Goldmund, not much inside, but ultra expensive.


Is judging Goldmund products on what’s inside them fair? If it’s, then what are you paying for? There’s nothing but space inside most of their equipment. Not only is there nothing inside them they’re ridiculously expensive. Look inside their Nextgen 590 intergraded amp $29000. There’s nothing inside.
To be fair, I must say I’ve never heard their equipment, so maybe it’s worth what they charge, but judging it from its inside It looks like it isn’t.
hiendmmoe

Showing 1 response by paullb

Here's Srajan Ebaen's answer in his Goldmund Telos 360 amp review a while back.

Conclusion. Responsible journalism can't skim over a basic fact. Goldmund's Telos 360 are very expensive. For that they're quite empty inside and materially of low weight. The very smallest XA Series stereo amp from Pass Labs weighs more than this pair combined but wants just 1/6th the coin. Such a seriously loaded tab is part of the brand's luxury positioning. It comes with the territory. Where material packaging goes, their own Job 250 monos sold direct at $3'400/pr and manufactured in the same Geneva location show how a very similar circuit with the same power output can be stuffed into far smaller de-blinged boxes. Wherever ownership is invested in such matters, pride takes a hit. With these luxe monos, there's only a reassuring cuddle and the obligatory gleam of gold-plated decals and silkily finished nearly white aluminium to confirm status. Whilst sensibilities on eye candy diverge, there's no argument that these Swiss amps also deliver sonic substance. They aren't pushers of empty calories. Yet they aren't kitchen pickers with big knickers either. The overriding part of their design brief is speed, low noise and the resolution which occurs at the confluence of these two streams. There's very refined smoothness yet no comfort padding from fatty warmth.

With speakers whose warmth is built in with strategic radiation patterns and minor response tweaks à la Kaiser, the Telos 360 amps are truly ideal and ultimate choices which prevent additive fattening, deceleration and coagulation. Hence my earlier amp-as-passive-magnetive-preamp characterization. With speakers on the cooler leaner side like our Albedos or equivalent efforts from Estelon, Gauder/Isophon, Mårten & Co, arriving at a similar sound requires adjustments with your upstream choices. Then a superior valve preamp and/or tube-buffered DAC become natural options. Finally, I can think of precious few if any amplifiers which could brag of an equivalent lineage or core circuit tracking back unbroken 3+ decades. Over this period, the topology has undergone constant refinements by different teams of engineers. Should this be the sonic flavour of your dreams, here it's been tweaked, polished, re-tweaked and polished again and again perhaps to a more extensive degree than anywhere else. It's how Goldmund's commitment to tradition coexists with and informs their commitment to evolution. For those of us insufficiently lubricated*, the Job amps benefit from the exact same commitment. They're simply a few generations behind this now 9th-gen curve. This rewards those who make a far greater investment into the company with the very latest advances and findings. Which is as it ought to be. Finally, the art of scaling up power without sacrificing sophistication is trickier than doubling or quadrupling everything on a proven low-power circuit. That's why to this day we don't have a 100wpc FirstWatt, a 200wpc Bakoon or 300-watt Crayon monos. That Goldmund have learnt how to scale their circuit into high-power turf without sacrificing sophistication speaks to the lengths their various project leaders have gone over the years; and how management continues to invest into relevant R&D to make it so.