"Against design"
Audiophiles want ugly speakers. Really. This sounds almost funny. Why would you want something that’s ugly?
The reason is very simple. If it’s ugly, you think–it must be good. No one in their right mind would pay $100,000 plus for a box with some cones in it, an unattractive thing at best, unless it was GOOD at doing what it does. Conversely, a speaker which is beautiful, or at least one where a great deal of work is evident in its industrial design, is not to be trusted. That speaker is, in the mind of the audiophile, trying too hard, like a woman all gussied up, hair, cosmetics and clothes all concealing another reality. Could not possibly sound as good as it looks, to be blunt about it.
It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it was pretty much the opposite fifty years ago. Before that AR monitor speaker, owning a really (sonically) impressive horn speaker was the ultimate. And those speakers, made by companies like JBL, Voight, Klipsch, Electrovoice, et al., were often very beautifully designed as pieces of furniture, a trend almost entirely absent today. Speakers such as the Paragon, Metregon and Hartsfield would not be out of place in the Museum of Modern Art, or any contemporary interior design magazine. Most audiophiles have never even heard of these speakers, let alone listened to one.
Martykl -- Thanks for your input. There may be an interpreting angle in Mr. Weiss' (and the rest of us) assessment of design and what makes it beautiful or ugly, but notwithstanding he equates the more typical box "designs" with their more expensively priced and "eccentrically" designed siblings as being ugly at least partly with the a scientific reference: he sees an inverted relationship in what dictates the design of high-end speakers when comparing his own products to that of the more general "competition." As he points out: Back to OMA, I’ve always tried to explain to people who ask how we design things, that the design process starts (and ends) with the acoustic engineering. We begin by modeling a prospective speaker based on what we want it to do- how big must the horn or horns be to accomplish their task? How will lower frequencies be handled, and how low will we go? This process is devoid of any aesthetic considerations, it’s pure engineering. Later, our industrial designer, David D’Imperio, works with us to maintain the engineering integrity of the design while making it look like something you want in the middle of your living room, not hiding in the corners. The general problem with high end audio speaker design would then be assumed - not wrongly, I find - as differing (i.e.: baffling) design manifestations that dictate functionality as part of a marketing tool to promote and distinguish ones product - not vice versa. Coupled with this is the core aspect of sheer size, a banality from one perspective perhaps when choosing speakers insofar sound quality is paramount (as in: if great sound requires large speakers, then so be it), but something that is likely one of the deciding factors why so few would buy a pair of the larger OMA speakers - or other larger, and beautifully furnished speakers; their homes (and spouse) dictate audio equipment, not least its size, and so sound, yet again, becomes secondary. What I like about (in this case) OMA speakers is that they're large and exude a natural, organic quality with no excuse for functionality; what follows aesthetically is grounded in audio engineering and the catering to what emulates live acoustic, real-performed music (or so I suppose). Looking at the materials used - oiled hardwood, solid aluminium, and slate - one can indeed almost smell them. (to reiterate) To reverse the downward spiral that describes the high end industry today requires a rethinking of both its audio engineering and its industrial design. ...as well as an overall mentality among audiophiles, so to accept these changes, to break with established and conventional molds of speaker design, perhaps in part in grounding ones reference more highly to live acoustic music and, dare one say it, listening more with the body than the mind. |
Mr. Weiss' follow-up to "Against design" - "Art vs. furniture:" ... audio design is much like furniture, in that the relationships between form and function are easily convoluted. We live with these things in our homes, surrounded by other domestic furnishings. Because of that, we project the same codes that inform our furniture onto our audio equipment. Yet we like to think the form of something like a loudspeaker, follows from its function.That is not necessarily so. Virtually all box type speakers have made terrible engineering (read-function) compromises to fit the expectations of what the manufacturers think the consumer wants. They then try and decorate and fancify these boxes so they blend into the disaster that is most modern domestic interiors. The fact that sound comes out of these boxes at all is really just an alibi for their form. In fact, many loudspeakers are placed in ceilings and walls in affluent homes, where they exist (barely) only as function. The form is simply gone. This gets around the issue of how to deal with the loudspeaker as an object, at least until you have to listen to it coming out of the ceiling. http://oswaldsmillaudio.com/blog/ |
