| TEAC Corporation | |
| Native Name: | ティアック株式会社 |
| Type: | Public KK |
| Founded: | in Tokyo, Japan |
| Hq Location City: | Ochiai, Tama-shi, Tokyo, 206-8530 |
| Hq Location Country: | Japan |
| Key People: | Yuji Hanabusa (President) |
| Industry: | Electronics |
| Revenue: | JPY 20.3 billion (FY 2014) (US$ 185 million) (FY 2014) |
| Net Income: | JPY -1.8 billion (FY 2014) (US$ -16.6 million) (FY 2014) |
| Num Employees: | 1,046 (consolidated, as of 30 September 2015) |
| Footnotes: | [1] [2] |
is a Japanese electronics manufacturer. TEAC was created by the merger of the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company, founded in 1953, and the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company, founded in 1956.[3]
TEAC has four divisions:
TEAC is known for its audio equipment, and was a primary manufacturer of high-end audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. During that time, TEAC produced reel-to-reel machines, cassette decks, CD players, turntables and amplifiers.
TEAC produced an audio cassette with tape hubs that resembled reel-to-reel tape reels in appearance. Many manufacturers at the time used these TEAC cassettes in advertisements of their tape decks because the TEAC cassettes looked more professional than standard audio cassettes, and because reel-to-reel tape recordings were known to be of higher quality than cassette recordings.
The company that eventually became the TEAC corporation was founded in August 1953. Originally named the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company,[3] it employed Katsuma Tani, a former aviation and aeronautics engineer,[4] who established a reputation as a highly qualified creator of audio equipment.
In 1956, his brother, Tomoma Tani, brought home a hand-made, 3-motor, 3-head stereo tape recorder. This sparked Katsuma's interest in reel-to-reel tape recorders. Confident they could engineer a better tape recorder, the Tani brothers founded the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company on 24 December 1956.[5]
The Tokyo Television Acoustic Company and the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company were merged to create the TEAC corporation, taking the initials of the latter company as its name. The main focus of the new company was to design and manufacture tape recorders.[3]
In 1969 TEAC produced the first consumer four-track reel-to-reel tape recorders capable of playing pre-recorded Quadraphonic open reel tapes (Q4). This was the first format to play high quality four-channel quadraphonic recordings in the home. In order to keep costs affordable, home machines used slower tape speeds and narrower track widths compared to similar professional machines. Quadraphonic sound was not widely adopted by the public and the Q4 format died by the late 1970s.
In 1972 TEAC introduced the first consumer grade four-track reel-to-reel recorders with Simul-Sync that were capable of overdubbing. Musicians were able to use these products as the basis of home recording studios. With this advancement many consumers created sophisticated home demo recordings for the first time. TEAC, and its TASCAM division, as well as other manufacturers sold thousands of these machines to musicians well into the 1990s.
Some of TEAC's most popular home multitrack recorders with Simul-Sync:
In 2013, Gibson bought a majority stake in the company,[6] giving it 54.42% of the company.[7] After Gibson's bankruptcy in 2018, TEAC announced that they would continue to operate on their own.[8]
In May 1961 TEAC entered into a licensing agreement with IBM to create magnetic tape memory systems.