GOLDMUND - Swiss Made High-End Audio Equipment

1995 will be the year of Goldmund affordable products and Goldmund luxury Service !

For the first time in Goldmund history, we finally decided to use the know-how accumulated from our advanced research to build inexpensive components.

The Mimesis 14 came first, and was received by our customers as their unique chance to get the Goldmund digital sound for the price of a Wadia or a poor Japanese converter. Then came the Mimesis SR, a full performance integrated amplifier that can compete with more expensive Goldmund stuff in sound, and with good English mid-fi in price. And today you should get your first Mimesis 39.

If you listened to these new babies already, you know the technology and quality we have been able to pack in such affordable goods. We will explain in this newsletter why we decided to design them and how we managed to keep them so affordable.

1995 will also be a great year for our best distributors. With the introduction of the Goldmund Gold Service, we now provide them with a 100% hassle-free, cost-free, 5-stars service like they never dreamed we could provide. Any product, located anywhere in the world, may now receive a ultra-fast service directly from Switzerland as if it were next door. We think it will change the Goldmund image.

And be assured we will do everything to make it easy for you.

See you on the Internet !

Happy new Goldmund year !

Michel Reverchon

For 10 years we have built electronics, among the most advanced in technology.

For 5 years we have manufactured D/A converters with an accuracy and a musical quality that others envy us.

But all these technology wonders had in common one fault : they were at the top, in price too.

Even if we already started to decline our most successful designs toward more affordable prices (Mimesis 9.2->Mimesis 8.2 or Mimesis 10->Mimesis 12), we were still out-of-reach for most of the youngest audiophile beginners. The Mimesis 8.2, then Mimesis 6.2 success, as well as the phenomenal reception we had with the Mimesis 12 shown us the trend to follow. We never sold so many components in so many countries. So, everybody expected more from us in that direction.

To manufacture less expensive components, an audio manufacturer has to work first on the production processes which can lower assembly costs, without lowering quality. During long and tedious experiments over the last 10 years, we finally learned the changes we can make and those we should never make. A good example is the (very detrimental) effect of replacing hand soldering by machine soldering. Far cheaper, and far worse… We tried it and rejected it. Try to ask the other high-end manufacturers to see how many are still hand-soldering ?

We also took the time to try, the individual components, part by part, to select the good sounding among the least expensive. Look inside a Mimesis SR and watch the type of capacitors we use, and all the decoupling. No sonic sacrifice, but no fancy components either. However the same unit assembled at the same cost but with different capacitors could just sound bad. Look at the Roederstein, Beyschlag and Siemens resistors. They are not more expensive than other bad ones. Just better selected. And all our electronic components are picked the same way.

To make good sounding components with inexpensive parts is not a technology, it is an Art. And with so many years of experience, we are starting to learn this art.

However, we know we are still far from perfect. This is why we request your support. It is mandatory for us that you listen to the Mimesis SR and tell us what you think. We need criticism and challenge, because without them, we could remain another high-end manufacturer, proud of himself and dumb. Thanks in advance.

The main justification lays in the new generation of young audiophiles, far more demanding in absolute quality than their aging predecessors.

If most audio manufacturers can continue to fool the old audiophile generation with gold-plated huge chassis, tubes, and “warm sound”, it is very reinsuring to see that a growing number of young music aficionados are now far more accurate in their taste and technical understanding. They want real performance, no gimmicks, and they hate to be taken for idiots.

They appeared first in Europe and in the USA, then in Japan, and today, only some old-fashioned countries in Far-East still applaud to historically out-of-date designs. We know they will join the crowd pretty soon too.

Today, more and more young Goldmund fans exist around the world, who are asking for our sound and our technology, but without having a typical Goldmund budget in their wallet. We wish to satisfy them immediately with our new products, rather than waiting for them to be able to afford our top line components.

We dedicate our new “Entry Line” to these new friends and we wish them a very warm (but accurate) Welcome.

This was probably the most unexpected among our new components of 1994 year end.

SR means “Square Root”. Why ? Because we extracted the essence of our best preamps and power amps in this single design.

In order to achieve affordability, only features and the chassis have been simplified. The front panel displays only a power switch, a volume knob, a selector knob and a single-tape monitoring switch. The unit can accept 6 line inputs only. Features are limited to the essential.

On the contrary, performance is not limited. The amp section has a power of 100W per channel, and its schematics resembles our most esoteric components. Its sound is extremely close too, which is appreciable for the very limited price of the unit.

We are manufacturing the Mimesis SR for the demanding young audiophiles, the new high-tech generation with fine ears, so bandwidth is still in the MHz region and the propagation delay of the whole unit is very, very linear with frequency (a Goldmund must, and the most difficult performance parameter to achieve, see our competition for a smile).

Electronic components are typically Goldmund, even if we have not included our most esoteric selection, too expensive.

Separate Signal Ground and AC earth allow the lowest noise to be achieved (far better than any pseudo-balanced construction !).

The Mimesis SR front panel is finished in black anodized. However, a special version with acrylic front panel can be made on special order.

We strongly believe that, considering the quality of this unit, all Goldmund Exclusive Distributor will unavoidably sell it in large quantities (or we could not take them seriously). So, our production is organized in larger batches than for our other products. It means we should have Mimesis SR always in stock, as we have now.

A big change for Goldmund too.

The new Mimesis 39 may or may not be considered a member of our “Entry Line”. It is still too expensive for most unfortunate young audiophile. But in the same time, it cost half the price of a Mimesis 36 and produces a very, very close sonic quality.

We had to sacrifice gimmicks. No electric cover, no automatic clamp, no fancy opto-electronics to adjust suspension, no exchangeable output modules. We also sacrificed weight. The Mimesis 39 weights only 16 kilos, instead of 25 kilos for the Mimesis 36.

The Mimesis 39 also works manually : the cover is manual, the clamp is manual, the suspension adjusts manually. So you have to sacrifice some comfort compared to the Mimesis 36.

But we use the same electronics (standard outputs include coaxial and AES, no AT&T nor Toslink, both decidedly unacceptable at Goldmund level), same Philips CDM9Pro transport, same 3-materials clamp, same one-axis suspension. The Mimesis 39 is manufactured in the same hard brass, metacrylate and aluminum to keep a perfect “Mechanical Grounding” and receives the same finish quality as the more expensive Mimesis 36.

Standard color is black anodized. We also propose a black acrylic version on special order. Only few samples of the Mimesis 39 have been delivered so far. We should have quantities available when you read this.

A fantastic partner for the new Mimesis 39 CD Turntable, the Mimesis 14 is already selling for a few months, but its real justification only comes now, with the launching of our new “Entry Line”. Associated with a Mimesis 39, it is THE converter to beat in sonic accuracy at its price level.

We remind you, if you did not read our last newsletter, that the Mimesis 14 is in fact a stripped Mimesis 12. One digital single input (AES and Coaxial), one single analog output (no more balanced), and a special version of the Digital Interface and Converter modules, only different from those of the Mimesis 12 by a lesser selection of the components, everything else remains the same.

The features on front panel are identical, including the absolute phase control, and the power supply is also built-in.

If the chassis is identical, the front panel is now black anodized, assorted with the Mimesis SR and the Mimesis 39. On option, black acrylic front panel is also available for a slight price upgrade.

And we deliver from stock, of course.

You probably tried once or twice to use the Goldmund Lineal Digital Cable in analogue and you certainly appreciated its transparent quality. To satisfy the demand of our best distributors, we today present the Goldmund Lineal Interconnect cable.

Based on the same design principles (except for the specific digital impedance), the Goldmund Lineal Interconnect cable is even more transparent for analogue signals. It uses a very similar wire and the same plugs, as well as the famous Goldmund “Cold-Soldering” technology. As for the Lineal Digital Cable its optimal direction is indicated on the plug by an arrow.

The difference with the Digital Lineal Cable lays in the impedance matching that we achieved by including selected components inside the plugs.

Available in pairs of 1m and 2m in standard (special lengths on order), the new Goldmund Lineal Interconnect Cable is delivered in a new packaging design that will be progressively applied to the whole line of Goldmund accessories.

You already know it because we keep repeating it. On the contrary of all other high-end amplifier manufacturers, we use small transformers and small capacitors in our power amplifiers not because it is cheaper (we heard that comment, you know..) but because it is the only way to build a high-speed power supply. This is why we use 4 separate small transformers in a Mimesis 9.4 rather than a big one (which is more expensive, by the way), and why our best amps have such a low value of filtering capacitors.

But what seems to be misunderstood is the critical importance of the AC line speed for the sound of a Goldmund amplifier.

It means that :

• You must use fast powercords rather than thick ones (remember we manufacture Goldmund Powercords ?).
• As far as possible, you must use a separate direct AC connection to the building circuit-breaker to the Goldmund power amplifiers (and one for each is even better if you use mono amps).
• You must ABSOLUTELY NOT use ANY serial line-conditioner or isolation transformer. We recently saw a top Goldmund system powered by a Titan line conditioner. This is an absurdity. You could have used a Levinson, Krell or any other slow amp in such a system WITHOUT HEARING A DIFFERENCE ! A shame. Why not put a set of tractor tires on your Ferrari ?

You may have seen it mentioned briefly in one or two of our previous technical publications. But you probably did not realize how important it was. This is why we come back on the subject. Let’s be more precise :

First the “Thermal Grounding” principle could be for Goldmund future electronics a discovery of the same importance as was the Goldmund “Mechanical Grounding” for the record turntable, 10 years ago.

Second - and this is how we discovered it - the “Thermal Grounding” rules in an electronic circuitry are an exact analogy of the “Mechanical Grounding” rules in a mechanical assembly, or the electrical grounding rules in an electric design.

In fact, we discovered the “Thermal Grounding” principles by following one of our favorite method of research in audio, the “Analogy Tracking”. Based on an approach of the similarities in physical laws applying to electrical, vibrational, optical and now thermal signals, this method allowed us to correlate some of the audio signal measured (but unexplained) distortions with the thermal behavior of the components where the signal travels.

We will amply come back on the subject if you are interested, but you already have a slight idea of the importance of this discovery if you had the chance to compare a Mimesis 9.4 with a Mimesis 9.2. Let’s say that we just started to apply in the Mimesis 9.4 design (and in the A2 module) some of the simplest results of our research on the “Thermal Grounding” principle. You probably noticed the dramatic sonic improvement which is the result.

In few years from now, this principle will be probably as usually applied as the Goldmund “Mechanical Grounding” principle is today by High-End audio manufacturers. By then, we hope you will remember that it was a Goldmund discovery…

First samples have been already shown in Las Vegas this month.

The Goldmund Speaker Cable uses some of the technology developed for the Lineal, but carefully adapted to each type of amplifier or speaker design it should connect by an appropriate termination box tuning the impedance, speed and time alignement of the signal. We plan to give you a full description and photos in our next issue.

We are still waiting for the final termination boxes to ship, but all other parts are ready and we have large manufacturing quantity planned for as early as mid-February. Please Call.

We remind you we can provide the new Goldmund A2 module separately for customers who want to upgrade their Goldmund electronics to this new technology.

The A2 modules are available from stock, they can be exchanged with the existing A1 without any tools (plug-in assembly), and the only adjustment needed is the DC Offset adjustment of the stage, as it was when exchanging A1 modules.

The Mimesis 10+ benefits of a new Digital Interface module, a new Power supply and a new EPROM software. These new parts are all included the Mimesis 10+ upgrade Kit. They all are pluggable and can be exchanged without tools.

That is all you need if you already have a Mimesis 10P and you want to make it a 10P+.

But if you want to upgrade a Mimesis 10C to a Mimesis 10C+, you may wish to benefit of the phase inversion capability of the Mimesis 10+. For doing that, you need to order separately an additional pluggable front panel PC board for the remote. This will allow your Mimesis 10C+ to be remote-controlled for both the input switching and the absolute phase inversion.

Do not forget to explain this point to your customers for their upgrade kits orders.

Available in small bottles for those who want to remove all scratches from the metacrylate parts of their Goldmund audio components, this Goldmund Polish is the same we use at the factory. With a very soft cloth, it allows to remove surfaces scratches better than any other polish we tried. A good gift for a Goldmund collector or a perfectionist. Please call for details.

1995 will be THE year of Service for Goldmund.

In 1994, we received several complaints from our best customers about the difficulty we had to deal with their service requests. To help them better, we are happy to announce, starting January 1st 1995 the Goldmund Gold Service.

For a Gold Service member, it means :

• All warranty service parts are free of charge. No need to return defective parts anymore.
• Returned components for repair under warranty will be taken care of at our own cost, both shipments by UPS included. You just have to receive from us an authorization number.
• Starting later in 1995, free direct access to our service information database by Internet. Schematics, Part lists, Troubleshooting information, right at your fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And soon, a Goldmund BBS forum to receive your questions and suggestions, and to provide help directly from our engineers for your most difficult problems.

This luxury service will be limited to our best distributors, best dealers, who deserve this effort by generating a respectable amount of sales, as well as some customers isolated in a country without decent representative or service facility.

Following the creation of a real European Community in 1993, Goldmund is proud to announce that the distribution for the whole Europe will be, starting January 1st 1995, grouped under the responsibility of its most recent emanation : Goldmund Europe. Operated in association with Sarl 2001, Goldmund Europe will directly sell to dealers in Europe without going through local exclusive distributors. More details will be given to the European dealers about the process they should follow to deal with this new entity.

Spanish top demo, Ole…

The most accomplished Goldmund presentation we have seen in Europe for long has been set up recently in Barcelona by the new Goldmund Europe Dealer there, Amadeus. In a beautiful hotel reception room, a full Goldmund (Analogue-Mimesis 9.4-Mimesis 10P+-Mimesis 36) system was demonstrated, in alternance with technical seminars. The quality of the demonstration, the warmth of the reception, and the appreciation of the assistance are gages of the work that could be accomplished by our new dealer friend.

Bravo Ramon, and welcome in the Goldmund family.

This will be THE BIG EVENT of 1995.

As a recompense for our most active distributors, we invite them for a fabulous week in Europe in May 1995.

Please book from Friday May 26th to Friday June 2nd 1995 for your trip to Europe.

Arrival in Nice. Installation in a Seafront Hotel facing the Mediterranee.

Welcome dinner.

Transfer to the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix, where you will have the unique chance to assist from one of the best location on the circuit, a window facing the starting line. This priviledge, usually not accessible, is provided to us thanks to our local relation with our Porsche pilots. These guys have the chance to be Monaco residents and very good friends of the Monaco Prince family. For you, this is the experience of a lifetime if you like car racing.

On Saturday, in addition to a small reconnaissance of the Monaco city, you will assist to the last qualification session and to several other races if you wish.

By the evening, we will return to our Hotel in Nice and relax.

The Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco, seen from the terrace facing the departure line is an experience. The morning warm-up session, the fever of the departure and the incredible ambiance brought to Monaco by this unique event is memorable.

Transfer from Nice to Le luc, where we will stay in a beautiful country side provencal Auberge, and taste the best french cooking.

In the afternoon, reconnaissance of the Racing Circuit, presentation of your professors, inspection of the cars for your Formula 1 Driving Seminar.

This is THE great day of your life. After an intensive training on Formula 3 cars on the circuit, you will have the unique chance to drive, for few runs, a real Formula 1 racing car, a car which really raced during the Formula 1 world championship. This is a priviledge few people in the world can share. We have the possibility to offer you this unique chance thanks to our relationship with our Porsche cup pilots.

During the morning, Trip from Nice to Paris in TGV, the french high-speed (very appropriate for Goldmund) train.

You are invited by our friends of Station 2001 near Paris to the Grand Opening of the Goldmund Europe demo center. In presence of all the important European press (you will have the occasion to meet and speak with people like Ken Kessler), and most important people in European Audio, the extraordinary Station 2001 Demo Center will be presented to you in avant-premiere. Considered by most international visitors as the best Hi End Audio Store in the world, Station 2001 is a fundation member of Goldmund Europe. There, you will be able top see the whole line of Goldmund new products including the new Mimesis 20 and Mimesis 2.2 prototype, and have a direct contact with some of their designers.

We do not plan any technical or sales training during this week of celebration, however if you wish to come and visit our facilities in Switzerland, you will be very welcome to do it just after the Paris celebration. You can also choose to visit Paris before leaving back to your country. If you plan to come and see us in Switzerland, please let us know in advance so we can better arrange your stay.

Have been selected for their exceptional performance in 1994 :

• Stellavox Japan (a top performer, several seats reserved)
• Station 2001, France (2 seats)
• Seki, Korea (1 seat)
• Hi End, Singapore (1 seat)
• Royce, Taiwan (1 seat).

We will be very, very happy to see you all in Europe with us next May.

And BIG CONGRATULATIONS.