Brüel & Kjær

Brüel & Kjær (1947–2000) was a Danish multinational engineering and electronics company, known for industrial equipment for acoustic & vibrational measurements, as well as studio microphones, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and other related audio gear. ⟨See also the artist entry for Technical credit roles.⟩ The firm was established in November 1942 by two recent Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt graduates, Per Vilhelm Brüel (1915—2015) and Viggo Kjær (1914—2013), and initially headquartered in Nærum, near Copenhagen.

In 1992, a German holding company AGIV acquired Brüel & Kjær, splitting it into several independent businesses, including "Brüel & Kjær Sound and Vibration Measurement A/S" for the core industrial sectors and "Danish Pro Audio" (later became DPA Microphones) for microphones and studio equipment. In July 2000, a UK-based Fairey Group Ltd. purchased AGIV's Spectris sub-division, which included Brüel & Kjær and Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik (HBM), among others. In August 2020, two companies were merged to form Hottinger Brüel & Kjær (HBK).