The Oswald Mill Audio showroom in Brooklyn’s industrial-artisan neighborhood of DUMBO is packed with the presences of luminary recording artists. Alicia Keys has rifled through the record crates of jazz, rap, and blues. JLO and Al Green have climbed the concrete stairs from Bridge Street to sit in the throne-like ‘listening chair’. For a Rolling Stone photo shoot, Gwen Stefani smashed bottles in the tub of the solarium-style bathroom. (The showroom also doubles as owner Jonathan Weiss’s studio apartment.)
But those aren’t the only artists whose presence can still be felt. Among the cherry and ash megaphone-shaped speakers that tower over the average person’s height, you can feel the ghosts of performers long gone. Weiss demos the speakers using old vinyl records. When he pulls yards of red curtains over the windows to dampen the sound, the room resonates with the vibrato of the French singer Barbara, and the rollicking notes of Willie Dixon, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson. These singers are all brought together by Weiss’s passion for fusing new industrial design with vintage audio to create the best sound and design experience that (a lot of) money can buy.
Weiss caught a glimpse of the heyday of sound quality when he was fourteen, cleaning up popcorn at an art deco movie palace in California. During their shifts, the staff would use the massive speaker system behind the screen to blast film soundtracks through the theater. “It was a magical experience,” says Weiss. Now, Weiss is on a mission to unmask what he sees as the audio industry’s decades-long focus on decreasing speaker size at the expense of sound quality and new technologies cutting out the music’s soul when compressing audio files into low-res MP3s. His solution? Bring back mid-century cinema speaker and amplifier technology because they knew how to do sound right.
Weiss founded Oswald Mill Audio ten years ago, after he bought and restored a four-story grain mill in Eastern Pennsylvania. For a brief span, he put his interest in the sensory experiences to work as a chef, crafting feasts of Dutch apple pancakes, coconut curries, and the occasional whole roast pig for visitors to the mill. At the same time, the audio underground, itching to test drive Weiss’ growing collection of antique audio equipment, morphed those food feasts into annual sonic ‘tastings’ of music listening and nerding out on audio equipment.
Those informal gatherings grew into Weiss’s current venture. To make his speakers, which can run up to $300,000, Weiss works with a prototyper, a loudspeaker and industrial designer, and an extended network of Pennsylvania-based craftsmen and manufacturers. For a founder fascinated by the invisible waves of sound quality, Weiss is just as obsessed with the caliber of the tactile elements of OMA’s manufacturing processes. The wood for the speakers—ash, cherry, maple, and walnut—is milled from the Pennsylvania countryside. It’s the same wood used in Martin guitars that are made across the valley. Entire trees are purchased in boules and the boules are air dried for several years in solar kilns.
Weiss’s industrial designer, David D’Imperio, sketches out a pen and paper speaker drawing, which Weiss then takes to his loudspeaker designer, Bill Woods. Woods maps the design against the acoustic goals of each speaker. Weiss then shepherds the acoustic constraints to D’Imperio to inform his next round of industrial designs. OMA’s designers don’t necessarily speak the same language: D’Imperio “knows nothing about audio, but is a brilliant industrial designer,” says Weiss. “He’s like Houdini; you put him in chains and then dump him in water, and he comes out with something every time.” And Woods “doesn’t know anything about how to make something look beautiful, but he’s the world’s best at the acoustic part,” adds Weiss.
OMA isn’t large enough to warrant in-house manufacturing, so, once Weiss brokers a design agreement, the plans are sent to a local Pennsylvania woodshop that also counts Ralph Lauren as a client. “They build super high-end millwork, and then they make our speakers,” says Weiss.
Weiss doesn’t only design speaker systems; he’s committed to supplying the full audio set up, including the turntables, cables, and furniture for shelving. The 100-pound turntables are made of slate quarried in Pennsylvania. Once the heavy matte stone is cut, it’s sent to a Mennonite family-owned facility ten minutes away in Fleetwood. Here, the slate is shaped with a water jet on the same machines that Boeing uses to slice carbon fiber for airplanes. Weiss loves the balance between thousand-year-old manufacturing traditions and new technology. He points to a picture of a man in goggles cutting the stone. “This is as medieval as it gets.” Meanwhile, the mold for the coral-reef-like Ironic speaker is 3D-printed.
Weiss knows his speakers are for very few, and that’s okay with him. While he wouldn’t comment on revenue numbers, he says the business is doing well enough for him to move it into a new 42,000-square foot factory complex he just bought in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. There, the goal is to make a product priced at under $10,000.
Back at the DUMBO showroom, a potential client, whose company just went public, stopped by for one of the listening appointments Weiss requires to visit the showroom. Weiss put on a few classical records and disappeared into the kitchen while the music played. (He likes to leave people alone while they listen to the music.) The room filled with the spirits of concert pianists, ferociously raising the notes of past composers.
Afterwards, the customer asks Weiss to play some music off his iPhone. Weiss is disappointed; his speakers are built for vinyl records and he’s in a constant war with the MP3. But he’s a businessman and he connects the phone to the 3D-printed Ironic system. As the music pours out of the printed shells, the visitor takes pictures of the speakers with his phone. He sends a few texts. It’s hard to tell if he’s already sold and texting pictures of the soon-to-be-his speakers, or maybe he’s lost interest in making a purchase. In either case, when listening to the MP3 it does feel like the spirits have abandoned the OMA showroom and left us all alone.
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