The next stop on our Italian HiFi Manufacturer’s Tour took us to Tuscany, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, great wines, unreal landscapes, and Gold Note.
We made the 2-hour+ drive from Treviso directly to the Gold Note Factory in Montespertoli, which lies about 20 kilometres southwest of Florence. Ah, Florence.
The Gold Note factory was formerly occupied by a high end outdoor/patio furniture company who were kind enough to leave behind a pool.
As I hope you can see, the Gold Note factory feels more like an art gallery on the ground floor and this theme continues throughout with art hanging on every available stretch of wall. Most of these works are from local, ‘undiscovered’ artists and Gold Note plays its part in raising their profiles, something I applaud with my own art-making hands. Bravo!
As you can also readily see, the Gold Note facility is among the most organized work places you’ll ever encounter no matter how closely and widely you look.
The company uses software that tracks each part from the moment it arrives through to production, burn in, and testing, and every employee’s productivity is monitored with all this data appearing on a large screen in the large production and testing room.
The company has gone so far as to design custom ‘carts’ that are populated on the ground floor with the parts needed to assemble a specific model which is then brought upstairs to be assembled.
Think superb organization and super high efficiency which I would suggest helps account for the company’s ability to deliver high-value products at low, for hifi, prices.
Gold Note was founded in Florence in 2012 by Maurizio Aterini, Gold Note’s CEO, whose appearance is as fit and put together as his factory, while Gold Note’s Tom Dolfi acted as our guide throughout our 2-day visit. One important takeaway, which you may already know, is that Gold Note makes everything from phono cartridges to tonearms to turntables to CD players to streaming DACs to phono stages to amps, preamps, all-in-ones, cables, racks, power supplies, and speakers. That’s some SKUs! Gold Note is also part of The Vinyl Alliance and presses some of their own records that are more environmentally friendly than a typical vinyl LP including The Weavers at Carnegie Hall.
As mentioned in my visit to Unison/Opera, Gold Note sources many parts including transformers locally which you can add to that long efficiency (and control) checklist.
The stunning woodwork found on Gold Note speakers and turntables is also sourced from an Italian supplier for obvious reasons. OK, I’ll spell it out—Italy lives and breathes art & craftsmanship and pride in work, something that held strong for at least two generations of Paterson, NJ-born Lavorgnas. I like to think I inherited my grandfather’s work ethic, but he worked with his hands as a carpenter which is a different kind of work than writing.
In any event, Gold Note’s products speak for themselves when it comes to looks, fit, and finish. You may recall my review of the Gold Note PH-10 Phono Stage as part of the ‘Playing 78s’ extravaganza and I have to say I loved its slick touch screen interface and feature richness that includes a number of EQ curves for playing pre-RIAA records. And the fact that it costs a hair under $2k makes it one appealing package. My pal Ken Micallef reviewed Gold Note’s less expensive phono stage, the PH-5 ($999), for Analog Planet and he was equally impressed.
A grand for a very nicely made great sounding phono stage hand built in Italy sounds nearly too good to be true.
Gold Note’s familiar half-width chassis house their 5 and 10 Series products, another nod to efficiency, but only the 10 Series come in your choice of silver, black, Gold Note gold. Black is the dress code for the 5 Series. Further up the electronics line we move to full-width chassis as found in the PH-1000 phono stage, DS-1000 EVO streaming DAC, and P-1000 MkII preamplifier/PA-1175 MkII power amp combo.
The speaker line start with the A3 EVO II bookshelf (from $4999/pair) with the floorstanding A6 EVO II (from $8399/pair shown above) in the middle on up to the passive flagship XS-85s.
In terms of the new, we got to see and hear the new Diana speaker line whose atypical looks are sure to inspire different opinions as is the case with any thing that is not generic. Why, why oh why, do people feel the need to share their off-the-cuff opinion on how things look as if the World needs to know? The Internet, that’s why. [/ old man gripe]
One interesting aspect of the Diana design is you can begin with just the Dianna I or Diana II, the two-way or three-way version respectively, and add the Diana Subwoofer/stands further on down the road. A baked-in upgrade path. Nice! A brief listen proved promising as the sound in this small listening room was clear, open, and nicely resolved through digital and analog sources. Yes, Ken and I figured out how to change inputs/sources without any help. Because we’re professionals 😉 and because the Gold Note interfaces are super intuitive.
Sitting in its own space off the main production room is Gold Note’s lab, replete with lab coat sporting engineers. Once again, order and proximity feed the process with what feels like near zero loss.
The hotel for our Tuscany stay was a 30-minute drive up a dirt road that wound its way up and down and up a small mountain as if designed by a drunken sailor with poor balance (on the drive back from dinner we nearly ran over a family of wild boar). But once up top, the views were very nearly hard to believe. I still remember something my father-in-law said when he first entered our then new home, “I’m not used to so much goodness” and this feeling hit me like a ton of gnocchi when looking out over miles of Tuscan landscape.
The Gold Note logo is designed after an antique horn that was used in battles sounding the charge with a killer edge.
Gold Note’s flagship XS-87 active DSP-driven 5-way loudspeakers ($90k/ea.) sat in prime position in the main stairwell. Each speaker houses 40,000 Watts of hybrid Class A/B power. (!!) You can also run them as passive speakers using multiple amps to taste.
I walked away from Gold Note mightily impressed by their determination to make the best products possible in a wide range of price categories without a bit of waste or wander from their carefully laid out path. Bravo!
Further Viewing
Randy cheapaudioman: Wow! Hi End Brand Redefines Affordable Audio in Italy!
Jason The Audiophile Junkie: The Best Speaker You’ve Never Even Heard About – Interview with Maurizio Aterini of Gold Note
