This Preamp Costs More Than a Fancy Sports Car

In the world of hi-fi, there’s “high end,” and then there’s Goldmund. Since 1978, the Swiss manufacturer has produced exquisitely designed, astonishingly high-performance and staggeringly expensive audio equipment. As it nears half a century of proudly uncompromised engineering, its determination to position its products as credible alternatives to jewellery, art, or other pricey indulgences for the superrich shows no sign of abating—quite the opposite.

I was recently invited to Goldmund's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to experience the new Mimesis Statement, the company’s flagship analog preamplifier. Goldmund's HQ, incidentally, features the sort of high ceilings, generous use of concrete and glass, and fanatical tidiness that puts me in mind of a Bond villain who's decided to devote their time to audio gratification rather than global tyranny.

In a traditional stereo chain, a preamplifier takes the low-level signals from your source gear, handles volume and input selection, and feeds that clean signal to a power amp to drive your speakers. Most people use an integrated amplifier, one that combines pre-amplification and power amplification in the same box.

Those who want to take things to the next level often separate pre-amplification and power amplification into two boxes—to keep the precious audio signal away from any electrical activity that might compromise its integrity. Goldmund, naturally, is convinced that a preamplifier alone needs to occupy three separate boxes.

The first box, the one with the buttons, dials, and display, houses the pre-amplification electronics. It’s where your source equipment—turntable, network streamer, whatever you fancy—connects using the generous selection of balanced and unbalanced inputs. The other two boxes are external power supplies serving the left and right channels of your stereo signal.

Goldmund reckons this radical separation, along with painstaking internal architecture featuring complete symmetry, voltage regulation stages, and optimized heat dissipation, guarantees signal integrity and utterly consistent operating conditions in all circumstances.

It’s apparently not enough to make a preamplifier with such a low total harmonic distortion figure (0.0002 percent) that it’s extremely difficult to measure in the first place. No, it has to be housed in three chassis with mirrored-glass displays, metal-coated controls, and Goldmund’s signature slender gold-line design flourish to confirm its identity.

In the US, the Goldmund Mimesis Statement analog preamplifier costs $240,000. No, I didn't accidentally add a few zeros. We’re already into “fairly fancy European sports car” territory here, but a preamplifier by itself doesn’t constitute an audio system. For the Mimesis Statement to do its thing, it needs a music input signal, which it will output to a power amplifier. From there, it goes to a pair of speakers.

Thankfully, Goldmund offers plenty of options. During my listen to the Mimesis Statement, it is connected to the company’s Eidos network streamer (yours for $27,000) at one end and a pair of Thelos 9800 power amplifiers (nearly 800 pounds per amplifier, 1,560 watts per channel, an imposing aesthetic, and $500,000 each) at the other. The amplified signal then moves to a pair of Theia Passive four-way floor-standing loudspeakers ($215,000 for two). That’s a total system price of $1,482,000—not so much “sports car” as “very nice apartment, probably with a balcony.” And I haven’t even added in the price of cables.

What does all that money buy you? Well, it most certainly buys a distinctive industrial design language, attention to detail and precision where fit and finish is concerned that’s beyond OCD, hand-soldered circuit boards, military-grade alloys crafted using established Swiss watchmaking techniques, and the sort of overall physical presence that’s more commonly associated with the stuff they build at NASA.

But can a stereo system possibly be worth $1.5 million? The answer has to be “no.” I’ve been a part of the audio equipment appraisal process for over two decades, and I know full well that the law of diminishing returns kicks in long before you’ve spent six figures, let alone seven. But Goldmund isn’t selling you a hi-fi any more than Rolex is selling you a wristwatch—it’s selling you an unmistakable symbol of status, wealth, and success. It’s selling you exclusivity. It’s selling you what it sincerely believes is the pinnacle of artisanal engineering.

And it’s also selling you a serving of detailed, tremendously insightful, and eloquently communicative sound. I am not a prospective Goldmund customer, but if I had the disposable income, I really think I might be.