Share this starter pack

Klipsch OJAS kO-R2

Devon Turnbill aka OJAS is somewhat of a hero of mine. First beginning his career in fashion, OJAS has an eye for visual design evidenced by his invitation to create several exhibits for design museums like Lisson and Cooper-Hewitt. His audio products aren’t just easy on the eyes; they take a completely different approach to most loudspeakers. Instead of focusing on utilizing complex, modern components to adhere to a specific frequency curve, OJAS’ speakers look backwards and endeavor to perfect the oldest and simplest designs from early 20th century American audio. The calling card for these speakers are their “horns” which leverage physics to naturally amplify sound waves rather than by raw power. This increases a speaker’s sensitivity or level of volume produced by a certain amount of power or current, which was required when amplifiers employed vacuum tubes that use a heating element to amplify a signal. Back then, amplifiers could produce only a handful of watts, so speakers needed to be as sensitive as possible so their tube amps could produce sound at a listenable level. The speaker world got away from this design philosophy after the advent of transistors, which meant amplifiers could produce more power and by extension allowed speaker designers to utilize more complicated electronic components that made tweaking the sound easier but consequentially sucked up far more power. What was gained in convenience was lost in sound quality. Speakers began to sound more “veiled” or incoherent. That largely has been overcome in the past several decades, but normal box speakers will never be able to produce the inherently transparent sound that a horn-loaded speaker can. OJAS spent a few years in Japan as a young audio engineer and became infatuated with old American audio and its horn-loaded speakers, which Japanese jazz bars or kissas use almost exclusively. The formula was simple—remove as many components as possible from the audio chain to try and get you as close to the music as possible. I’ve owned several nice speakers, and they all have their merits, but I keep coming back to OJAS because I forget I’m listening to speakers and just hear the source. The ko-R2 is the second collaboration between longtime audio company and horn speaker stalwart Klipsch whose artisans produce their heritage speakers by hand in Hope, Arkansas. OJAS took their Heresy speaker components and rearranged them in his image with birch plywood or his signature grey hammer tone enclosures and his own horn design manufactured with old-world sandblasting techniques to create the ko-r1, which was limited to 50 pairs. The ko-R2 utilizes Klipsch’s Forte speaker components in an even larger design. I own the ko-r2s and have listened to all other OJAS speakers. I can say with a great deal of certainty that these will be ones to cherish for a lifetime.

ZMF Caldera Closed LTD Koa

ZMF is definitely probably the coolest headphone brand that exists. The founder used to make guitars and banjos for himself with rare and exotic woods, which made him curious if the different types of sound produced by various wood types translated to headphones. It did. The rule of thumb is harder woods like an African Blackwood produce tighter bass and less decay (reverb) and softer woods like buckeye burl enhance warmth and timbre (naturalness). Including the Caldera, ZMF makes a few headphones using planar magnetic drivers, which offer a more neutral and technical sound, and dynamic drivers that sound more natural yet less revealing. The caldera closed is a good example of getting the balance just right. Since it’s a closed-back headphone, you can show off whatever cool wood you get with it. ZMF will drop batches of rare and stabilized wood-cupped from time to time but usually offer some limited versions like this one with cool, special woods that they have more stock of than rare drops but less than stock wood.

First Watt SIT-4 Power Amplifier

Housed in a no-nonsense black box, the SIT-4 is a super cool power amplifier designed to drive sensitive speakers using esoteric components hand-picked from living-legend amplifier designer Nelson Pass. First Watt is Nelson’s side project to his main business Pass Labs, which produces high power amplifiers for insensitive, hard-to-drive speakers. First Watt is a if-you-know-you-know kind of brand. Since many First Watt amps have used new old stock parts, they were produced in limited numbers as long as the stock lasted, which has made previous models quite collectable. In Nelson’s words “there is no such thing as a perfect amplifier, but there is a best amplifier for each speaker.” I don’t claim to know which speaker the SIT-4 is best for, but I own most of the First Watt amps produced over the years, and I can say it is the best I’ve paired with my Klipsch/Ojas ko-r1 speakers. Typically, an amplifier that produces more power at higher impedances wishes to be paired with a speaker of 8 ohms or greater. Vice versa for the reverse, all things equal. The swap ability of first watt amps is part of the fun, though.

DECWARE SE84UFO2 Zen Triode Amplifier

Decware is a passion-project company that exists only because the owner and product designer Steve Deckert wanted to make amplifiers that he wish other people made. Simple yet mighty is Decware’s mantra. This amp started it all for Decware almost 3 decades ago and it only produces 2 watts. Therefore, it requires a sensitive speaker. Pair the right speaker with it, though, and it will sing with a liquid midrange, holographic imaging and mid-bass bloom to die for.

Klipsch OJAS kO-R2

Devon Turnbill aka OJAS is somewhat of a hero of mine. First beginning his career in fashion, OJAS has an eye for visual design evidenced by his invitation to create several exhibits for design museums like Lisson and Cooper-Hewitt. His audio products aren’t just easy on the eyes; they take a completely different approach to most loudspeakers. Instead of focusing on utilizing complex, modern components to adhere to a specific frequency curve, OJAS’ speakers look backwards and endeavor to perfect the oldest and simplest designs from early 20th century American audio. The calling card for these speakers are their “horns” which leverage physics to naturally amplify sound waves rather than by raw power. This increases a speaker’s sensitivity or level of volume produced by a certain amount of power or current, which was required when amplifiers employed vacuum tubes that use a heating element to amplify a signal. Back then, amplifiers could produce only a handful of watts, so speakers needed to be as sensitive as possible so their tube amps could produce sound at a listenable level. The speaker world got away from this design philosophy after the advent of transistors, which meant amplifiers could produce more power and by extension allowed speaker designers to utilize more complicated electronic components that made tweaking the sound easier but consequentially sucked up far more power. What was gained in convenience was lost in sound quality. Speakers began to sound more “veiled” or incoherent. That largely has been overcome in the past several decades, but normal box speakers will never be able to produce the inherently transparent sound that a horn-loaded speaker can. OJAS spent a few years in Japan as a young audio engineer and became infatuated with old American audio and its horn-loaded speakers, which Japanese jazz bars or kissas use almost exclusively. The formula was simple—remove as many components as possible from the audio chain to try and get you as close to the music as possible. I’ve owned several nice speakers, and they all have their merits, but I keep coming back to OJAS because I forget I’m listening to speakers and just hear the source. The ko-R2 is the second collaboration between longtime audio company and horn speaker stalwart Klipsch whose artisans produce their heritage speakers by hand in Hope, Arkansas. OJAS took their Heresy speaker components and rearranged them in his image with birch plywood or his signature grey hammer tone enclosures and his own horn design manufactured with old-world sandblasting techniques to create the ko-r1, which was limited to 50 pairs. The ko-R2 utilizes Klipsch’s Forte speaker components in an even larger design. I own the ko-r2s and have listened to all other OJAS speakers. I can say with a great deal of certainty that these will be ones to cherish for a lifetime.

ZMF Caldera Closed LTD Koa

ZMF is definitely probably the coolest headphone brand that exists. The founder used to make guitars and banjos for himself with rare and exotic woods, which made him curious if the different types of sound produced by various wood types translated to headphones. It did. The rule of thumb is harder woods like an African Blackwood produce tighter bass and less decay (reverb) and softer woods like buckeye burl enhance warmth and timbre (naturalness). Including the Caldera, ZMF makes a few headphones using planar magnetic drivers, which offer a more neutral and technical sound, and dynamic drivers that sound more natural yet less revealing. The caldera closed is a good example of getting the balance just right. Since it’s a closed-back headphone, you can show off whatever cool wood you get with it. ZMF will drop batches of rare and stabilized wood-cupped from time to time but usually offer some limited versions like this one with cool, special woods that they have more stock of than rare drops but less than stock wood.

First Watt SIT-4 Power Amplifier

Housed in a no-nonsense black box, the SIT-4 is a super cool power amplifier designed to drive sensitive speakers using esoteric components hand-picked from living-legend amplifier designer Nelson Pass. First Watt is Nelson’s side project to his main business Pass Labs, which produces high power amplifiers for insensitive, hard-to-drive speakers. First Watt is a if-you-know-you-know kind of brand. Since many First Watt amps have used new old stock parts, they were produced in limited numbers as long as the stock lasted, which has made previous models quite collectable. In Nelson’s words “there is no such thing as a perfect amplifier, but there is a best amplifier for each speaker.” I don’t claim to know which speaker the SIT-4 is best for, but I own most of the First Watt amps produced over the years, and I can say it is the best I’ve paired with my Klipsch/Ojas ko-r1 speakers. Typically, an amplifier that produces more power at higher impedances wishes to be paired with a speaker of 8 ohms or greater. Vice versa for the reverse, all things equal. The swap ability of first watt amps is part of the fun, though.

DECWARE SE84UFO2 Zen Triode Amplifier

Decware is a passion-project company that exists only because the owner and product designer Steve Deckert wanted to make amplifiers that he wish other people made. Simple yet mighty is Decware’s mantra. This amp started it all for Decware almost 3 decades ago and it only produces 2 watts. Therefore, it requires a sensitive speaker. Pair the right speaker with it, though, and it will sing with a liquid midrange, holographic imaging and mid-bass bloom to die for.