Goldmund

This article is about the Swiss audio company. For the musician, see Keith Kenniff.
Goldmund International
Private
Industry High-end audio, Home cinema
Founded 1978
Headquarters La Condamine, Monaco
Key people
Michel Reverchon, Chairman
Website http://www.goldmund.com/

Goldmund is a Swiss Luxury high end audio brand founded in 1978. Goldmund has developed and introduced industry’s first home wireless music distribution, DVI output, mechanical grounding, thermal grounding, extreme multichannel processing and many more. Goldmund introduced products such as the Reference II turntable, the world’s most expensive turntable, the Telos 5000 limited series 5000 watts amplifier, the Eidos Reference Blue, the most luxurious universal player, and the Goldmund Media Room, a revolutionary customized home theater solution.

Corporate history

Goldmund was founded in 1978 and is still in operation today. The company has since moved its corporate headquarters to Monaco, while maintaining its R&D and manufacturing facilities in Geneva. Goldmund related companies include professional audio companies Stellavox and JOB Systems. Through various arrangements, Goldmund and these companies share technology.

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Goldmund technology

Since its creation, Goldmund has developed its own technologies. The company owns several registered patents and licenses. The technologies developed by Goldmund are:

Mechanical Grounding:

This Technology was introduced by Goldmund in 1982. The “Mechanical Grounding” building technology uses physics laws to evacuate vibrations from any structure, allowing lower resonance from speakers but also from electronics, where mechanical vibrations are one of the major sources of coloration. As a result, there is no overemphasis on certain tones and the sound preserves its naturalness.

Alize Converter:

The research done by Goldmund demonstrated that the main sources of digital sound inaccuracy were not to be found in the conversion circuits themselves, but in the difficulty to provide them with a low-jitter digital signal. Developed initially for the Mimesis 20 D/A converter, the Alize technology uses a totally different circuit topology than other converters. The ultra-complex output filter is time aligned and uses more than 12 stages, keeping the unit completely transparent without the detrimental effect on Jitter of the over-sampling traditional approach. The result is an extremely precise and advanced filter which made the converter sound absolutely analog.[1]

AC-Curator:

AC curator technology is used in most of the Goldmund products like preamplifiers, disc players, video projectors and the processors. It consists in a series of power supply enhancements that ensures smooth and clean power is delivered to the mechanical drives and circuit boards. It not only filters the high frequency but also the low frequency noises generated through AC power line by other equipment. The power supply in the best Goldmund disc players uses 6 transformers and 6 separate regulated precision power supply circuits. Each unit from the AC line is decoupled and filtered.

Telos Amplifier:

The circuit in the Telos amplifier provides a dramatically reduced distortion and an extreme control of the attached speakers, thus allowing much higher dynamics without damaging the speakers. Goldmund amplifiers have a bandwidth of approximately 3 MHz, roughly 100 times that of a typical audio amplifier. In addition to the bandwidth element, the Telos technology acts on the damping factor, which is the amplifier’s ability to move the speaker cone backward and forward but also to stop it completely, providing more control on the whole speaker. It also provides a strong protection circuitry that, with a rise time of 400 ns (or 400 billionths of a second), does its work within a mere 40 ns. Finally the Goldmund Thermal grounding technology is used in all Goldmund amplifiers.

Magnetic Grounding:

This technology is used to improve the reading of the latest ultra-fast readers in DVD and Blu-ray player mechanisms. The magnetic grounding utilizes a very strong magnetic field to damp the overshoot of the lens assembly, the most typical source of reading errors. The magnetic grounding prevents these errors while providing more precision in the signal reading.

Speaker Modeling:

Heavy aluminum enclosures, mechanical grounding techniques, modular construction and active amplification improve the performance and system versatility of the Goldmund speakers. The technologies Goldmund uses allow no subjective or flattering coloration to exist in the speakers therefore all Goldmund speakers sound exceptionally similar which each speaker line with different sound level limit.

Multi-Channel Acoustic Processor:

Goldmund holds several patents, and one of its major technological advancement is the Multi channel processor. Unlike the conventional 2.1, 5.1 or 7.1 channels Goldmund offers as many as 32 separate channels. These may be used to create additional channels for a surround sound system. All audio outputs of the Goldmund acoustic processor are digital, designed to interface with the digital inputs of Goldmund amplifiers and speakers. Having many channels allows producing a perfect surround image. The Mimesis 15, 16, 16HD and 32 and Metis 10 acoustic processors may then be used indifferently for 2-channel or Multi-channel, and switch automatically between the various formats. In addition, the performance and quality of the stereo system is completely preserved.

Proteus-Leonardo:

The Proteus project was started to develop a technology that would make better speakers. This took the company 7 years of painstaking research and development efforts and resulted in the creation of the Epilogue 1 Signature. Later on the technology was applied to many other speakers not only Goldmund but other brands also. Proteus optimizes the performance and quality of the sound

Many tests have been performed by high end specialists where the performance and sound qualities of the same system are compared with and without Proteus technology. They are unanimous on the improvements brought and some have qualified Proteus as "The most powerful invention in audio history".

Leonardo, a revolutionary technology allowing correcting the time distortion in crossovers, is a part of Proteus.

White papers explaining technologies by Dr. Veronique Adam, PhD in Acoustics and member of the Audio Engineering Society are available on the technology page of the Goldmund official website.[2]

Goldmund products

Players & D/A

• Reference II, Turntable
• Eidos Reference Blue, Universal Player
• Eidos 36U+, Universal Player
• Eidos 17, Universal Player
• Mimesis 20H, D/A Converter
• Metis D/A Converter

Processors & Preamplifiers

• Mimesis 32.5, Multichannel Acoustic Processor
• Mimesis 16.5, Multichannel Acoustic Processor
• Mimesis 15, Multichannel Acoustic Processor
• Metis 10, Multichannel Acoustic Processor
• Metis 8, Stereo Acoustic Processor
• Mimesis 22H, Analog Preamplifier
• Mimesis 27.8, Analog Preamplifier
• Metis 2, Analog Preamplifier

Power Amplifiers

• Telos 5000, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 3500+, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 2500+, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 1000+, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 350, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 352 & 353, 2 and 3-channel Amplifier
• Telos 153 & 154, 3 and 4-channel Amplifier
• Telos 250+, Mono Amplifier
• Telos 280, Stereo Amplifier • Metis 3, Stereo Amplifier
• Telos 390.5, Integrated Amplifier
• Metis 5, Integrated Amplifier

Speakers

• Apologue Anniversary Wireless Speaker
• Metis Speaker
• Metis Wireless Subwoofer
• Micrometis Wireless Speaker
• Logos 1N
• Logos 1+ 2N, System
• Logos 3N, Sub-subwoofer
• Logos in Wall Speaker
• Logos In Wall Subwoofer
• ProLogos Wireless Speaker
• Epilogue 1
• Epilogue 1+2, System
• Epilogue Full System
• U-Logos 1, In-wall Media Room Speakers
• U-Logos 2, In-wall Media Room Subwoofer
• U-Logos 3, Media Room Sub-subwoofer


External links


  1. http://attachments.goldmund.com.s3.amazonaws.com/2011/08/22/02/46/37/869/goldmund_alize_converter_white_paper.pdf
  2. http://www.goldmund.com/en/technologies
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