
THE POWER BEAUTY OF SOUND
OMA's project is to improve the quality of sound in a world that's forgotten the beauty and power of music
OMA (Oswalds Mill Audio) and Fleetwood Sound are the project of Jonathan Weiss and a cohort of like minded audio designers, engineers and savants, united by the marked decline in audio quality over the last 50+ years. This project grew as a very organic response of wanting to share a technology of sound that has become a veritable secret- that the best sound quality humanity ever created dates to the cinema speaker systems with their triode vacuum tube amplifiers from companies like Western Electric and RCA in the 1930's. The question was how to bring that technology up to date, and to scale it for use today by people in their homes, or in public hospitality venues.
After graduating from Princeton and London School of Economics in International Relations and Public International Law, Weiss took an abrupt turn, becoming a self taught filmmaker and created the cult non-narrative feature length adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s most notorious novel, The Atrocity Exhibition. This remarkable film was touted by Ballard as “a poetic masterpiece”. Weiss then turned to TV where in the early ’90's he created the first global food show (The Global Kitchen), years before cooking shows became reality travel tv. Weiss shot some of both projects at his huge loft in Dumbo, which he renovated well before the neighborhood became a magnet for gentrification and tourism, and which today is the studio and showroom for his audio companies.
It was also around this time that Weiss bought a derelict, late 1700's architectural marvel on the verge of collapse in rural Pennsylvania, Oswald's Mill, the only known remaining integrally built house-mill left in North America and one of very few remaining anywhere in the world. Weiss and his partner Cynthia van Elk set about restoring and renovating the enormous 10,000 square foot building, which became their residence and the home of the legendary Oswald's Mill Tube and Speaker Tasting events, a mecca for underground audio builders.
These events led to the creation of Oswalds Mill Audio, a grouping of some of the world's top audio artisans in horn and speaker design, tube amplifier design, turntable and tonearm design, and the industrial design talents of David D'Imperio. Under the direction of Weiss, this collective has changed the direction of high end audio towards a model that had been long forgotten.
Weiss is currently engaged in education and design for audio in Psychedelic Medicine and Therapy, as well as working on a major restaurant project for OMA in Brooklyn and a television show on the State of Sound (SOS).
