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Club Bellevue. To play at the HDA's altitude with my hardware choices meant the $9'300 pack of AURALiC Vega and Bakoon AMP-12R., i.e. costlier separates. For a different flavour of equivalent sophistication—full-time DSD—I had the twice-priced Nagra HD DAC loaner which of course first and foremost is a remote-controlled DAC/preamp with analog volume. In our digs the last stop below their final ascent was represented by the €3'200 Lindemann Audio music:book 15 and the very closely matched $2'995 April Music Eximus DP-1. Both are integrated DAC/headfi amps with main preamp functionality. On looks, both Nagra and Goldmund are equally festooned by fasteners on their tops and sides whereas the super-sleek Lindemann and Eximus show none except on their bottoms for the slickest industrial designs. Where Nagra and Lindemann beat Goldmund on functionally is with their useful displays. Aside from comprehensive menu options, they confirm incoming format and sample rate data. With DSD-capable DACs, final proof that your software player of choice—mine is PureMusic, with Audirvana as second for certain converters—don't pass off 176.4kHz or 352.8kHz PCM as native DSD is a convenient check.

with Audeze LCD-XC (ALO Audio leash) and HifiMan HE-560 planars

64-bit upsampling in software is more precise than their 24- or 32-bit on-chip equivalents. Hence my oft-confirmed habit is to set PureMusic to maximal power-of-two upsampling. This dispatches standard 16/44.1kHz Redbook data as 24- or 32-bit 352.8kHz signal instead.


Incidentally, that's precisely what Norbert Lindemann does for his musicbook DACs and for the same reason. Upsampling in player software is superior and many chip sets perform better being fed such signal. So avail yourself of this option, be it in PureMusic, Audirvana or Amarra for Mac; or J.River, JPlay & Co. for Windows.


With the fortuitously coincident arrival of three top headphone decks with integral PCM/DSD DACs, I had unexpected opportunity to track the law of diminishing returns. On pure data density as the subjective sense of how much you'll hear, paying half of Goldmund's ask already delivers the lot. The latest chip sets—say Asahi Kasei's AK4490 with its 11.2MHz DSD input championed by Lindemann—retrieve all of the detail. Here the best implementations don't really add anything. Where they add more is in how heavy that detail comes across.


It's a bit like a poetry recital competition. The words are all the same. Everyone recites the same text. It's in the delivery, diction, enunciation and persuasiveness of meaning where contestants vary. This is a reminder. We must shift the focus of hi-rez discussions away from the word count and into the meaningful aspects of experiential gravitas. Think of a Shakespearean play turned movie with a contemporary action setting. It's the very rare screen actor indeed who can deliver the cadence of Victorian English in such a way that a modern audience gets all of old Will's extremely dense meaning rather than mentally turns off against sheer overload. "This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." If you talk like that, you best work on your delivery.


That's where the HDA excels. It's the James Earl Jones of stage- not screen-trained orators. Nothing is rushed. Meaning isn't just partially explored. It is fully exposed without assaulting the senses. It is seriously weighty. Like that rarest of muscle amps sounding exactly like its low-power stable mate, only more powerful—too often an increase in power steals from finesse and sophistication—the Goldmund adds gravitas. Burson too focus on it but lack this level of resolution. Bakoon is just as resolved but prioritizes speed over weight. To get equal or perhaps yet more weight should require ALO Audio's Studio Six but give up lucidness. The visual reader already sees a snaking river, not a straight-line canal. These two polarities push and pull on the sound in either direction. Each listener sets up shop in the area which most closely approximates their ideal mix of dark and light, mass and speed.


With my exposure to this sector of headfi integration, Goldmund's Telos amp strikes me as unusually well balanced and loaded up on both. It stays the middle but climbs very high. In so doing, it also manages to eliminate or diminish known weaknesses in headphones like the Audeze LCD-2v2 (too dense and dark) and Sennheiser HD800 (too lit up and zippy). In this assocation, they were both made even better.


Naturally desktop streaming—16/44 FLAC via Qobuz, 320mbps MP3 via Spotify+—benefited from the same treatment. Kit like this makes a powerful proposal. Embrace ultra minimalism. Simply add to your work computer a €9.99/month Qobuz or WiMP full-resolution streaming subscription, a ~$150 software player of your choice, one luxo silver box and a pair of statement cans. Now kiss old-fashioned hifi goodbye. Or, chuck the computer and use a digitally docked iPod or Toslink'd Astell&Kern portable. For many freshly minted audiophiles, that's the future. No more man cave. Listen to what you want when you want at the levels you want without disturbing neighbours or loved ones. No more altar to stereophilia in the living room. Just park the HDA and a laptop next to your lazy chair; on a bedside stand; or on the work desk. You'll never partake of hifi at this level with a traditional speaker system. Your room (any room) conspires against it without serious counter measures. With the HDA, even bombastic movie watching is on the menu. You'll be shocked by how powerfully intense Zimmer-esque big drum mayhem will come across.


Goldmund's HDA serves two clients: he who already owns a state-of-the-art system but means to add equally ambitious headfi; and she who wants a state-of-the-art minimalist system without speakers. Both have the funds. Both have the desire to aim this high. Legacy audiophiles haven't caught on to headfi yet. They can't conceive of spending money on it, much less at this level. Those who have caught on may lust after it but lack the necessary expanse of green. As a reviewer, excitement can come from unexpected performance at everyman prices. It can also come from exclusively positioned products that push the envelope. To this writer, the former happens more often. Cynicism, general appeal and keep-it-honest hardware in inventory often conspire against the latter. Because Goldmund's HDA exceeded said hardware by a demonstrable margin and combined the performance of costlier separates in a single box, it frankly demanded a formal award even if it remains out of reach to most. Being this guilty of excellence also destroys one's innocence of thinking less is good enough. But that's not Goldmund's fault. That just taps into our never-ending quest for better. In August 2014, the HDA to this writer represented best of breed...
Goldmund website