Pop quiz. What does the following verbiage describe? And what does it mean?
“It’s about what we love the most. It’s about what we hate the most. It’s about what we wait for but never happens. Relationships turn on, interrupt, and resume. Or sometimes they just stay still. Floating and suspended. So breathe in. Let go. Let’s begin from nothing.”
Huh. Any luck yet?
“And suddenly we discover that it’s easier than we thought. It’s more powerful than we ever imagined. You can see and feel what’s around you with an intensity that you never felt before. Just embrace the most pure and authentic connection. Life.”
The words are spoken over two minutes of footage showing hyperattractive millennials and Gen Z’ers. There’s also a blink-and-you-miss-it cutaway to a grandfather type. The shiny happy people in the video read, swim, dance, lounge, and make love in curated spaces where every book and album sleeve is placed to look like it ended up there by chance. At the end, a young woman draped in flowing white fabric jumps into a pool and, captured by an underwater camera, does her best Weeki Wachee mermaid impression, rotating slowly within a giant letter O.
If you guessed that this is a promo for Sonus faber’s new $1999 Omnia wireless speaker1—well, then apparently you’ve already seen the video. The company’s copywriters again outdid themselves with the Omnia’s digital brochure,2 describing the new product as “an organic architecture of technological desires” and exulting that “our journey is inspired from connection, the truest relationship of humankind—the link to life.”
Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” (16/44.1 FLAC, Tidal) was particularly expansive via the Omnia.
That last quote, though still pretentious for my taste, isn’t wrong. Music a link to life, and the enjoyment of music a matter of making connections (when it comes to recorded music, both liter-ally seeking the proverbial wavelength that lets us meld our minds and hearts with a favorite performer. When it works, it’s one of the most pleasurable and satisfying of human links. How close can the Sonus faber Omnia get us?
