Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1414025
BAL HARBOUR 199 bit like windmills. The Ironic speakers, made of iron and vastly heavy in order to isolate the gear from vibrations, look like little clouds of bubbles, as if an iron Zeus had blown them through a tube. What Weiss makes does something profound, creating an effect that goes way beyond and above categories like "wow" or "cool." OMA gear reconnects music to its elemental and physical nature, and reveals what is in a recording. Not everything sounds great on this equipment—overly produced records, for example, don't respond well to this pure-sound approach. OMA gear simply tells you the truth, which is an idea as alien to commercial ventures as making speakers out of wood. When he plays me Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," he tells me about the harmonica test. "Harmonicas work with harmonic frequencies that are very hard to reproduce," Weiss says. "They almost never sound good." When Dylan finishes the chorus, and adds a wheezing little harmonica figure, it doesn't sound like my memories of the record. The tone is unexpectedly soft, like a few colored banners flapping out into the breeze and then falling back against the building. I wouldn't know how to describe it beyond saying that it sounds like what Dylan actually did. Whether or not it is good is a condition that Weiss and OMA return to the artist and his music. This equipment is so good you simply forget it's there, even the six-foot tall wooden sentries. The Ironic speakers, made of iron and vastly heavy in order to isolate the gear from vibrations, look like little clouds of bubbles, as if an iron Zeus had blown them through a tube. PHOTOS © CYNTHIA VAN ELK / OMA These objects seem so unlike technology, as we think of that category now, and yet they are absolutely speakers, made of iron and slate and, most visibly, wood. OMA's Imperia speaker BAL HARBOUR 199