Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you? You know? In a tech
Speaker 1: News episode a few weeks ago, I mentioned that the
Speaker 1: company on Chio, which created an audio equipment brand that
Speaker 1: was well known and respected in the A V world,
Speaker 1: was going out of business. I also mentioned that the
Speaker 1: brand would actually live on because other companies had sort
Speaker 1: of swooped in to purchase those assets before the demise
Speaker 1: of on Chio, and it appears that the plan is
Speaker 1: to continue producing equipment using those assets that will presumably
Speaker 1: carry the Onchio brand names forward. Then I asked if
Speaker 1: y'all wanted me to follow up on that and do
Speaker 1: an episode on it, and y'all said, yeah, us at
Speaker 1: least five of you did, So here we go. That's
Speaker 1: that's a bar that I am happy to hit. Now,
Speaker 1: before I really jump into things, let me give a
Speaker 1: few caveats up front in this episode. First, there actually
Speaker 1: are not a ton of great resources that chronicled the
Speaker 1: history and evolution of on Kio, So there are going
Speaker 1: to be some gaps in this episode. And we should
Speaker 1: probably consider any dates I talk about beyond like really
Speaker 1: formative ones like the founding of the company, to be
Speaker 1: more or less approximate. Also, many of the resources I
Speaker 1: uncovered were obviously originally written in a language other than English,
Speaker 1: and the translations vary from pretty good to this is
Speaker 1: unintentionally disturbing. For example, one source I came across described
Speaker 1: a moment in an on Kio commercial that totally gave
Speaker 1: me the creeps, and I'm gonna go ahead and read
Speaker 1: what it said, because should I be the only one
Speaker 1: to suffer? This is literally how it read. Quote Yoko
Speaker 1: Mina Mino and Idol speaks in a moist voice. I
Speaker 1: want you to like it slowly. This is a scene
Speaker 1: from the commercial of Radian, a popular mini component system
Speaker 1: of a Kyo In end quote, yeah, have fun getting
Speaker 1: that out of your head, because it's been haunting me
Speaker 1: for days. Anyway. My point is that the combination of
Speaker 1: scant sources and questionable translations, also some sources contradicting facts
Speaker 1: that other quote unquote facts that other sources are are listening.
Speaker 1: All of this means that we could be jumping around
Speaker 1: a little bit and taking everything with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Beyond certain things that are pretty certain, I usually would
Speaker 1: default to the company's own history sources over everything else,
Speaker 1: thinking well, that's going to be the most reliable. But
Speaker 1: there's at least one instance where I feel like that
Speaker 1: was also incorrect, and we'll get to that all right,
Speaker 1: back to a Kio. As we'll see, the story of
Speaker 1: on Kio includes more than one moment where the entire
Speaker 1: brand could have disappeared, and that only thanks to some
Speaker 1: other companies was on Kio able to keep going. Sadly,
Speaker 1: it's luck was bound to run out at some point,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be what has happened now. But
Speaker 1: our story begins back in the early nineteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: in fact involves not just on Kio's founder, who is
Speaker 1: Takeshi Godae, but another really important person in Japanese tech
Speaker 1: and business, Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of the company that
Speaker 1: would ultimately become known as Pana Sonic. Konosuke Matsushida became
Speaker 1: childhood friends with Takeshi Godai after taking a job at
Speaker 1: the Goodai Bicycle company. Mattsushida would later moved to Osaka
Speaker 1: take a job at the Osaka Electric Light Company. Work
Speaker 1: his way up quickly in that business, and in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida would leave to found his own electronics company,
Speaker 1: initially focusing on stuff like bicycle lamps and light sockets.
Speaker 1: This is the company that would ultimately become Panasonic, and
Speaker 1: it would take a few years for that company to
Speaker 1: find stability, but after that it grew pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida would eventually bring over his childhood buddy Takeshi
Speaker 1: Good Eye to oversee a manufacturing facility dedicated to making
Speaker 1: speakers loud speakers. After World War Two, Matt Sushida's company
Speaker 1: was actually in danger of being split up by the
Speaker 1: occupying forces, primarily the United States in Japan. That was
Speaker 1: something that was happening to a lot of Japanese companies
Speaker 1: because Japanese companies had sort of a dynastic structure. There
Speaker 1: was very much a kind of inherited structure for companies
Speaker 1: where they would belonged to a family or maybe a
Speaker 1: small group of families and um. The concern by the
Speaker 1: occupying forces was that this was concentrating power in a
Speaker 1: way that was harmful at least to United States interests.
Speaker 1: So around that same time, Matt Sushida's company spun off
Speaker 1: its audio production operations, which gave Takeshi the opportunity to
Speaker 1: make his own decision to found a company of his
Speaker 1: very own. So he did, and he called it Osaka didn'
Speaker 1: ki a kyo kk on Kio means sound acoustics, and
Speaker 1: Takesh's dream was to create a company that could produce
Speaker 1: higher quality dynamic speakers than what was typically available on
Speaker 1: the market in Japan, and he founded that company in
Speaker 1: April of nineteen forty six. The next month, on Kio
Speaker 1: introduced its very first product, but this was not a loudspeaker. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was a cartridge pickup for record players. This is
Speaker 1: the part of the record player that has the stylus
Speaker 1: or needle inside of it. That needle will vibrate as
Speaker 1: it moves through the grooves of a record, so the
Speaker 1: needle kind of navigates this canal in the form of
Speaker 1: this groove, and the variations in that canal cause vibrations
Speaker 1: through the needle. Uh and a very small, very sensitive
Speaker 1: electro magnet in the cartridge would convert the vibrations into
Speaker 1: a weak electric signal, and then when amplified, that electric
Speaker 1: signal would be able to drive speakers that could play
Speaker 1: back the recorded sound represented by those grooves in the record.
Speaker 1: Super cool technology. It's been around for more than a
Speaker 1: hundred years now, according to one source, which was a
Speaker 1: thorough source, but also impossible for me to verify because
Speaker 1: I could not find any corroborating evidence. So again, take
Speaker 1: this with a grain of salt. This original product sold
Speaker 1: for a three yen in ninet. If that is indeed true,
Speaker 1: it would have been incredibly expensive. But again, the source
Speaker 1: I found was one that doesn't even exist online anymore.
Speaker 1: Actually had to use archive dot org to even get
Speaker 1: a copy of it. Like I found a link to
Speaker 1: the source in a forum about on chio. I followed
Speaker 1: the link and got a four oh four error. So
Speaker 1: I went to archive and actually found a snapshot of
Speaker 1: the uh the link from two thousand and twelve in
Speaker 1: order to actually read this. And again, like I said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any corroborating evidence. So we're just kind
Speaker 1: of going to assume that the product was expensive. It
Speaker 1: would have made sense. You know, electronics typically when they
Speaker 1: first debut in a market, tend to be very very expensive.
Speaker 1: They're expensive to make, and so the manufacturer passes that
Speaker 1: onto the customer, and thanks to you know, bleeding edge
Speaker 1: early adopters who have a lot of disposable cash. Then
Speaker 1: eventually the price comes down because manufacturing improves and you
Speaker 1: start producing at scale well despite the cost. At least
Speaker 1: according to this one source, the products sold well enough
Speaker 1: for to Cache to mark those profits toward developing a
Speaker 1: loudspeaker research and development division, as well as set money
Speaker 1: aside to pay for the construction of a factory. That
Speaker 1: part is absolutely true because by January, two years after
Speaker 1: the company had been founded, the company had built its factory. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the first things that that factory began to
Speaker 1: produce were speaker cones, which means we should probably take
Speaker 1: a quick moment to explain what speaker cones are and
Speaker 1: what they are for. So briefly, a loud speaker or
Speaker 1: just speaker for short, takes an incoming electric signal, feeds
Speaker 1: that to an electro magnetic set up, and that in
Speaker 1: turn drives a diaphragm or cone to move inward and outward,
Speaker 1: which creates fluctuations and air pressure that we perceive as sound.
Speaker 1: So inside a speaker you typically have a permanent magnet
Speaker 1: that's attached to the chassis of the speaker itself and
Speaker 1: suspended in the speaker is a coil of conductive wire,
Speaker 1: and as electricity moves through the coil, it creates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, the magnetic field, and the coil interacts with
Speaker 1: the magnetic field of the permanent magnet. And depending on
Speaker 1: the direction of the current, because we are working with
Speaker 1: alternating current here, the magnetic fields either repel one another,
Speaker 1: which forces the coil outward from the speaker, or they
Speaker 1: attract one another, which pulls the coil inward toward the
Speaker 1: speaker or the back of the speaker. I guess well,
Speaker 1: that coil in turn is attached to a cone or diaphragm.
Speaker 1: Typically there's a connector sometimes it's a direct connection, but
Speaker 1: usually there's a a component that serves to connect the
Speaker 1: coil to the cone, and the cu own is secured
Speaker 1: to the speaker at the wide end. So if you
Speaker 1: think of a megaphone, the part where the sound comes
Speaker 1: out is the bit where it would attach to the chassis,
Speaker 1: and it's the narrow endo the cone that attaches to
Speaker 1: the coil. So the movements of the coil push and
Speaker 1: pull on this diaphragm. The stiffness of the material of
Speaker 1: that diaphragm, as well as the size of the diaphragm,
Speaker 1: will affect the quality of sound that comes out of it.
Speaker 1: Larger diaphragms can be much louder than smaller ones and
Speaker 1: generate lower frequencies of sound as well. Your basic subwhiffer
Speaker 1: has a larger diaphragm than say, a tweeter speaker would,
Speaker 1: and there's a real art and science to creating the
Speaker 1: right cone shape and the right stiffness for speakers. Typically,
Speaker 1: speakers have a range of frequencies and volumes that they're
Speaker 1: very good at reproducing. But beyond that range, if you
Speaker 1: try to go either higher frequency or lower frequency, or
Speaker 1: turn up the volume more than the speaker can handle,
Speaker 1: things start to get ugly. And a lot of those
Speaker 1: factors depend upon the cones material and shape. On Kio,
Speaker 1: like other companies in the loudspeaker business back in the
Speaker 1: early days, was producing paper cones. Paper in this case
Speaker 1: includes cones that have materials like wool or even synthetic
Speaker 1: fibers interwoven into them, so it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like printer paper or notebook paper or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It is a type of paper just as currency tends
Speaker 1: to be a special type of paper that has various
Speaker 1: fibers interwoven into it, so are speaker cones. And soon
Speaker 1: the company had its first real hit. One early speaker
Speaker 1: released by on Kio was the e D one hundred.
Speaker 1: It had a driver measuring times or about ten inches across,
Speaker 1: and it was also expensive, more expensive than its nearest
Speaker 1: competitor according to a Kio itself. And yet despite that expense,
Speaker 1: it sold well as reviewers praised it for the sound
Speaker 1: replication capabilities that it had. And from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: this was just the speaker itself, like just the actual
Speaker 1: speaker part, not the cabinet that would house the speaker.
Speaker 1: Now I could be wrong about that. Maybe they produced
Speaker 1: an entire cabinet for this, but to me, it sounds
Speaker 1: like it was more of an O e M product.
Speaker 1: So O e M stands for original equipment manufacturer. It's
Speaker 1: a common term in business. These are the companies that
Speaker 1: make components that other companies used to put into their
Speaker 1: own products. So a lot of those types of companies
Speaker 1: have names that you probably aren't that familiar with because
Speaker 1: we are not the customers for O e M s, right,
Speaker 1: we don't go out and buy O E M products
Speaker 1: for the most part. I mean, there are places that
Speaker 1: will sell them, to sell the O e M components
Speaker 1: where you can do things like do a repair or
Speaker 1: something to a product, but typically we're more familiar with
Speaker 1: the consumer companies that the consumer brand companies UM not
Speaker 1: the O E M s, but other companies are the
Speaker 1: customers for those O e M s. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: think of it, Fox Con which is the company that
Speaker 1: Apple relies on for a lot of the assembly, can
Speaker 1: kind of fall into this business to business category. So anyway,
Speaker 1: all of that would have been an irrelevant tangent if
Speaker 1: in fact the E D one was a full cabinet
Speaker 1: speaker product. But all the photos I saw of it
Speaker 1: have been just for the speaker part itself, as if
Speaker 1: you had taken a cabinet apart and pulled the speaker
Speaker 1: part out and just had that. That's what all the
Speaker 1: pictures show. So my guess is that's exactly what it
Speaker 1: was when a Kia was selling them, and some other
Speaker 1: company would do things like create the cabinets or chassiss
Speaker 1: that would hold this loud speaker. Now, in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: on Kio filed for a patent on nonpressed cone drive
Speaker 1: unit technology. All right, this brings us up to pressed
Speaker 1: versus nonpressed That refers to the process of making speaker cones.
Speaker 1: Press cones typically have a more uniform density and stiffness,
Speaker 1: but they also tend to have a smaller surface area
Speaker 1: than non pressed cones. So nonpressed cones, while not being
Speaker 1: quite as consistent and sometimes having some quality issues, are
Speaker 1: able to move more air, and they could be louder
Speaker 1: than a similarly sized pressed cone. At least that's what
Speaker 1: I've come to understand on the matter. I started going
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole of this and quickly discovered that
Speaker 1: speaker cone technology can be treated with a complexity and
Speaker 1: reverence I would normally associate with quantum physics. Well, we've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to say about on chio before
Speaker 1: we get any further. Let's take a quick break, all right,
Speaker 1: My understanding about pressed versus non press cones really, non
Speaker 1: press cones, mostly we can just say, tend to be
Speaker 1: more power efficient and can produce louder sounds than similar
Speaker 1: sized pressed cones, But they also vary in quality, and
Speaker 1: therefore you cannot be absolutely certain that you're going to
Speaker 1: get the absolute best from a non pressed cone nt
Speaker 1: This was also when on Kio introduced the on Kyo
Speaker 1: o P six seventy, which was a high fidelity audio
Speaker 1: system complete with four speed turntable. And if you're like
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, you might be saying, wait, a
Speaker 1: turntable with four speeds. I think most people who have
Speaker 1: played with turntables they know that there are two standard
Speaker 1: speeds that you pretty much find on every single turntable
Speaker 1: slash record player that's out there. There's forty five rpm
Speaker 1: r VM O course, stands for revolutions per minute, meaning
Speaker 1: the turntable will turn forty five times every minute. This
Speaker 1: is usually reserved for seven inch records. Typically they are singles,
Speaker 1: which means you know, you have like a single song
Speaker 1: per side of the disk of the wreck, and then
Speaker 1: you have thirty three RPM, or really thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third, and this is what we typically use for
Speaker 1: long play albums or LPs, the larger records. Right, most
Speaker 1: people are familiar with that. Now beyond that, there are
Speaker 1: some folks who are probably aware that older turntables in
Speaker 1: particular often had a seventy eight rpm setting, so it
Speaker 1: would turn seventy eight times in a minute. Uh, that
Speaker 1: has dated back to some of the earliest records. You
Speaker 1: don't typically find seventy eight rpm records these days. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying no one's making them, because I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: out there is, but but these were the early early records. However,
Speaker 1: did you know And some of you probably do, but
Speaker 1: I doubt everyone does that. A few systems also included
Speaker 1: a fourth speed, which was all the way down to
Speaker 1: sixteen rpm. Technically it was actually sixteen and two thirds rpm,
Speaker 1: half the speed of thirty three and one third. If
Speaker 1: you're wondering why these odd speeds are hitting these these
Speaker 1: seemingly arbitrary numbers, it actually has to do with the
Speaker 1: gear ratios that were used in turntables, um, because it's
Speaker 1: the it's the ratio of these gears that determine what
Speaker 1: speeds you can have something turned to based upon the
Speaker 1: speed that the motor works at. And it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: But the reason for of these these numbers, UH really
Speaker 1: has to do with the capability of an electric motors
Speaker 1: that turn at a very specific speed and thus, by
Speaker 1: using gears, you can gear up or gear down that speed. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's why they are all these weird ratios
Speaker 1: of thirty three and a third or sixteen and two
Speaker 1: thirds or seventy eight. Now, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was convinced that the purpose of these different speeds
Speaker 1: on turntables was really so that you could turn up
Speaker 1: any LP or thirty three rpm album into a Chipmunks album,
Speaker 1: because if you play a thirty three rpm record at
Speaker 1: forty five rpm speeds everything you know, speeds up and
Speaker 1: all the sounds get pitched up, so it is hilarious
Speaker 1: if you're you know, nine, or in my case, forty six. Conversely,
Speaker 1: if you play a forty five rpm record at thirty
Speaker 1: three rpm while then everything slows down and pitches down,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you that the effect is often disturbing. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember in college where my roommate made an entire
Speaker 1: cassette tape where he he recorded songs played on albums
Speaker 1: but at the wrong speed, because we had a turntable
Speaker 1: in our dorm room and a cassette deck with it too,
Speaker 1: and so one day he just spent he spent the
Speaker 1: whole day converting thirty three rpm songs to forty five
Speaker 1: and vice versa, and listening to that forty five rpm
Speaker 1: recording of the BGS, Stay in Alive played at thirty
Speaker 1: three rpm was really the stuff of nightmares. I'm amazed
Speaker 1: that a horror movie hasn't done that, because it did
Speaker 1: sound like it was coming from you know, like a
Speaker 1: psychological thriller or something. Yeah, give it a try if
Speaker 1: you want, um it's it's it's a juvenile way to
Speaker 1: amuse yourself. Highly recommend it. Anyway. The whole thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third versus RPM story is rooted in different
Speaker 1: music labels attempting to set the standard and then eventually
Speaker 1: meshing together so that one format, the forty five would
Speaker 1: essentially be associated with singles, and the other, the thirty
Speaker 1: three RPM, would be associated with long play albums. But
Speaker 1: that speed really does impact other stuff. So naturally, the
Speaker 1: faster the RPM, then the faster the turntables stylus makes
Speaker 1: its way through the groove of a record, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's turning faster, so the journey takes less time. That
Speaker 1: also means that if you have two albums that are
Speaker 1: the exact same ameter, but one is a thirty three
Speaker 1: RPM and the other is a seventy eight RPM, well
Speaker 1: the seventy rpm record is gonna play through much much faster,
Speaker 1: assuming you've you're using the proper playback speed for each record.
Speaker 1: Of course, the record spends faster, the stylist gets to
Speaker 1: the end faster, which makes sense. Well. Another thing that
Speaker 1: the faster speed tends to do is affect fidelity. Slowing
Speaker 1: the speed down can impact the quality of the playback sound.
Speaker 1: If you go slower than normal, then it's going to
Speaker 1: start to sound worse. Slower speeds produce lower quality audio,
Speaker 1: is one way to think about it. So that meant
Speaker 1: that albums designed to be played at sixteen rpm had
Speaker 1: limitations on sound quality. For that reason, most but not all,
Speaker 1: of sixteen rpm records were spoken word pieces where the
Speaker 1: audio quality wasn't as big of a deal. And I
Speaker 1: know that was a tangent, but this is tech stuff,
Speaker 1: and that's what I do. If I didn't described technology,
Speaker 1: then I wouldn't really be doing the show, right. So anyway,
Speaker 1: if you weren't familiar with four speed stereos, now you
Speaker 1: know they could play albums at sixteen thirty three r
Speaker 1: p M. I'm sure some of you out there have
Speaker 1: had experience with these. I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: a four speed I have seen three speeds, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever at least I definitely never owned
Speaker 1: a four speed turntable. Now, on Kio was already off
Speaker 1: to a fast start. By just four years after opening
Speaker 1: its first factory, it was time to move into bigger digs.
Speaker 1: The company expanded both its factory space and it's office space.
Speaker 1: The next year, on Kio re released the e D
Speaker 1: one hundred loudspeaker, but this time they changed out the
Speaker 1: cone material. The loudspeaker had the non pressed cone design
Speaker 1: in the new version. You know, the original e D
Speaker 1: one hundred was a pressed cone one. But now on
Speaker 1: Kio had filed for its patent for non pressed cone
Speaker 1: technology and was able to incorporate that into the e
Speaker 1: D one and the improvement and sound quality garnered more
Speaker 1: positive reviews from critics, so on Kio's reputation in the
Speaker 1: audio world in Japan was on the rise. Now this
Speaker 1: next bit I have to take issue with. According to
Speaker 1: on Kio's own website, the company introduced a transistor radio
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three called the OS, complete with a
Speaker 1: speaker cone measuring twenty centimeters across, which was a much
Speaker 1: larger speaker cone than what you would typically find in
Speaker 1: transistor radio's at the time. However, the issue I take
Speaker 1: isn't with the speaker size. That's fine, that's with the
Speaker 1: year nineteen fifty three. See the general agreement is that
Speaker 1: the first commercially manufactured transistor radio was the Regency tr
Speaker 1: one that didn't hit store shelves until the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, and I cannot find any corroborating evidence
Speaker 1: that suggests the OS fifty five debuted in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: In fact, all other sources say that it came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five. To keep in mind on Kio's
Speaker 1: own sources, the one that says nineteen fifty three but
Speaker 1: everyone else says no, it was nineteen five. Honestly, five
Speaker 1: makes more sense. It would fall in line with the
Speaker 1: fact that the Regency tr one is widely considered to
Speaker 1: be the first transistor radio that was commercially produced. And
Speaker 1: also it would make the OS fifty five name makes
Speaker 1: sense right if the fifty five was in fact a
Speaker 1: reference to the year in which it came out, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, and then you wouldn't contradict the earlier fact
Speaker 1: about the Regency tr one. So my guess is that
Speaker 1: the on Chio official website has an error on it
Speaker 1: in this case, um, either that or everyone has been
Speaker 1: wrong about what the first transistor radio actually was. Anyway,
Speaker 1: transistors are super neat because they allowed for a miniaturization,
Speaker 1: and I've talked a ton about that in past episodes.
Speaker 1: So the too long didn't listen version is that older
Speaker 1: radios relied on vacuum tubes to act as diodes and
Speaker 1: to serve as amplifiers. A diode is an electric component
Speaker 1: or electronic component I should say that allows a current
Speaker 1: to flow in one direction but not to flow in
Speaker 1: the reverse direction, and vacuum tubes were used for that,
Speaker 1: and they were used for amplifying a signal, that is,
Speaker 1: taking a week signal and then boosting that up to
Speaker 1: a stronger signal. Vacuum tubes are large, and they're also delicate,
Speaker 1: and they also generate a lot of heat. They're kind
Speaker 1: of like light bulbs. Solid state transistors are much smaller
Speaker 1: than vacuum tubes, and they allowed manufacturers to make stuff
Speaker 1: like radio sets that were much smaller and lighter than
Speaker 1: older versions. If you've ever seen like a really old
Speaker 1: radio set, you know it's a piece of furniture, it's
Speaker 1: a big, big thing. Typically it would have its own
Speaker 1: set of legs, kind of like a table, and it
Speaker 1: would be a standalone piece. Transistors allowed people to make
Speaker 1: much smaller radios, eventually pocket size radios, and uh so
Speaker 1: it was a a truly important development in electronics. It
Speaker 1: is what allowed us to create manaturized components and have
Speaker 1: things that didn't take up an entire section of the
Speaker 1: floor like televisions and radios and later on computers. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go through every product released with a company,
Speaker 1: at least not in any detail, but the following years
Speaker 1: saw on Chio expand into speaker chassis manufacturing, and they
Speaker 1: also created a record player called the Kyo HP ten.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, this is a record player that
Speaker 1: has its own dedicated speaker, so you just you know,
Speaker 1: to put a record on it, you plug it in
Speaker 1: you that you can play the music straight from that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a component, in other words, it was its
Speaker 1: own standal own product. The company also got involved in
Speaker 1: TV set manufacturing around this time. Also, in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: the company settled on a logo just shy of a
Speaker 1: decade of the company's founding I couldn't find any other
Speaker 1: information suggesting that they had created a logo before nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, which is funny. So from ninety five apparently
Speaker 1: they didn't have an official logo type. Only a couple
Speaker 1: of years later the company would actually refine that logo
Speaker 1: type to quote suit the rapidly changing style of the
Speaker 1: times end quote. And yeah, this does make sense. Like
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, things were changing very quickly, especially
Speaker 1: in the world of audio equipment, and you didn't want
Speaker 1: to get associated with being left behind, right you didn't.
Speaker 1: Your company did not want to have this stigma of
Speaker 1: being stuck in the past because technology was evolving so
Speaker 1: quickly that in order to remain relevant you needed to
Speaker 1: change things up. And so it makes sense that even
Speaker 1: just a couple of years after they first settled on
Speaker 1: a logo type, they would change it. In ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the Toshiba Corporation entered into an accepted capital participation with
Speaker 1: on Kio. So you might say, well, what the heck
Speaker 1: does an accepted capital participation mean? While further documentation reveals
Speaker 1: that Toshiba brought up a lot of shares of on Kyo,
Speaker 1: a ton of them, like sixty nine percent of the
Speaker 1: ownership of on Kio went to the Toshiba Group, with
Speaker 1: the bulk of the remainder left over going to on
Speaker 1: Kio's founder, Takesh a Go die Um, and some of
Speaker 1: it going to some other executives and some members of
Speaker 1: good Eyes family. See. While on Kio was introducing new
Speaker 1: products and generally receiving a positive reception for them, the
Speaker 1: cost of doing business was so high that the revenue
Speaker 1: coming in wasn't keeping up. So in other words, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a great reputation in the market, but the
Speaker 1: market wasn't big enough to support the expansion that on
Speaker 1: Kio was doing, and so it was costing them more
Speaker 1: to to do business than they were making in revenue.
Speaker 1: So despite having huge success in the market, a Kia
Speaker 1: was on the verge of bankruptcy and there was a
Speaker 1: very real possibility that Takeshi would have to liquidate the
Speaker 1: company and go out of business. So the Toshiba Group
Speaker 1: represented a lifeline for on Kio, and Toshiba saw the
Speaker 1: value of incorporating on Kio's reputation for high quality audio
Speaker 1: components into Toshiba products. Plus, a Kio was already serving
Speaker 1: as an O E m for Tashiba for television sets,
Speaker 1: on Kio was manufacturing TV sets that would later be
Speaker 1: sold under the Toshiba brand, so there was a chance
Speaker 1: that if you went out and bought a Toshiba branded television,
Speaker 1: the actual manufacturer of that TV was on Kio. Also,
Speaker 1: a Kia was making its own TV sets the Onkio brand,
Speaker 1: so there were both brands on the market in Japan
Speaker 1: at the same time. Now, Toshiba is yet another company
Speaker 1: that I need to do a full episode on in
Speaker 1: the future, but I'm going to resist the urge to
Speaker 1: do it right now because you're already gonna have to
Speaker 1: put up a lot from me today. Anyway, on Kio's
Speaker 1: relationship with Toshiba would end up becoming a bit of
Speaker 1: an albatross thirty years later that, my friends, is foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: And with that, we're going to take another quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back now, getting back to on Kio's history. The
Speaker 1: company kept introducing new products, mostly in the audio space.
Speaker 1: Much of the work was in loud speakers, including bookshelf
Speaker 1: type speakers, which were a fairly new thing at that point.
Speaker 1: Now they are sort of a go to speaker style.
Speaker 1: You can spend thousands and thousands of dollars getting high
Speaker 1: end books shelf style speakers. I know because I've looked
Speaker 1: at them. Didn't buy any, but I looked at them
Speaker 1: and then ultimately said, you know what, I don't think
Speaker 1: I even have a space that would accommodate the way
Speaker 1: these speakers would need to be set up so that
Speaker 1: I could get the benefit from that. And so I'd
Speaker 1: be spending a lot of money on high end stuff
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't be able to use properly, and I
Speaker 1: talked to myself out of it. I'm proud of myself
Speaker 1: for that. However, on Kio also began to produce full
Speaker 1: audio systems. They've done a couple of those in the past,
Speaker 1: but they really got into it uh in the late
Speaker 1: fifties and early sixties. That included things like the on
Speaker 1: Kyo ST four hundred d L stereophonic system in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three and a standalone turntable component in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six called the ST fifty five. The company even branched
Speaker 1: into making radio transceivers, essentially Walkee to Hokey style radios,
Speaker 1: and in sixty three, Onkyo manufactured a phonio cardiograph, which
Speaker 1: is an actual medical instrument. So they were really diversifying here.
Speaker 1: They weren't just making high end audio equipment. They were
Speaker 1: making stuff that was related to audio still but had
Speaker 1: uses apart from rocking out with the latest record. Now,
Speaker 1: this was in the beginning of the real high fidelity craze,
Speaker 1: where they started seeing audio files who would seek out
Speaker 1: specific components in an effort to put together their ultimate
Speaker 1: audio system. So instead of buying an all in one
Speaker 1: stereo system, they were interested in buying the individual pieces
Speaker 1: and connecting them together to create what they felt was
Speaker 1: the perfect sound system. Now I should add that on
Speaker 1: Chio had been making components since the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: but it was really in the sixties where we saw
Speaker 1: the craze really take off. The goal was always to
Speaker 1: create the best listening experience, but that's a subjective thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm just here to tell you there is no
Speaker 1: real right answer for which system or which uh collection
Speaker 1: of pieces is the best. It depends on so many
Speaker 1: different factors, like the kind of music you listen to.
Speaker 1: Because some components are really good at representing or replicating
Speaker 1: certain frequencies and volumes that are best for one genre music,
Speaker 1: while others are better for a different genre. Plus, listening
Speaker 1: is a a psychoacoustic phenomenon, and in that our brains
Speaker 1: are interpreting the sound, so that means there is a
Speaker 1: filter in our gray matter that affects how we experience sound.
Speaker 1: And no two people are exactly the same, So the
Speaker 1: perfect system for person A is not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be the perfect system for person B. You can always
Speaker 1: hook up components to very sensitive equipment and say, hey,
Speaker 1: the number on this piece of equipment is better than
Speaker 1: the number on that piece of equipment, and that might
Speaker 1: be correct, but doesn't necessarily mean that the experience of
Speaker 1: listening to the different components is going to make a
Speaker 1: huge difference. So I say that because audio files get
Speaker 1: obsessive about the mathematical association of all the different components
Speaker 1: from everything from the electrical side to the actual acoustic side,
Speaker 1: and I get a little squirrel e when I go
Speaker 1: into those discussions, because I feel like people obsess over
Speaker 1: things that are largely ephemeral that that we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily translate into how we experience the actual output.
Speaker 1: So that's a long way of me saying it's okay
Speaker 1: if you go out there to build an audio system,
Speaker 1: and you're not going with what someone else says is
Speaker 1: the absolute best of the best, because it really depends
Speaker 1: on how you perceive it that it's the system that
Speaker 1: makes you happy that's the one that ends up being
Speaker 1: the best, not the system that arbitrarily hits certain you know,
Speaker 1: electronic metrics necessarily that can have an effect, but you
Speaker 1: get what I'm saying, alright, So on chios standalone turntable
Speaker 1: means that you would actually need to connect this turntable
Speaker 1: to other components like an amplifier for example, to boost
Speaker 1: the signal, and then speakers to play back the sound,
Speaker 1: and on Kio standalone record player, this s T fifty
Speaker 1: five would be part of the initial audio file craze
Speaker 1: in Japan. UM At this point, on Kio is still
Speaker 1: very much a Japanese focused company. They had not really
Speaker 1: started massive exports to other parts of the world yet,
Speaker 1: so the st fifty five was valued for its performance
Speaker 1: as well as it's simplified, no frills aesthetic. The company
Speaker 1: continued producing stereo systems as well, adding in new features
Speaker 1: and refining designs with every passing year. No big shock there,
Speaker 1: and it got into making headphones in nineteen seventy Most
Speaker 1: of Onkyo's fame came from its full stereo systems and
Speaker 1: the individual audio components such as loudspeakers and receivers, turntables, amplifiers,
Speaker 1: and such. In nineteen seventy one, the company changed its
Speaker 1: name from Osaka on Kyo k K to simply on
Speaker 1: Kio Corporation. Then we get up to nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: A few things happened that year that were really important.
Speaker 1: For one thing, Akio established the Onkio Germany Facility, which
Speaker 1: primarily focused on research and development and acoustics, and also
Speaker 1: served as a base of operations for marketing and distributing
Speaker 1: on Kio products to Europe. So the Japanese facilities would
Speaker 1: export products to Germany, which would then be able to
Speaker 1: distribute those two retailers in the Europe region. The company
Speaker 1: also introduced loudspeakers that used titanium instead of paper for
Speaker 1: the speaker diaphragm, and on Kio got out of the
Speaker 1: television set business in around nineteen seventy two. This will
Speaker 1: also be important when we come back to Toshiba more foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: At that stage, an Kio was ready to focus completely
Speaker 1: on producing just audio equipment, its dependence on Toshiba had declined,
Speaker 1: although Toshiba still owned nearly seventy of on Kio, so
Speaker 1: between nineteen fifty seven and seventy two, a Kia was
Speaker 1: kind of acting like a subsidiary to Toshiba, but really
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen seventy two, an Kio was operating as
Speaker 1: an independent company. Yes to Toshiba had ownership interest in
Speaker 1: on Kio, but was not directing the company. So this
Speaker 1: would be a key argument that on Kio would make
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven. Yet more foreshadowing, nineteen seventy two was
Speaker 1: also when on Kio introduced the INTEGRAE power amplifier, so
Speaker 1: Integra is another brand name under on Kio. People probably
Speaker 1: heard of Integral products that came from on Kio. Uh
Speaker 1: I also recommend that you Google image the Integra ninety
Speaker 1: one power amplifier because it looks unlike anything else that
Speaker 1: was on the market at that time. On Kio described
Speaker 1: it as having a steam locomotive like design, and I
Speaker 1: can see that. On Kio continued to expand and opened
Speaker 1: up manufacturing facilities in Korea, so it started to build
Speaker 1: out its manufacturing capabilities and in nineteen seventy three, the
Speaker 1: company debuted the Intech four oh five stereo system, which
Speaker 1: supported quadraphonic sound. I've talked a bit about quadraphonics before. Uh.
Speaker 1: Quadraphonics are essentially a surround sound system that used for
Speaker 1: or used is four channels, and typically the way you
Speaker 1: would set up a quadraphonic listening area is you would
Speaker 1: have speakers at your front left, your front right, your
Speaker 1: back left, and your back right, and you would be
Speaker 1: in the middle and each of those speakers would play
Speaker 1: back a distinct channel of audio. There were several different
Speaker 1: quadraphonic formats, which probably impeded widespread adoption of quadrophonic sound
Speaker 1: because people were using different ways of producing quadrophonic sounds
Speaker 1: and they weren't all cross compatible. So I'll have to
Speaker 1: do a full episode on quadrophonics in the future, and
Speaker 1: maybe I'll even try to record it in a style
Speaker 1: that mimics quadrophonic sound, if I'm being cheeky. We'll see.
Speaker 1: In nine, on Chio established the Onkyo USA Corporation. That
Speaker 1: subsidiary would serve as a foothold for on Chio sales
Speaker 1: in North and South America. So, again like the German version,
Speaker 1: the USA version would import products from Japan and then
Speaker 1: distribute those to US stores and US retailers at least
Speaker 1: for several decades now. In nineteen seventy seven, on Kio
Speaker 1: once again refreshed its logo. The company also introduced the
Speaker 1: Scepter Speaker system, which I thought was super cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was really for the serious audio file. So the
Speaker 1: company offered customers the chance to customize their speakers, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking like crazy levels of customization. According to a Kio,
Speaker 1: there were one hundred seventy three different combinations possible. If
Speaker 1: you had your own idea of what combination you wanted
Speaker 1: of speaker drivers, enclosure setups, and more, then you could
Speaker 1: do that through the Scepter Speaker system. On Kio even
Speaker 1: provided a helpful handbook to guide those who weren't already
Speaker 1: obsessively detailed in their approach speeding onward. In nineteen eight one,
Speaker 1: on Kio introduced the first consumer high speed dual dubbing
Speaker 1: cassette deck, meaning it had to cassette decks and you
Speaker 1: could put a you know, a tape that had stuff
Speaker 1: on it in one, a blank tape in the other,
Speaker 1: and very quickly dub and and copy tape one to
Speaker 1: tape two. I'm guessing that that probably set the music
Speaker 1: industry into a bit of a tizzy, because the introduction
Speaker 1: of any technology that makes it remotely easier to copy
Speaker 1: media tends to put music studios on tilt. In a
Speaker 1: Kio offered a CD player called the C seven hundred
Speaker 1: in some markets, so five still pretty early for CD players.
Speaker 1: It was also called the d X seven hundred and
Speaker 1: other markets. It featured optical fiber connections between the digital
Speaker 1: components and the digital to analog converter. UH. The sales
Speaker 1: pitch for that was that it would cut down on
Speaker 1: signal degradation between going from digital to analog. You have
Speaker 1: to go to analog in order to power analog speakers.
Speaker 1: So the idea here was that, oh, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: this pathway as clean as possible so that you get
Speaker 1: the full benefit of the digital recording UH process. Now
Speaker 1: we're up to nine, so we could finally find out
Speaker 1: what all that foreshadowing was about. In the summer of
Speaker 1: the U S government was proposing a ban on the
Speaker 1: sale of all Tashiba products in the United States. Why, well,
Speaker 1: have you seen a little movie called The Hunt for
Speaker 1: at October or you know, read the book that the
Speaker 1: movie was based off of. See in the film, a
Speaker 1: Russian submarine commander wishes to defect to the United States.
Speaker 1: This was back in the Soviet Union days, mind you,
Speaker 1: and the commander is aboard a prototype Russian submarine with
Speaker 1: a propulsion system that can operate in near silence, which
Speaker 1: makes the submarine very difficult to detect. Well. The US government, meant,
Speaker 1: was miffed at Toshiba's subsidiary, the Toshiba Machine Company, for
Speaker 1: essentially supplying technology to the Soviet Union that would allow
Speaker 1: for the near silent operation of submarines. So kind of
Speaker 1: the same as the Hunt for October, right, They were saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: supply high tech tools to the Soviet Union. We have
Speaker 1: very strong feelings about that. So the US government proposed
Speaker 1: a multi year ban on the sale of all Tashiba
Speaker 1: products in the United States as a result, which is
Speaker 1: pretty wild, right mighty was the missage thereof the actual
Speaker 1: sales happened in the early nineteen eighties. Uh So, Toshiba
Speaker 1: Machine Company was responsible for that around the early to
Speaker 1: mid eighties, and then it was uncovered in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: and that was in violation of this policy the United
Speaker 1: States had, and that represented a pretty tough choice for
Speaker 1: the US government. So, on the one hand, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union was the hated rival of the United States. The
Speaker 1: two countries have been in a Cold war for decades.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, this was Ronald Reagan's America, and
Speaker 1: the general philosophy of Ronald Reagan was that government should
Speaker 1: stay the heck out of the way of business. So
Speaker 1: you're in a real quandary, right, like, what do you do?
Speaker 1: You you hate the Soviet Union, but you've also been saying, hey,
Speaker 1: government should not get in the way of business. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to this story, and maybe one
Speaker 1: day if I do a Toshiba episode, I'll certainly go
Speaker 1: into more detail about all of that. But the part
Speaker 1: that concerns us is that because Toshiba still maintained a
Speaker 1: majority stake in on Kio, like it still had that
Speaker 1: massive amount of ownership of on Kio stock, that put
Speaker 1: on Kio's business in jeopardy as well, because to the
Speaker 1: US government, on Kio looked like a Toshiba subsidiary, so
Speaker 1: it would also get covered by this ban. On Kio
Speaker 1: hired lawyers who filed a mess with the US government,
Speaker 1: and those lawyers argued that a Kia was, and always
Speaker 1: that mattered, an independent company. Yeah, Tashiba maintained a stake
Speaker 1: in on Kio. The Akio no longer made televisions for Toshiba.
Speaker 1: It had stopped doing that in the seventies, and on
Speaker 1: Kio's products were actually competing against Toshiba products that were
Speaker 1: on the market. So a Kia was arguing for the
Speaker 1: survival of its business and pleading with the US government
Speaker 1: not to lump it in with Toshiba's own operations. An
Speaker 1: Kia was able to mitigate the impact of the political
Speaker 1: scandal on its own business, so it was able to
Speaker 1: remain afloat. In nineteen nine, an Kio got a new president,
Speaker 1: takeshe Go Die had led the company from nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six to nineteen nine. Now I'm not certain if he
Speaker 1: stepped down, if you retired, if he passed away. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find any definitive information on that. But the new
Speaker 1: president was Sunio Otso, who would hold that position until
Speaker 1: nineteen so only from nineteen ninety ton. At that point,
Speaker 1: Naoto Atsuki would take over and he would actually stay
Speaker 1: on until two thousand nine, so to two tho nine,
Speaker 1: and then Munnan Nori Otsuki took on the reins, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to get all of that out of the
Speaker 1: way to illustrate how one man to Keshi go Die
Speaker 1: led on Kio for almost forty five years, and then
Speaker 1: the next three leaders in charge were leading it for
Speaker 1: the next thirty years, and some for very few, like
Speaker 1: four years for the first one. Now we have a
Speaker 1: few more things we got to cover with on Kio
Speaker 1: before we wrap things up. In two thousand and twelve,
Speaker 1: on Kio got another capital partner. This time it was
Speaker 1: Gibson Guitar Corporation. Now back in eighteen, I did some
Speaker 1: episodes about Gibson Guitars. In the nineteen eighties, Gibson was
Speaker 1: in danger of going out of business itself, but then
Speaker 1: some entrepreneurs bought the company, reportedly for like five million dollars,
Speaker 1: and Gibson began to climb out of the hole in
Speaker 1: a found itself in and in the process began to
Speaker 1: acquire other companies. So the thought was that diversification was
Speaker 1: a great idea. It would help Gibson remain relevant even
Speaker 1: as tastes were changing in the music industry and people
Speaker 1: were kind of migrating away from guitar driven music at
Speaker 1: that point. An Kio was one of the investments that
Speaker 1: Gibson made around this time. Well, that would end up
Speaker 1: being a bad move, and I'll explain why in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first let's take one last break al
Speaker 1: right before the break, I said that Gibson would make
Speaker 1: an investment into a Kio and that would end up
Speaker 1: being a bad move. What did I mean by that? Well, Gibson,
Speaker 1: for many reasons, was again finding itself in financial trouble
Speaker 1: a few years further in the line, So in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, the historic guitar company, which had been in
Speaker 1: operation for more than a century, had to declare bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Gibson would refocus on making musical instruments once it emerged
Speaker 1: from bankruptcy, and it had to liquidate other assets that
Speaker 1: had not been profitable and had been outside of that
Speaker 1: that laser focus, and that meant that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Gibson would actually emerge from Chapter eleven bankruptcy in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, but in the process, the relationship between Gibson
Speaker 1: and on Kio was severed, so it only lasted from
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve to two thousand eighteen, But that also
Speaker 1: meant once Gibson went away that on Kio was finding
Speaker 1: itself in uncertain financial territory. It was really dependent upon
Speaker 1: UH these relationships it had with Tashiba and with Gibson.
Speaker 1: So the company made the tough decision to sell off
Speaker 1: its European operations, the ones that were centered in Germany.
Speaker 1: They sold it to an Austrian company called a Kipa
Speaker 1: a q I p A. Akipa is best known for
Speaker 1: selling accessories for various electronics. Now, between the time that
Speaker 1: Gibson purchased a steake in on Kio and the time
Speaker 1: where Gibson went bankrupt, so two thousand twelve to two eighteen,
Speaker 1: on Kio also made an investment. On Kio purchased Pioneer
Speaker 1: Home Entertainment. Pioneer is another famous name in the a
Speaker 1: VY equipment industry. Pioneer would actually take a nearly fifteen
Speaker 1: percent steak in on Kio in return. It is customary,
Speaker 1: or at least it used to be. I'm not certain
Speaker 1: if it still is, but it was customary with Japanese
Speaker 1: acquisitions for each company in a merger to purchase shares
Speaker 1: in the other company. That's kind of how Japanese mergers work.
Speaker 1: It's a little different than what we typically see in
Speaker 1: other markets. So on Kio and Pioneer plan to keep
Speaker 1: both brands alive. It weren't going to have Pioneer just
Speaker 1: get folded into on Kio and everything be cave on
Speaker 1: Kio products. You would have both on Kio and Pioneer
Speaker 1: on the market. Now, I'm not sure if this would
Speaker 1: be the right place to say that this was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the end for on Chio because on Kio
Speaker 1: was struggling with something that was affecting the entire audio
Speaker 1: equipment industry. It wasn't just unique to on Kio's situation.
Speaker 1: That thing was more and more people were starting to
Speaker 1: migrate away from stereo systems and stereo system components as
Speaker 1: they were listening to music because the way they listened
Speaker 1: to music was changing. Digital music and streaming were completely
Speaker 1: transforming the way music works. Uh. Over time, things like
Speaker 1: smart speakers were taking the place of high end audio
Speaker 1: systems for pretty much everyone except audio files. Audio files
Speaker 1: obviously they're obsessed with getting that perfect sound, so a
Speaker 1: smart speaker is not gonna cut it. Like even the
Speaker 1: best smart speaker on the market can't even can't even
Speaker 1: remotely compare to a well put together music system. But
Speaker 1: for the mainstream, for the majority of people, that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case. It was convenience and accessibility and connectivity. Those
Speaker 1: were the things that were really important, and a lot
Speaker 1: of companies in the A V industry were struggling to
Speaker 1: deal with that. You saw companies rushed to try and
Speaker 1: incorporate various new components in their systems, like Bluetooth connectivity capability,
Speaker 1: but they were they were trying to catch up. They
Speaker 1: weren't staying ahead of the changes in ways we access music,
Speaker 1: and the problem was that, you know, they couldn't really
Speaker 1: catch up at that point. There was there were already
Speaker 1: alternatives on the market that people were gravitating towards. So
Speaker 1: companies like a Kio, we're really struggling to stay relevant.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just on Kio that this was affecting. A
Speaker 1: lot of a V company were seeing massive drops in revenue.
Speaker 1: In twenty the rug was pulled out from under on
Speaker 1: Kio once again. So in the spring of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: there was a company called sound United. Uh. Sound United
Speaker 1: is kind of like a holding company for several notable
Speaker 1: audio brands, including Polk Audio. I would argue Polk Audio
Speaker 1: is probably the most famous of the brands that Sound
Speaker 1: United owns, and so sound United was wanting to expand
Speaker 1: its portfolio of high end, well known a V brands,
Speaker 1: and it announced its intention to acquire on Kio, and
Speaker 1: that would include brands like Pioneer and Integram, so all
Speaker 1: of these were kind of under the Onchio umbrella. Many
Speaker 1: news outlets actually just went ahead and reported that the
Speaker 1: deal was essentially done and that was just a matter
Speaker 1: of time for the deal to close officially. But this
Speaker 1: story is one that reminds us that just because something
Speaker 1: is announced, like an acquisition or a merger is announced,
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean it's going to go through. Because come October,
Speaker 1: all of that changed. Sound United abruptly pulled out of
Speaker 1: the deal, and in a statement, the Sound United Company
Speaker 1: essentially said that the two parties were unable to satisfy
Speaker 1: all of the requirements that were necessary for a deal
Speaker 1: to go through and ultimately decided to terminate the proposed acquisition.
Speaker 1: The Pandemics certainly made things even more complicated. It shut
Speaker 1: down show rooms and stores so revenue took yet another hit,
Speaker 1: and in twenty Chio made the decision to shut down
Speaker 1: on Chio USA. If you remember, that's the division responsible
Speaker 1: for distributing on Kio products in North and South America.
Speaker 1: So instead, on Kio would outsource that job to Vox
Speaker 1: International Corporation, which is the parent company of Clips k
Speaker 1: l I p s H. It's a company famous for
Speaker 1: speakers in Vox International and Sharp Corporation created a joint
Speaker 1: venture named Premium Audio Company or p a C. Now,
Speaker 1: through that joint venture, Sharp and Vox acquired sev of
Speaker 1: on Kio's home audio video business, and that meant the brands,
Speaker 1: including a Kio and Integra would end up changing ownership
Speaker 1: to p a C. P a C also negotiated with
Speaker 1: the Pioneer Corporation for the right to produce a V
Speaker 1: equipment under the Pioneer brand as well, so at that
Speaker 1: point on Kio equipment was actually being under the ownership
Speaker 1: of p a C, not on Kio itself. Then this
Speaker 1: year two on Kio Home Entertainment Corporation, which was really
Speaker 1: the last surviving component of the company that takesh A.
Speaker 1: Godai founded back in declared bankruptcy. Now this does not
Speaker 1: impact the Onkio brand, because again P a C now
Speaker 1: has ownership of that. In fact, p a C released
Speaker 1: a statement saying that at the time on Kio went bankrupt,
Speaker 1: it was essentially performing only as a licensing company, that
Speaker 1: it was licensing the I P two p a C.
Speaker 1: And and other than that, it really wasn't doing anything.
Speaker 1: Well now it's not doing anything, or it won't be
Speaker 1: doing anything at all because it's declared bankruptcy and I
Speaker 1: do not expect it to emerge from bankruptcy. I expected
Speaker 1: to essentially have liquidated all assets to pay off as
Speaker 1: much debt as possible. And that's it. So the Onkio
Speaker 1: brand lives on, but the company that spawned the brand
Speaker 1: is no more. So here's to you on Chio and
Speaker 1: your contributions to making audio equipment that raises the performance
Speaker 1: bar we hardly knew ye, And that's it for this
Speaker 1: extra long episode of tech Stuff. Actually debated at one
Speaker 1: point of dividing this into two episodes, and I wait
Speaker 1: to hear from my producer Tari about whether or not
Speaker 1: she's going to make me do that. So if you've
Speaker 1: listened to all of this in one go, Tari did
Speaker 1: not make me do that if you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff. There are two ways that
Speaker 1: you can get in touch with me. One is you
Speaker 1: go you download the i Heart Radio app. You navigate
Speaker 1: to the tech Stuff podcast page of the iHeart Radio app.
Speaker 1: There's a little microphone icon on there that if you
Speaker 1: if you tap on that, you can leave a thirty
Speaker 1: second voice message and you can give me a suggestion
Speaker 1: for a show, or comments or anything. If you want
Speaker 1: me to include the audio into an episode, just say so.
Speaker 1: I prefer opt in. So if you say that you're
Speaker 1: cool with us using it, then I will use it.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, then I'm gonna assume you would
Speaker 1: rather I not. The other way to get in touch,
Speaker 1: of course, is over on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an i
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite jokes.