Orban/Circuit Research Labs Inc. (Tempe, Ariz.) announced that it has purchased the assets of Dialog4 System Engineering GmbH (Ludwigsburg, Germany).
Dialog4 is a worldwide leader in ISO/MPEG, audio, ISDN, satellite transmission, networking and storage. The company has been designing and manufacturing equipment for the codec market for over 10 years. Their products, available in Europe since 1993, include the MusicTaxi codec family for encoding and decoding audio and data over TCP/IP on the Internet, ISDN and satellite.
CRL Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Orban/CRL, purchased the Dialog4 assets for $2 million dollars U.S., consisting of 1.25 million shares of Orban/CRL common stock valued at $1.00 per share and $750,000 in cash to be paid at a later date. All current operations and staff of Dialog4 will be retained in Germany. Orban/CRL will now have a European operations center based in the Dialog4 offices in Ludwigsburg, Germany. The Dialog4 infrastructure will be used to expand Orban/CRL’s engineering, sales, marketing and sales support for the European markets.
Orban/CRL has been involved in a joint project to bring the Dialog4 products to North America with the development of the Orban Opticodec and Sountainer for the past year. “From the beginning of our relationship, it was clear that Dialog4 is a quality company with a great reputation for engineering excellence,” stated C. Jayson Brentlinger, president/CEO/chairman of Orban/CRL. “When the opportunity to acquire this great company came along, we had been working so closely with Dialog4 on so many new products that we felt as if they were already a part of the Orban/CRL family.”
Berthold Burkhardtsmaier, Dialog4 managing director, is now VP of European Operations for Orban/CRL and has been appointed to the Board of Directors. In addition, Peter Lee, director of sales for Dialog4 products, has been appointed manager of European Sales for all Orban and CRL products.
The newest addition to the Orban/CRL line is the Sountainer, a small, high-quality, broadcast MP3 recorder/player. The Sountainer is aimed at both the professional and consumer markets.
For more, visit www.dialog4.com/.
