I love the look of those Goldmund speakers. What attracted you to them initially, or was it a cold audition? Also what else did you compare them against besides the Nautilus?
Would love to hear a Goldmund someday, but I’ve never even seen them over here in the states.
I was working in France and found that a dealer ther had a set of Wilson WAMM speakers for sale used. All the magazines back then had been going on about how wonderful they were - best speakers ever etc., so I arranged to go up for an audition, this was around 25 years ago. I had a good income at the time and they were inside the budget I had set for my "speaker for life", new would have been far too much.
The dealer in question, now retired, was the French importer of Wilson at the time and had all their models.
Anyway I auditioned the WAMM and was relatively umimpressed, given the hype.
In the huge listening area, effectively a roofed in courtyard in a French country house, he also had Goldmund Apologue and Analogue speakers set up so I had a listen to them too.
The difference was stark IMO. Instrumental timbre much more realistic and a cleaner non boomy bass. I actually found the Analogue more convincing than the Apologue.
Anyway I decided I probably should get the Analogue and asked if I could compare it to the B&W Nautilus, which had a convincingly plausible engineering background to its design and I loved the styling.
They arranged to do the demo, they were not B&W dealers, and by the time they had borrowed the Nautilus and so forth the Analogue/Apologue models had been superceeded by the Epilog so I listened to them as well.
The final audition between Nautilus and Epilog was more a question of being astonished by the Epilog 1 on its own than disappointment in the Nautilus, which, with the 8 channels of high quality amplification it required, was much more expensive. I now know that less expensive amps would have probably been fine but not then. The Nautilus is active 4-way but only the crossover is supplied with the speaker allowing the owner choice of power amp - probably a wise marketing decision back then.
Anyway, the Epilog blew my socks off and, whilst expensive by any sensible standard, was not above budget and I preferred it to my previous favourite, the Analogue, even though at the time only the Epilog 1 module was available for audition.
The Epilog system was modular. The main module is the Epilog 1 which can be used on its own. There is an Epilog 2 which can be used as a pair to lower the bass and improve power handling. There is also an Epilog 3 Sub, so there is a sequence of potential speakers one can make with them.
Epilog 1, Epilog 1 plus Epilog 3 sub, Epilog 1&2 (which is what I ordered) ditto with Epilog 3 sub, full epilog system with 2 epilog 1s per side, and Epilog 2 rotated 90 degrees between then and th whole shebang mounted on an Epilog 3 per side.
They are machined metal enclosures and a range of frames allowed the various combinations to be bolted together.
My only disappointment has been the Epiframe 2 despite a complex construction and being bolted together using damping gaskets is a bit resonant.
They were expensive, but not ridiculously so considering their construction, which is much more expensive to make than anything else I had seen until the Magicos many years later.
Goldmund have increased their prices absurdly since then IMO, basically the more expensive the better in the high end in their biggest markets, and I would not consider them now.
OTOH they do have an importer into the UK now and all the speakers have been DSP active for some time (the last evolution of the now replaced Epilog was active) and I heard some at the last HiFi News exhibition. I thought them the best in show but far too expensive.
I generally highly rate their speakers but the electronics are not worth the money - though the enclosures are made to a quality level I haven't seen from any other maker.
Also, they're meant to sit on top of the W371 so that the woofers are right next to each other and you get to keep the point source behavior of the Ones.
