JBL

The brand

History

JBL's story begins with a single name: James Bullough Lansing, an engineer and loudspeaker designer who, after leaving Altec Lansing in 1946, founded James B. Lansing Sound, Inc. in Los Angeles. Even before it existed as an independent brand, his technology had already changed cinema: in 1944, together with John Hilliard, Lansing created the A-4 loudspeaker, nicknamed 'The Voice of the Theatre', redefining the sound standard for the cinemas of Hollywood's golden age — a legacy that had earned the company, back in 1936 with the Shearer Horn, the first of several scientific and technical awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 1955 the name was shortened to JBL, and in 1969 Harman International acquired the company, driving decades of international expansion. It was in this period that JBL became synonymous with studio monitors: as early as 1976, a Billboard survey named JBL monitors number one in the American recording industry. In 1977 the company moved to Northridge, California, where the Harman Center of Acoustics Excellence still operates today — the same acoustic engineering centre that created, in 1992, the JBL Synthesis® line, the first fully equalised, processed and THX®-licensed home theater system on the market.

Over eight decades, the brand has earned three technical Grammy awards — the most recent in 2005, for cinema line array engineering — and honours such as the CES Innovations Award and induction into the CEDIA Hall of Fame. In 2026, celebrating 80 years, the JBL Luxury Audio line directly continues this legacy: ultra-high-performance equipment built on the same acoustic engineering that defined the sound of the world's greatest studios and cinemas.