Following up on its acquisition of Brazilian loudspeaker manufacturer Electronica Selenium in June this year, Harman today presented the European professional audio community with Selenium by Harman at the PLASA Show in London. Selenium is now part of Harman Professional's Loudspeaker Group led by Mark Ureda, Vice President and General Manager, and also including JBL Professional.
“Being a part of a global organization such as Harman allows Selenium to expand our distribution in a measured, strategic and well-supported manner,” says Rodrigo Rihl Kniest, Country Manager, Harman Brazil. “In doing so, we dovetail well with other Harman Professional brand offerings and we provide European customers with greater choice, improved versatility and Selenium's unique combination of innovation, quality and performance value. I am confident that Harman's product portfolio coupled with Selenium's positioning in Brazil and Latin America will facilitate new businesses opportunities in all sectors – automotive, consumer and professional.”
Harman has ambitious growth plans for the Brazilian market. Since the acquisition of Selenium, the company has invested approximately US$100 million to expand its production capacity and establish a world-class research and development center. Founded in 1958 in the south of Brazil, Selenium manufactures and sells audio solutions for the car audio aftermarket, musical and professional markets.
Commenting on the announcement, Michael MacDonald, Harman Professional, Executive Vice President of Marketing & Sales noted, “The decision to acquire Selenium made perfect sense since the first visit to the meet with the people and see the facilities. Now as we debut the brand and product family to our European distribution partners I am more confident than ever that Selenium will be a great success as part of the Harman Professional portfolio of brands. Looking forward to the upcoming Olympic Games and the World Cup, which will both be held in Brazil, I am equally excited that Selenium will be a local flagship for the Harman Professional Division from a sales, marketing and product localization perspective.”
At PLASA, European audio professionals can look forward to the following product offerings on the Harman stand.
18SWS1000
18” subwoofer loudspeaker with 1000W RMS and excellent efficiency. Its 4” voice coil helps to dissipate the heat. The Selenium 18SWS100 uses an exclusive multi cooling system that completes the voice coil cooling task and reduces the power compression. An injected aluminum basket makes the product lighter and reinforced. And the long non-pressed fibers make the cone more rigid and resistant.
D2500Ti Nd
This small sized and very lightweight compression driver, with an extremely high efficiency, is recommended for use in high performance compact, two-way, line array and flying systems. Powered at 80W RMS its SPL at 1W – 1m is 111dB. Housing material is made in aluminum that helps dissipating the heat with light weight. With a Titanium voice coil, its response curve goes up to 22kHz.
Ribbon Line Array
Selenium's most compact passive Line Array system is extremely light and flexible to mount. When fly-mounted the design factor for 10 cabinets is 7:1. The subwoofer cabinet uses a 15” 800W RMS Selenium transducer and the HF cabinet is composed by two 6.5” mid-bass woofers (150W RMS) and a ribbon driver (30W RMS) with a very smooth sound.
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.