If you've paid attention at all to innovative-and-better-for-it audio's ebbs and flows in the last 50 years, the acquisition of Definitive Technology and Boston Acoustics by the umbrella company which controls Polk holds just a bit of irony.
IMO this is not, in any way, comparable to Harman International being a good corporate parent to, say, Mark Levinson.
Press release is from Vista, California. A town NOT noted for AnyThing. Well, maybe, the Superior Court and jail is there. Moonlight Theater has a wonderful Summer Stock program.
Other than that? I can't think of a single reason to recommend Vista as a destination or place to move.
They were never (other than a period in the late '90's and early '00's when both were churning out crap AV receivers) competitive lines. Denon had long been used as the DM group's entry level components and Marantz as their step up model. Denon is now a much smaller step (barely) above baseline Pioneer and Sony than each company's history would suggest.
Makes me wonder just where Yamaha fits in to all of this.
IMO, the new group has put long time competitors in the same small room IMO.
Boston Acoustics and Polk?! The founders of BA were with Kloss when he was CEO/chief designer, thinker, all 'round iconoclast and forward driver of Advent.
Mathew Polk (and his infamous white lab coat) always treated the entire idea of acoustic suspension systems as his personal invention and no one had done anything with the concept prior to his arrival. His early products were nothing more than cheaper knock offs of Advent and BA and dismissed most of the truly innovative ideas those two companies brought to the marketplace.
He took his marketing model from Amar Bose - advertise, advertise, advertise - while BA was based on the Advent/KLH/AR model of giving the client more than their money's worth.
Definitive Tech came out of the frustrations of a former Polk engineer/founding partner with Mathew Polk. He quit the audio business and then eventually worked his way back in to create DF as a direct competitor to Polk.
IMO the bottom line is found in your link ...
"The D+M Group is the largest supplier of audio/video receivers worldwide and a leader in wireless multi-room audio. Sound United is the largest supplier of loudspeakers in North America and a leading supplier of sound bars and wireless music systems. The combined company will be known as Sound United, which will own and operate some of the most prestigious brands in the consumer audio space, providing synergy opportunities for the existing core businesses, while also unlocking the potential to expand the product portfolio and market reach."
and ...
"Disclaimer
Statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact include forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that such statements are just predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties surrounding competitive and industry conditions, the ability to launch products on time and enable new features sets, market acceptance for the company's products, risks of litigation, technological changes, developing industry standards and other factors related to the company's businesses. The Company reserves all of its rights."　
Of course, each company's founders, and those who acted as their driving force, have now moved on - many have passed on - and the irony of these lines existing together under one umbrella is lost on many readers.
It's "business" so, sure, money is the end game. You can only be so inventive and creative when you have no business to follow through and test your ideas.
I could be way off base since I haven't been able to keep up with all the small, contemporary companies that create an audio product and then seem to disappear. High end consumer audio seems to be working the way internet blogs make their profits.
I can remember discussing ... let's say, "defending" the values of cottage industry companies such as Ivor's and Henry's multiple endeavors. John Bau, John Dahlquist, Jeff Rowland, Mark Levinson and Jim Thiel were the singular drivers of their companies and their ideas. They were the quintessential out sized personalities of audio for years.
You knew when you were listening through a Nelson Pass component or a Frank McIntosh component. What they produced was what they felt best represented the concepts of music reproduction because they knew, and were intimately familiar with, the sound of live music.
McIntosh sold equipment that reproduced music as Frank McIntosh heard it live. Kloss and Vilchur were considered radical when they first conceived of a complete AR system which expressed music with a singular voice.
These were companies that treated their employees with care and attention to what made their employees better employees. That was not a "money rules" first principle.
No company which follows a "money rules" philosophy would even think about the Mac Clinics which traveled the US 46 weeks out of each year for almost 50 years.
Finding a company with the philosophy that says the customer, and the employee, counts seems increasingly difficult today. There seems to be a move toward corporate collectivism where "this" company is the entry level and "that" company is the step up line and another is the "flagship" model.
As I said, that isn't even how Harman ran their very large and very creative group.