As digital audio technology continues to advance, the threshold for entry-level audio equipment is getting higher and higher. It is very difficult for manufacturers to fool users into paying a lot of money without having real skills. At this time, manufacturers need to show their sincerity. At the end of October last year, Goldmund, a Hi-End brand from Switzerland, completely showed its sincerity and brought the entry-level speakers to a new standard. This is the Melos wireless active speaker.
Wireless + Active = Super Hi-End
Goldmund, founded in 1978, has developed many of the industry’s highest-level audio and video equipment in the past 45 years, and has established an excellent reputation for itself in the process of constantly exploring the accurate reproduction of sound and image. Goldmund’s classic products that are widely praised include the Reference turntable, the Apologue wireless speaker, and the Telos pure power amplifier, each of which is a masterpiece of its time.
Therefore, Goldmund also has absolute confidence to claim that it is “the only manufacturer in the world that can achieve perfection in frequency response, phase response and time response of speakers, and can achieve the most accurate and realistic sound that other manufacturers cannot achieve”. So, it is very interesting that Goldmund suddenly launched an entry-level small speaker, which is wireless and even active: what level will Goldmund’s entry-level be?
Tribute to Aegean culture
The name Melos actually has something to do with Greek culture. It is a modern volcanic island in the Aegean Sea. In ancient Greece, people built strong cities on the island. Because of its rich obsidian, the island is also known as the Obsidian Islands with Izra Island. The main city of the island, Milos, was one of the early centers of Aegean culture. The famous Venus of Milos was unearthed from here in 1980. After long-term archaeological excavations, ancient citadels such as Klima and Philakopi were also found on the island.
The reason why the island of ancient Greek culture is used to name the speaker shows Goldmund’s positioning and expectation for it: to reflect elegance and cultural atmosphere from the basics.
Classic and modern fusion design
When you see the Melos wireless active speaker for the first time, you will understand the manufacturer’s painstaking efforts. Melos is a very traditional and classic standard cube shape, with a bit of the classic BBC LS3/5A flavor. However, in terms of color and decoration, it is completely modern and fashionable: the whole body adopts Goldmund’s usual gray, which is very elegant; the side panels are designed with dense vertical “ribs” protrusions, which the manufacturer says are inspired by the flagship Gaïa speaker design.
On the back panel, you can see the difference between it and the traditional speaker: a receiving antenna stands up high, used to receive Bluetooth wireless signals; a power switch and an S/PDIF digital audio input/output terminal each, also showing that it is a pair of active speakers with built-in amplification circuits. As for the front panel grille, the original factory matches it with gray, if you want something different, you can order a black grille from the manufacturer.
Under the grille of the front panel, there are a 1-inch soft dome tweeter and a 7-inch mid-woofer, distributed high and low, and two front-facing ports on the left and right, which look a bit like the design style of the famous British speaker brand Acoustic Energy.
Luxurious built-in amplification circuit
What is particularly noteworthy is that the built-in amplification circuit of the Melos wireless active speaker is very “luxurious”. Each Melos has two sets of amplification circuits with an output power of 175W each, which are used to drive the tweeter and the mid-woofer respectively. This operation shows Goldmund’s attention to the active speaker amplification circuit, which is completely designed according to the standard of independent amplifiers, ensuring that the units are fully driven and do not interfere with each other.
In addition, the Melos wireless active speaker also uses advanced Proteus LS© software for circuit design, using the manufacturer’s patented digital filtering and Leonardo® time correction technology, coupled with high-quality crossover, to lay a solid foundation for the unit to produce good sound.
The manufacturer claims that the Melos wireless active speaker is handcrafted by craftsmen from the Geneva factory in Switzerland. There will also be a pair of dedicated stands coming out in the future, which are both beautiful and helpful for the speaker to produce good sound, which seems to be something to look forward to.
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