Mark Rosen has always had an ear for music. In the 80s his Porsche 928 was featured on the cover of Stereo magazine, having been outfitted with 16 Esoteric amplifiers. “It was a great car for audio,” Rosen recalls, and it became his impetus to explore other avenues of great music listening. After the Stereo cover, Rosen tinkered on and off with systems for his homes, adding, upgrading, tweaking constantly. But wasn’t until a few years ago that he crafted a system that he can say he’s truly satisfied with. “Crosby, Stills and Nash sounds so good on this system, it’s scary,” he says.
A few years ago, Rosen decided to bring his love of high-performance audio off the road and into the living room of his third-floor apartment in the Trump Tower in NYC. Familiar with the Goldmund line of products, he contacted the Goldmund USA representative Bob Visintainer, of Rhapsody Music & Cinema, New York, NY. According to Visintainer, Goldmund speakers and amps are designed expressly for the discerning ears of audiophiles like Rosen. “Goldmund products are made of Swiss machined aluminum cabinetry and the have proprietary mechanical grounding which evacuates unwanted frequencies from the speaker enclosure, resulting in a clearer, more precise sound,” he explains.
With Visintainer’s guidance, Rosen turned his and his wife’s living room into an audiophile’s version of a very elite man cave. Like most audio enthusiasts, Rosen let his equipment take center stage, adding nothing else to the décor but a slate-blue leather couch, where he admits he spends most of his evenings. “I come home from work at night, pour a glass of wine and pop on some music.” All of the numerous amps, speakers and components are completely exposed, and Rosen took no pains to attempt to hide all the high-grade cabling that keeps his system humming. “This way easier to add new components later on,” he says. The only part of his system that is neatly tucked away is his collection of CDs, SACDs and DVDs. They occupy a shelf in a hallway closet. No LPs for Rosen, though. “I’m much too lazy to deal with a turntable,” he says.
Today, his total investment in this top-of-the-line Goldmund-brand audio system tops out at close to $1 million. This includes an Eidos Reference Blu-ray player, Mimesis 32 Processor, six Telos 2500 amplifiers and Epilogue 1 and 2 Signature Series Speaker system.
Unlike most Blu-ray players, the Edios Reference comes complete as a player and a stand. The stand isn’t your ordinary table-top option. The heavily damped brass and aluminum enclosure is suspended on four spring-loaded suspension pods to cancel the negative effects of vibrations. The Mimesis 32 processor is capable of outputting 32 channels in a 96kHz 24-bit high-resolution digital format. The processor feeds signals to six Telos 2500 amps, which line the front wall of Rosen’s dedicated listening area. There are six of them; each one connected to an individual driver within the speaker cabinet. For example, one amp drives the woofer, another handles the midrange driver, and a third amp takes care of the tweeter within a single speaker housing. In essence, three amps are connected to each speaker in Rosen’s setup. The end result is crisp, clear, precise audio that “makes even a $5.99 Supersaver CD I picked up on my way home from work sound like a work of art,” says Rosen.