Master & Dynamic - MorningCalm May 2018

RHAPSODY IN SILVER

New York-based Master & Dynamic creates headphones and speakers that provide audiophile-grade sound quality right alongside timeless design. Music has never sounded, or looked, so good.

The hills are just faintly squeaking with the sound of music. Listen to music on a pair of cheap earbuds, and you’ll find that the tinny tune is often accompanied by an orchestra of animated phone calls and staccatoed by the persistent coughing of someone nearby. With a good pair of headphones, all the noises of the city recede; you find your own private oasis. But while superb sound quality has long reigned supreme in the realm of hi-fi headphones, it was often at the expense of aesthetics. Then Master & Dynamic came along.

Launched in New York in 2014, the company was inspired by a youthful passion for music that lies at the heart of the city’s own constant sonic reinvention. When Jonathan Levine saw the way his son was dedicating himself to producing music at just 16 years old, he built him a recording studio in his office. Knowing nothing about the audio industry, Levine was making his first foray into what would eventually lead to a wildly successful headphones and speakers company.

Since its founding, Master & Dynamic has been lauded by sound experts previously derisive of designer headphones heavy on style and light on substance. But when asked whether he’s now developed ultra-sensitive ears capable of picking up minute sonic subtleties, Levine laughs. “Not at all. I’m not an audiophile,” he says. Instead, Levine is an admirer of fine objects. “When I first got out of business school, I went to Wall Street — but got fairly bored. As a young man I wanted to be an architect, which I was talked out of,” he says. “But I’ve always loved design. So in building Master & Dynamic, it felt like coming home to architecture.”

He’s no doubt the grand architect of the company, guiding the motley crew that makes Master & Dynamic such a unique success. “Most of my team, even in the early days, worked in different fields, whether it’s design or fashion or others. Not headphones,” he says. “I just got very lucky, which happens a lot in this business — serendipity. I wasn’t looking for a chief product officer; I just happened to be introduced to a very talented young man who’s been with me for four years. He spent 10 years at Bose previous to that.”

The talented young man is Drew Stone Briggs, who Levine says disagrees with him on luck playing any part
in success. For Briggs it’s all about skill, and his skill set has helped design headphones that marry comfort and sophistication without sacrificing audiophile-grade sound. At the top of the company’s line of headphones is the MW60, which features a leather headband that connects to memory-foam ear pads covered in soft lambskin. Perhaps most attractive of all, the headphones are wireless. The MW60’s battery lasts 16 hours, and the Bluetooth signal range is impressive. This is largely due to the placement of the company’s patent-pending antenna, which, rather than being hidden inside the headphones, makes up a part of the aluminum frames that edge the ear pads.

The whole package is a pair of headphones that looks timeless yet contemporary. Timeless design is important to Master & Dynamic; it’s also a taller order than merely being stylish. “There’s no group you go in front of that votes on your design and says, ‘Yes, this is now timeless, congratulations,’” Levine says. “For something to be timeless, people have to recognize it as something that looks and feels familiar. It has to be a balance of what came before and what’s new.”

Timelessness is also defined by how the product is crafted. “In the companies I admire in my personal life,
I can always see the effort that goes into what they do. Sometimes it’s not even supposed to be consumer-facing. It’s just part of their DNA,” he says.

In 2017, Master & Dynamic launched its first speaker at the MoMA Design Store. Designed by architect Sir David Adjaye, each 16.5kg piece of concrete is created from a mold. “Everybody thought I was crazy,” Levine says, recalling the initial reaction to his idea for a concrete speaker. It was so crazy that it was selected as a 2018 CES Innovation Awards honoree.

Levine’s boundary-pushing instincts must be in part influenced by where he lives — the birthplace of music genres that have left an indelible impact on the world. “It’s a great city to build a company like this,” he says. “I really think that New York itself is rooting for us.” And Master & Dynamic roots for New York. The recording studios at its headquarters are free to use for any musician, and for years the company has sponsored an arts program at a public charter school in Harlem. “The ethos of Master & Dynamic is that we want to engage with and support the masters of not just music but any sort of medium, as well as support and promote the dynamic up-and-comers,” Levine says. “Because at the end of the day, the luminaries in music used to be the young disruptors.”

Asked about an artist in New York he’d like to work with, Levine says, “Definitely André 3000. He knows
it, too. I think he’s just being coy.” It would be a fitting collaboration. No other headphones come close to being so fresh, so clean.