not sound all that hot, quite disappointing in fact but represented a reasonable value at the time if we take its diminutive size and competing products into the equation.

Changes in the format of the newer iPod/iPhone systems meant that the product only partially worked with newer models, the supplied remote for instance lost some of its functionality and you had lift the unit out of the dock to change playlists or albums. This meant that the company was sitting on a considerable stock of outdated devices and in April 2010 it was decided to close the operation down and sell the remaining stock on Play.com at a steep discount, the Indigo went for 29.95 and the Indigo travel for 14.99 and had sold out by the autumn.

Aireon Manufacturing Corporation
Founded in 1937 in Kansas City, USA by Randolph C. Walker as the Aircraft Accessory Corporation and did during the war years manufacture radar systems and radio related products for the U.S.A. armed forces. The company had by 1946 changed its name to Aireon and gained ownership of a number of electronic component manufacturers including Cinaudagraph Speakers and the Lewis Electronics valve manufacturer, later that same year the company diversified by entering the then booming market for record jukeboxes, their first products in that market was the high end Aireon Super-Deluxe but it was popularly known as the Airliner due to it being the biggest such product on the market. Aireon had banked on the consumer market taking over when contracts with the army ran out at the end of the war, in anticipation of this they had introduced a number of radio related products intended both for the ham radio market and 2 way radios and suchlike intended for the consumer market but neither product line sold in any volume and the company went bankrupt in September 1946. A company called Reconstruction Finance Corporation bought the company and restarted production of jukeboxes and ham radio products but by 1949 production of jukeboxes was halted. The electronic components part of the Aireon operation appears to have been taken over by the Consolidated Group but it is not clear if they did after the bankruptcy of the original company or if that was something that happened later, the manufacture of ham radio products survived into the mid 1950s as a company called PrePro.

Next Page : Defunct Audio Companies - Al -- Previous Page : Defunct Audio Companies - Ac