There’s a fun little split. Samsung owns the consumer JBL brand—the portable speakers, headphones, and soundbars you see at Best Buy. But the professional cinema and studio gear (like the giant speakers in theaters) is owned by a separate company called JBL Professional, which is now part of Hartke’s parent group. Confused yet? Good.
Basically, the JBL logo you see on a movie theater screen is not the same company that makes your Bluetooth speaker that showers in the bathroom. It’s like having two identical twins who share a last name but hate each other. “Which one are you? The cool one or the one that charges $300 for a cable?”
The Great Soundbar Ownership Conspiracy
If you’ve ever wondered why JBL soundbars and Samsung soundbars look suspiciously similar—they are. Samsung’s audio division essentially reuses JBL technology in its own TVs. So your Samsung TV’s “Object Tracking Sound” is just JBL tech with a fancier name and a bigger price tag. It’s like buying a designer bag that’s made in the same factory as the knock-off.
But don’t let that make you cynical. JBL still has its own R&D team in Northridge, California, where actual engineers test speakers by blasting them with sleep-deprived teenagers’ playlists. They’re the unsung heroes of every pool party.
Who Is James Bullough Lansing? Was The Founder Of American Audio
