reality
Member
Goldmund has a new flagship mono amplifier, the Telos 9800, at around $500,000. Each. It does 1,560 watts RMS into 8 ohms at 0.005 percent THD from 20Hz to 20kHz, stays stable into 1 ohm, quotes a damping factor of 900 at 1kHz, output noise under 3 microvolts and 117dB of dynamic range on a 22kHz bandwidth. Power supply and amplification sit in separate interconnected boxes. It sits above the Telos 8800 from 2023 at the top of the range.
Here is what gets me about these launches. Every one of those numbers is good, and not one of them is out of reach. A damping factor of 900 is excellent and also inaudible past roughly 100, because the driver's own voice coil resistance swamps it long before the amp matters. 0.005 percent THD is well under any published audibility threshold anyone has managed to defend. 1,560 watts into 8 ohms is genuinely rare, and the honest use case is a pair of low-sensitivity panels in a large room, which describes maybe a few hundred rooms on the planet.
So what is the half million buying? Machined aluminium, a Swiss address, a new industrial design and the fact that almost nobody else will have one. That is a legitimate thing to sell. It just is not an engineering argument, and the spec sheet is doing the work of pretending it is.
For anyone building a room, the useful read runs the other way. If this is what unlimited money produces on paper, go look at what a well-reviewed $3,000 amp measures and ask honestly which of the gaps you would hear from your seat. Where does that line sit for you, watts or noise floor or neither?
Here is what gets me about these launches. Every one of those numbers is good, and not one of them is out of reach. A damping factor of 900 is excellent and also inaudible past roughly 100, because the driver's own voice coil resistance swamps it long before the amp matters. 0.005 percent THD is well under any published audibility threshold anyone has managed to defend. 1,560 watts into 8 ohms is genuinely rare, and the honest use case is a pair of low-sensitivity panels in a large room, which describes maybe a few hundred rooms on the planet.
So what is the half million buying? Machined aluminium, a Swiss address, a new industrial design and the fact that almost nobody else will have one. That is a legitimate thing to sell. It just is not an engineering argument, and the spec sheet is doing the work of pretending it is.
For anyone building a room, the useful read runs the other way. If this is what unlimited money produces on paper, go look at what a well-reviewed $3,000 amp measures and ask honestly which of the gaps you would hear from your seat. Where does that line sit for you, watts or noise floor or neither?
