Steve Guttenberg was there and made a video in 2020. Then he made another video with audiophile who actually owns their small speakers and prefer them to many well known speakers he owned. Everything in High-End is expensive, very few modern high-end units are beautiful and expensive, they are normally ugly and expensive. OMA Producs are definitely not ugly, they are different from any other manufacturers, they are trying to make something unique, his design is retro futurism. Their new turntable looks like something from the 1920s, this is not like your Rega or Pro-Ject. Unique things made by qualified designers are normally expensive, but some people are happy to pay extra for unique design for their interior. This is a part of luxury life style. They are in NY after all. |
I am sorry, but if an AUDIOPHILES can spend $129 000 on "ultimate" turntable like this (which is IMO the winner of the world's ugliest turntables contest for insane price) then what's wrong with OMA Direct Drive turntable for double price? Again, 99% of audiophile turntables looks just like this one from Triangle Art. Anyone complained ? OMA is not a typical High-End manufacturer and they always tried to be different, their stuff is just different and people with a good taste appreciate it. Audiophiles made this industry the way it is today where $3k for a meter of speaker cable is not even the highest price. $20k cartridge is not the highest priced cartridge. What else, you name it .... |
Most of the modern turntables that I like are based on vintage drives and vintage looking design, here is another example. I admire new designers who can make a beautiful things in a traditional way. This is from Italy. They are all very expensive. |
Those Torqueo tables are beautiful For sure, especially this model in my opinion, but many people on audiogon may think they are ugly too, because they have no taste at all as I can see. Looking at the system profiles you can understand what people like in their room and how they room actually looks, most of them don’t have to talk about design at all :)) |
This is what our @sbank posted in another thread about OMA products and I totally agree: I have no dog in this fight, but feel that the conspiracy theorists about OMA don’t know what they’re talking about. These guys have been building and selling extreme high end stuff for ages. Their Technics SP10 plinths are highly regarded. They have a novel approach. Those familiar with Fern & Roby, who are newbies by comparison, might appreciate see some similarities in concepts.
Vitas, the former lead designer for Veloce, the highly regarded amp/pre manufacturer that were in Harry Pearson’s reference rig for some time, I’m told has been doing some work for OMA.
Yes, their stuff is high priced in general, but that’s no shocker when you consider the market they serve, the US costs, premium materials, etc. Check out the audiophiliac video, it’s fun and spot on explaining this company.
Cheers,
Spencer And actual USER of OMA (Fleetwood Sound) speakers is happy, you will find his original post in the same thread, but i will post it below. All I have to say is that these are the finest speakers available in this size range for anything close to $10k. Good luck finding something for $30k that sounds as good. They play with delicacy, but can go deep and play loud - an extremely engaging sound, but one which has not once fatigued my ears (a huge problem for me with Focals and Wilsons I have owned). All of this AND a pretty small cabinet with a cool design with a high WAF.
Jonathan (owner of OMA and Fleetwood) is a true genius who makes things that are just better than the rest of the industry. The solid construction is so much nicer than the veneered particleboard bullshit you get elsewhere and the drivers are professional transducers rather than some $30 crap made in China. These will list your lifetime and probably your grandchildren’s lifetime.
Are these expensive? Yes. Have I owned much much more expensive speakers that sound hilariously worse? Yes. The value proposition on these is through the roof. Are they really expensive when you consider how much a single solid wood shelf or chest costs? Honestly it’s not crazy - it’s under priced in terms of both build cost and performance - just the parts and materials in these things are literally several thousand bucks. Then you have a ton of handmade USA labor (I figure 30-50 hours), packaging, and development costs (which have to be recouped over a relatively small run). I think the $9,600 black model I have is almost a loss leader - of course he is making a bit of margin, but it is way less than the margin of a typical high end distributor and dealer (80%). Consider that most $10k speakers literally cost about $1-2k to make... And if you want to see more users of OMA (Fleetwood Sound) products watch this. |
If anything made for OMA by specialists in speaker design, amps, suts, turntables ... it was made because of Jonathan who is a founder of the OMA company. It’s his company and their products made in a way he want them to be made. This company has it’s own style, every company should have it, they are not copy other manufacturers, they do their own stuff. And they have professional designer with a certain vision of production line, this vision is way different from poorly designed modern high-end audio gear from many other manufacturers. They have beautiful showroom open for everyone. It’s clearly not my niche of equipment, but as a business model I like the way they are doing their business, everyone can recognize OMA products and even haters discuss their products everywhere. The fact that they can sell for very high prices is a sign of success too. They have their own followers (audiophiles), none audiophiles are crazy about design of these retro looking horns and stuff. This is all good. Long time ago they made amazing plinth for vintage Technics turntables (I wish to have one), their old and new plinths are better than the original plinths made by Technics. They did the same for Garrard and others. Their OMA/SoundSmith cartridge looks better than original SoundSmith design. What else? This new turntable reminds me cutting lathe a bit. Final product is much better than prototype. Casting process from OMA instagram page uploaded by someone on another forum, more - images - here. Personally I like my Luxman DDs better, but I respect what they are doing, I’m not gonna buy anything, so I don’t care about their prices. |
Meanwhile those huge and beautiful $280k OMA Imperia horn speakers just received The Golden Ear Award from The Absolute Sound Magazine (2021). What are you gonna say now? P.S. OMA K3 turntable is on the cover of Stereophile (issue 478) , I hope you can buy and read. Regarding its unusual design I do not see any single negative comment on their instagram, so I think their marketing strategy is just right, people love it, except for some old audiogonners as usual. Interesting part in their press release about OMA new DD motor: "We hope to offer a stand alone version of our motor in the future to replace Neumann cutting lathe motors (Lyrec, Panasonic SP-02) for record cutting engineers. This motor, comprising a huge 25mm main bearing spindle riding in a pressurized oil column with an inverted bearing is accurate to molecular tolerances. The design of K3’s mechanicals is the work of a team led by Richard Krebs in New Zealand, the worlds foremost authority on direct drive turntable technology... Bucknell University’s Engineering and Physics departments did extensive FEA and other analysis of the platter and chassis design (and gave OMA their award for most innovative product of 2019.). " read more. |
Lewm, I prefer to post links, people can read, Mr. Richard Krebs has been mentioned in OMA press release for K3 turntable on OMA website (see my previous posts):
“The design of K3’s mechanicals is the work of a team led by Richard Krebs in New Zealand, the worlds foremost authority on direct drive turntable technology... ”
I’m sure Mr. Krebs could chime in and tell us more about this project. It would be nice. He’s an a’gon member for a long time.
If Jonathan can invite many professionals in different fields (speakers, amps, turntables, tonearms… ) to create something new and/or unique then he’s a good businessman, but he’s an audiophile and collector of vintage analog gear.
All those people like Mr.Krebs , Herr Schröder and others must be happy and proud of the final product under OMA brand. This is amazing and I’m glad it’s not a one man show, but a collective of experts, I’m sure it’s a lot of work and experts are not cheap (their time cost money).
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Harkening back to a golden glowing, transistorless, horn-filled past (50s?, 30s?) that probably didn’t sound as great as we might imagine. I think you have no idea what you are talking about. At the moment I have RCA 45 globe tubes from 1930s in my modern Yamamoto triode amp and it’s pure magic! Next to it I got modern JFET amp from Nelson Pass, so I can compare tubes vs. solid state. I’m not a horn guy, but I can dig why people are still using an old Western Electric, Altec full range speakers (upgraded with modern parts) with vintage tube gear. Those are amazing! I love my Tannoy. How can you compare Bose to OMA? The concept is completely different and they explained many times in the interviews like this. You’d better made an appointment if you are in NYC to visit OMA showroom and to listen what they got. They are also on various audioshows with smaller $10k speaker (Fleetwood Sound) and if you can’t visit you can find videos on youtube. OMA small speakers demo here. |
OMA is all about marketing. @chakster, I am really surprised that you are so enthralled by OMA’s marketing BS. You are smarter than that. @mijostyn The whole High-End industry today is about marketing, but OMA can do it better than others, because 99,9% of modern High-End turntables look like this and it’s awful design! I think I will pay extra to get rid of stuff like this even if someone will bring it for free to my room. This is modern High-End reality, not OMA. The OMA is almost completely different from any high-end store and I respect that. If they can sell their stuff for insane prices it’s fine, who cares? I mean look at my virtual system (2017-2019), I’m definitely not an OMA gear buyer, but I like a mix of modern and vintage high-end. Long time ago I noticed their love for Technics SP-10 mkII which I owned for a long time. I realized that Jonathan is a collector of vintage audio gear, can't find his oldest video, but this is a new one about it. I bought some nice stuff from OMA, Jonathan was a good seller, he personally replied to my emails, answered all my question, it was long time ago, but everything was nice and smooth, I bought a tonearm and MC cartridge from an OMA shop and received it my mail (overseas). Selection of cartridges at their shop was nice ( Miyajima, Ortofon SPU, SoundSmith...), selection of tonearms was nice too ( Schick, Schroeder ... ), I remember those German Silvercore SUTs and some other stuff. Instead of selling regular high-end BS they have been selling carefully selected stuff only. I really like this concept. I left no more than $3k at the OMA online shop and I was happy, later I sold everything after upgrading and did not lose any penny. Will I buy from OMA again? Probably not, I have my sources now, but I respect what they are doing. |
$360,000 buy a nice system for a $100k and a nice 911 turbo s with the quarter Million left. No, for $360k I could buy a TIME MACHINE to travel back to 1986 for Denon PD-100, Technics SP-10 mk3, Victor TT-101, Pioneer Exclussive turntables and a bunch of cartridges. |
Most of the cost of that TT is in the fuse they use. Haha. Brilliant:) |
