Audio Video News

D&M Holdings will pare its six brands down to four, eliminating Snell Acoustics, a well known speaker brand, and Escient, maker of media servers. Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Labs, and Boston Acoustics will continue in the D&M family.

The company seems to have decided that two speaker brands are one too many. Having acquired Boston Acoustics just a few years ago, D&M will concentrate on that brand for its presence in the loudspeaker marketplace.

Escient's demise comes as more of a surprise, given that the brand was well entrenched in a fast growing category. However, its media server technology will be incorporated into the a/v receivers and pre-pros of the surviving brands.

Snell Acoustics was founded in the mid-1970s by Peter Snell and first made its mark with the classic Type A floorstanding speaker. It has subsequently employed such distinguished speaker designers as Kevin Voecks, who went on to Harman-owned Revel, and Joseph D'Appolito, father of the D'Appolito Array. The company was purchased by D&M in 2005.

Escient was more than a decade old and was best known for its line of FireBall music and media servers. Like many media server makers, such as Kaleidescape, Escient was struggling with DRM-related restrictions on the hard-drive storage of a/v content and had not introduced a Blu-ray compatible product.

See This Week In Consumer Electronics.