Deadrock (Hi-fi furniture & loudspeaker stands) See --> Path Ltd. (90's)

Deflex Polyurethane Ltd.
Company based in St. Asaph, in Denbighshire, England, that was founded in 2008 by Michael Stuart Mason and his sons to take over the business previously handled by Spectra Dynamics Ltd.. The company opened up an internet storefront that sold a subset of the Deflex brand acoustic and mechanical damping products that the previous company sold and delivered product to some of their former distributers. Disappeared in early 2010 and had been delisted by 2011.

DEIL See --> Electrohome

Delphi Design
Small hi-fi manufacturer based in Chatsworth, California, USA, that was originally founded in 1994. Made primarily high end, high efficiency loudspeakers but also pre and power amplifiers, digital to analogue converter and silver based interconnects, all under the Imager name.

In fact it is the naming and branding that is the oddest thing about the company, their literature talks about "Delphi Design" as both the maker and the brand, but the only branding that appeared on any of the equipment they made was a "Imager" logo. As the name suggest the soundstage appears to have been the company’s raison d'être, but all the company's literature talks about "imaging" and "dynamics" but is low on specifications and and sometimes even gives none other than size and weight. As for the price range the loudspeakers had an RRP of $2900 including stands, the pre-amp $2000, power amp $3200, the DAC $1800 and the interconnects $595 for 1.5 metre. All quoted prices are in USD, exclude sales taxes and are from ca. 1999.

Delphi Designs disappeared from view sometime in mid 2002, although some sites list them alive and showing off their products as late as 2006, but we tried hard to contact the company in 2003 and Delphi is not mentioned in any of the show reports where they were suppesed to have been present post 2002, so I believe that it is just a case of overactive cutting and pasting making the 2002 date is more likely.

Delta-Sigma (Amps & cables) See --> Technology Science & Art

Deltec Amplifiers
Company founded in 1986 and based in High Hurstwood, Uckfield, East Sussex, England. Manufactured PA products with emphasis on smaller club and pub installations with a product line that included professional amplifiers, DJ consoles, PA loudspeakers and small lighting controllers and so on, company went out of business in 1994 or thereabouts. Principal owner F Paul Von-Hinten however continued trading as Deltec Loudspeakers from the same address and still does today.

Deltec Precision Audio Ltd.
Company founded in 1988 in Cardiff, Wales by school chums Adrian Walker and Robert Watts. Initially manufactured a preamplifier but soon added power amplifiers CD transports and DAC's. Went out of business in 1992 but re-appeared later that same year as DPA Digital Limited. Adrian Walker now runs Deltec Precision Audio.

DEMCO See --> SWTP

Diaglo (Media storage) See --> Path Ltd. (90's)

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 stopped making drivers even earlier than that, the full range drivers derived from the original NHK designs are absolutely revered by the Japanese audio elite.

Digital Audio Concepts (C64 soundcards) See --> Vanessa Ezekowitz

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.

Discrete Technology Ltd.
Company formed in 1995 and based in Slough in Berkshire, England that took over the manufacture of the mixing consoles that Trident Audio Developments had been making. They introduced the Ventura 85 desk that was the replacement for the 80 C series that used technology form the Series 90 consoles, however these did not sell well so the company re-introduced the 80 Series in 1996/7 but it appears that the market for those mid-range consoles simply no longer existed as the reintroduced 80 series did-not sell well either. The company was run by David Page Stocks and went out of business in 1999, some of the engineering staff from the company went on to form Tri-Tech Audio Systems while the brandname, designs and remaining stocks were sold to Trident Audio.

Discwasher
Innovative USA based maker of audio and AV accessories, bought by Beatrice Foods in the late 70's and they disposed of it to Ken Thomson (ex-Philips USA) in the mid 80's, had some financial problems and most trademarks and product lines were sold to Recoton later that same year.

DLK Accoustical Products, Inc.
An USA based manufacturer of loudspeakers from Minneapolis in Minnesota. Originally founded in the summer of 1973 by Donald L. Kliewer with the finace coming from Schaak Electronics Went out of business sometime before 1989 and Mr. Kliewer went on to start Winslow Industries.

Dominion Electrohome See --> Electrohome

Dormitzer Electric and Manufacturing Co.
Owned and run by Henry Dormitzer and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. This was a well know manufacturer of synchronised electronic flash equipment for cameras from the 1930's into the mid 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, the company also published at the least one book on photography lighting. Made a tape recorder in or around 1950 and did supply audio transformers to the trade but went out of business in 1957, Dormitzer branded flash equipment was sold as late as 1960 but that appears to have been unsold stock bought by a retail store from the bankrupcy court.

DPA Digital Limited.
Company founded in 1992 immediately after the failure of Deltec Precision Audio and like its predecessor based in Cardiff, Wales and run by Adrian Walker and Robert Watts. Continued to manufacture the products Deltec had been manufacturing and introduced a few new ones that had already been announced and discussed in the hi-fi press as Deltec products.

The company was underfunded from the word go and was in trouble as early as 1995 and by 1997 it had more or less ceased operations and was declared bankrupt in 1998, there was a smattering of products delivered after that courtesy of their German distributor but he had a small number of products assembled as late as 1999 and there were plans to resurrect the operation with finance from him but his untimely death laid them to rest. Adrian Walker now runs Deltec Precision Audio.

Dr. Audio See --> Virtual Dynamics

Drawmer Distribution (Yorkshire) Ltd.
A company formed in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England in 1990 by the husband and wife team of Laila Sinikka Giles (née Jantunen) and Gerrard Kenneth Giles, and originally known as KGM Studio Specialists (West) Ltd.. The Giles family had since 1983 handled the worldwide distribution of Drawmer products through a company called "Drawmer Marketing & Sales" and the new company took over that function but moved into manufacturing as well in 1993 when they purchased the Ambisonics microphone range from Siemens and formed a new company around that called Soundfield.

The Giles's decided to retire in 2012 and the distribution part of the company was sold to Drawmer while Soundfield was sold to TSL, Drawmer Distribution technically still exists but only as a holdings/dormant company.

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.

Dulcet See --> Acoustic Technology International

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.

Duotone Company
Company based in Ansonia, Connecticut, USA that manufactured gramophone accessories in the latter half of the 1910’s. Not to be confused with the later Duotone Company of New York (See below).

Dyna Company
Founded by David Hafler and Ed Laurent (ex-Brociner Electronics) in 1955 as a manufacturer of audio transformers and based in West 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 and one of the better known amplifier manufacturers overall but the Dyna ST70 design is in retrospect the quintessential American push-pull design.

Later that decade the company expanded into the then burgeoning loudspeaker market by distributing SEAS loudspeakers under the its 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 late 1970 or early 1971 (definitely not in 1968 or 9 as is often written) and the decade that followed the takeover was the really the heyday of Dynaco, with un-preceded sales of greatly expanded product lines of electronics and loudspeakers. Mr. Hafler left the company in 1971 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 were sold both under the Dyna and Dynaco brands depending on timeframe and country, early kits where branded Dynakit. For more info on the company and its products visit the Dynaco Homepage.

Dyna-Empire See --> Empire Scientific

Dynastrand See --> Jed L. Hacker

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