Denon's history stretches back further than almost any name in audio, to 1910, when American trader Frederick Whitney Horn founded Nippon Chikuonki Shoukai (Japan Recorders Corporation) in Japan. Alongside Japanese partners, Horn released the company's first products — a single disc record and a gramophone — laying the foundation for what would become one of the great names in Japanese audio engineering. The Denon name itself, a contraction of "Denki Onkyo" (electric sound), emerged in the late 1930s as the company merged with related businesses.

Over the following century, Denon built a genuine legacy of firsts: Japan's first professional-use disc recorder, used to record Emperor Hirohito's historic surrender broadcast in 1945; the world's first PCM digital recording system in 1972, a foundational moment in the development of digital audio itself; and decades of acclaimed turntables, cartridges, amplifiers, and AV receivers that became staples in both professional studios and home systems worldwide.