We combined two powerful brands – JBL Synthesis® and Mark Levinson® – tocreate one powerful home theater system: the Synthesis® One Array™ ML Premier.

 

This upgraded blend of the JBL Synthesis® One Array™ with the new MarkLevinson® 500H Series amplifiers represents one of the most dynamic systems inthe industry. The Synthesis® One Array™ alreadysets new standards of technological innovation and manufacturing quality, and the groundbreaking500H Series amps redefine acoustic detail with breathtaking realism.

 

This system delivers flawless sonic accuracy at any volume level, withMark Levinson® providing the very best in amplification to power the JBL®compression drivers as well as the dome and cone speaker configurations. Withcustomized calibration and installation, and optional JBL® Factory Calibration,this unique system offers precise, consistent sound for true theater quality witheven greater intimacy.

 

Synthesis® One Array™ ML Premier Home Theater System:

 

1 – SDP-40HD Surround Processor

2 – No 535H Multichannel Amplifiers

2 – S820 Stereo/Mono Amplifiers

1 – SDEC4500 Digital Equalizer / Active Crossover

1 – S4500XLRIC Interconnect Kit

 

3 – SAM1HF High-Frequency Horn Modules

3 – SAM2LF Low-Frequency Woofer Modules

4 – S4Ai Multipolar In-Wall Surrounds

2 – S1S-EX Passive Subwoofers

 

Click here to learn more about the Synthesis® One Array™ ML Premier

In a move that brings greater organization to each of its High Performance A/V brands and provides its customers with a centralized location for gathering information on all of its products, Harman today launched four new websites for its Revel, Mark Levinson, Lexicon, and JBL Synthesis brands. Each website is designed with an easy-to-navigate, stylish format and together showcase a complete set of Harman’s high performing, aesthetically pleasing home theater technologies.

 

In addition to an introductory page that automatically showcases the most popular products from each brand, the websites feature six tabs that each serve a different purpose: An “About Us” tab gives a detailed history of the brand’s heritage, contact information and its presence in Harman’s mobile showroom; a “Products” tab allows the user to browse through a catalog of every available product and also provides detailed information about each, including the products features, technical specifics, photo gallery, and frequently asked questions; the “Support” tab gives phone numbers and email addresses for technical support of each brand; a “Where to Buy” tab allows visitors to find the closest U.S. dealer or international distributor to them; a “Press” section gives the most recent news and announcements from each brand; and, finally, there is a “Gear” tab that directs visitors to the online swag store, where they browse through and purchase clothing and other apparel from any one of the four brands.

 

“Our team has put a lot of time and effort into the development of each website to ensure that we have addressed every possible need for all of our customers and dealers,” commented Marc Kellom, Vice President of Marketing, Harman High Performance A/V. “The websites are designed to bring a greater level of support to our customers and dealers and satisfy the needs of anyone who is looking for more information about any of our industry leading products.”

 

Before the websites went live, finding more information on Harman’s High Performance A/V products meant calling in to the technical support or visiting multiple websites for more information. Now, that information has been consolidated to each of the four websites. Anyone who is interested in installing a new home theater display or upgrading an existing system can simply go to any one of the websites, learn about which components are best suited for their situation, find out where to purchase each product and even learn about how to optimize the installation of each. 

 

For dealers, the websites can act as a guide for their customers. Dealers can refer their customers to the website to view product shots, read more about each product, and see each product in photos of existing home theater systems. Using the website allows dealers and their customers to discuss any purchase on a more detailed level and accomplish more in less time.

 

HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment solutions for the automotive, consumer and professional markets – supported by 15 leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon® and Mark Levinson®. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 20 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems.  HARMAN has a workforce of about 11,000 people across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and reported sales of $3.2 billion for the last twelve months ended March 31, 2010.  The Company’s shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NYSE:HAR.

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Harman today announced appointment of audio industry veteran Jim Garrett to the position of Market Manager for the Harman High Performance A/V brands – Mark Levinson, Lexicon, Revel, and JBL Synthesis. Garrett brings over eighteen years of industry experience in both research-and-development for audio-engineering and high-end home audio marketing, and will use this experience to continue the expansion of Harman’s Revel, Mark Levinson, JBL Synthesis, and Lexicon brands.

 

Before joining the Harman team, Garrett worked at CEDIA where he was the Director of Technical Training for the Education Department and the staff liaison for the Instructor Pool, Sales Representatives, and EST Content Action teams. Prior to his time at CEDIA, Garrett worked as a consultant for Velodyne Acoustics and spent nine years at Klipsch Group, Inc. where he was Director of Product Planning. While at Klipsch, Garrett led the development of numerous award-winning and industry-leading audio product lines for the Klipsch and Aragon brands, including a complete suite of THX Ultra2-certified electronics and speaker system and the Palladium and Reference Series lines of loudspeakers.

 

Garrett’s career started with stints in retail beginning with three years at Best Buy as an assistant store manager and four and a half years in sales and management at a CEDIA channel specialty retailer and integrator. At Harman, Garrett will be responsible for new product roadmaps, marketing strategy, and marketing communications for the High Performance A/V Brands.

 

“Jim’s experience as a product planning manager and his time in retail put him in the perfect position to carry out a long and successful career with Harman High Performance A/V,” said Marc Kellom, vice president of marketing for Harman High Performance A/V. “We’re all very confident that he will make an immediate and profound contribution to the team and we are excited to begin working with him.”

 

Harman International Industries, Incorporated (www.harman.com), designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment products for the automotive, consumer and professional markets.  Harman International maintains a strong presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and employs more than 11,000 people worldwide.  The Harman International family of brands includes AKG®, Becker®, BSS®, Crown®, dbx®, DigiTech®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson®, Revel®, QNX®, Soundcraft® and Studer®.  Harman International’s stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “NYSE: HAR.”

 

 

 

 

 

CEDIA EXPO, DENVER, CO – Mark Levinson®, a business unit of Harman International Industries, Incorporated (NYSE: HAR), famed for 35 years for its elegant high-performance products, introduces the Nº53 Reference Monaural Power Amplifier.

 

As with all Mark Levinson Reference products, it goes without saying that the primary function of the Nº53 is to reproduce sound at the purest level possible. Following in the tradition of such Mark Levinson solid state power amplifier products as the ML-2 and the Nº33, the new Nº53 continues to prove that solid state electronics can rival the best sounding tube-based designs. More specifically, the Nº53 is the first ever switching power amplifier from Mark Levinson. Despite their numerous advantages – increased efficiency, more power, compact dimensions, less weight and less heat dissipation than their linear counterparts – switching power amplifiers have generally been viewed with skepticism from the audiophile community, due to the technical limitations inherent in switching designs and assumptions about the resultant sound quality. The Nº53, however, is the end result of an extensive R&D effort to find ways to emphasize the advantages of switching power amplifiers while overcoming their weaknesses, creating a landmark product truly worthy of the Mark Levinson Reference designation.

 

The Nº53 is rated at an impressive 500 Watts into 8 Ohms, measures merely 21" H × 9" W × 21" D and weighs only 135 lbs, certainly playing up the strengths for which switching power amplifiers are known. It is capable of generating truly phenomenal power levels into virtually any speaker load to support both instantaneous and continuous demands. More impressive still, the Nº53 accomplishes this feat without the slightest change in performance capability while maintaining a constant, thermally-balanced operating temperature. Unlike most switching amplifiers, the Nº53 has superbly efficient power management capabilities, so its operating temperature does not change, no matter how hard or long the amplifier is driven.

 

Switching power amplifiers get their name because they switch the output devices on and off in very rapid succession, mimicking the input signal. One set of output devices drives the positive half of the waveform, and a separate set drives the negative half. The result is less power being wasted as heat, as the workload is essentially cut in half. Unfortunately, it also creates some significant design challenges in terms of how to manage the switching noise – the noise created from the output devices constantly turning on and off – as well as a phenomenon called "dead bands." Traditionally, these have been the two contributing factors to switching power amplifiers’ reputation for inferior sound quality. However, Mark Levinson has raised the bar by breaking through these barriers with the Nº53.The Nº53 removes switching noise without affecting the audio with the introduction of the new patented and proprietary Interleaved Power Technology (IPT), which, among other things, raises the switching frequency of the Nº53 to an extremely high 2MHz. The advantages of this are twofold: first, it pushes the fundamental switching noise and its harmonics far above the limit of human hearing, so that they have no direct affect whatsoever on sound quality; second, it allows for easier removal of the switching noise from the signal by using much gentlerfilters, having no negative effect in the crucial audio band (the result is a frequency response that is ruler flat across the entire audio spectrum and is only a few dB down at 100kHz – impressive for any power amplifier, but staggering for a switching design).

 

The Nº53 has also overcome the "dead band" problem. Dead bands are silent gaps in the audio output, created when the output devices driving the positive half of the signal and the negative half of the signal are both turned off. This generally occurs at every “zero crossing point,” whenever the audio waveform crosses over from positive amplitude to negative amplitude or vice versa. This is a constant phenomenon – in a 20kHz audio signal, this point occurs 40,000 times per second. It becomes a problem, however, because even the best output devices are not able to turn on and off instantaneously, so the result is a number of “dead bands” of signal every second. Obviously, the larger the gap, the more detrimental to the audio signal. Many designs minimize dead bands by ensuring that the time both sets of output devices are off is kept as short as possible, which unfortunately increases the potential for the output devices to be on simultaneously, which can damage or destroy them. The Nº53, on the other hand, was designed using a patented technology that allows both sets of output devices to be on simultaneously for short periods of time, to completely eliminate dead bands without damaging the output devices or reducing their life expectancy. In other words, this completely eliminates the dead band problem and maintains the Nº53’s long-term reliability.

 

Power amplifiers’ challenge and goal is to amplify the incoming audio signal without distorting it and effortlessly drive a wide range of loudspeaker impedances at any volume level with the forcefulness and grace that reference-quality sound reproduction demands. The Nº53 is designed toward that end. The chassis is a compact vertical design consisting of three separate internal compartments to provide shielding and isolation of the different circuitry – the power supply in the bottom, the four amplifiers in the middle and the control circuitry in the top. The power supply is completely isolated and shielded from the rest of the amplifier to reduce interference from magnetic fields and high current devices. The extremely low-noise toroidal transformer features an oversized 2.8kVA transformer with four 47,000µF low-ESR capacitors. The middle section’s four amplifiers, featuring a pair of coils each, are arranged symmetrically and mirror-imaged to maintain separation. Working together, the four amplifiers raise the effective switching frequency from 500kHz to 2MHz to produce the best sound quality known from a switching amplifier. The control circuitry has its own independent regulated power supply and is shielded from the rest of the amplifier to keep it from interfering with the audio circuits.

 

Commenting on the launch of the new Nº53 Reference Monaural Power Amplifier, Mark Levinson Director of Sales Ed Stadlen stated, “With the development of the Nº53, Mark Levinson’s R&D team has succeeded in solving the technical hurdles of switching power amplifiers and bringing a breathtaking, paradigm-shifting product to market. With the Nº53, we extracted every last ounce of performance that a switching power amplifier was capable of, producing what we see as a truly great sounding power amplifier that can bear the Mark Levinson name. The Nº53 Reference Monaural Power Amplifier is now available from authorized Mark Levinson dealers.