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The sound of excess

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Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Big Spender keeps her ear to the ground, and recently heard the sound of money emanating from a luxury home in the hills of Tarzana. Listen up, audiophiles. Swiss manufacturer Goldmund bought the pad, installed $1.5 million in woofers, tweeters, projectors and other equipment and now uses it as a showroom to woo buyers. Incidentally, the highest-end gear comes with plenty of extra customer service, including visits from Goldmund’s chief operation and technical managers. Here’s how to crank up the volume:

Reference II Turntable: Get in line -- only five a year will be made for the next five years. The technical specs on this are enough to get an audiophile’s heart pumping. A liquid-nitrogen rectified belt, cog-free motor “shielded and dampened” by brass to block noise and “hyperbolic tracking correction” with one micron precision.

Full Epilogue system: These speakers, constructed from hardened steel, brass and aluminum for the purest sound, sit one atop another balanced on mechanical diodes. Vibrations move down through the points and into the floor to reduce distortion and rattling.

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Goldmund Media Room. You’ll never go to a movie theater again after Goldmund’s crew helps customize your private screening room. Try 47 speakers, a two-ton ceiling and acoustic modeling for optimum sound. Each room is so carefully designed, they require fabric samples from your seats and wall coverings.

Eidos 20 BD Blu-ray player: The discs shouldn’t skip with this baby. The Eidos comes with an “AC-Curator” power-supply circuit, which promises to improve picture and sound stability. And special “mechanical grounding” construction is designed to remove “spurious vibrations.”

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