Initial GMA Europa impressions and a few questions

Another question since I don't have an owner's manual yet. I need to call Roy and ask him to mail me one. What is the correct height for the Europa's tweeter in relation to your ear in the listening position? When I first talked to Roy, he rattled off the formula but I forgot.

thanks,

Chris

Well I can't really comment on break in as mine sounded great right out of the box. Re: stand height - Depends on your listening height. From where you are sitting, you want your ears to be just about at the tweeter or an inch or so below the tweeter height.

My Europas became much more resolving from about 100 hours to about 200 hours. The low level detail and slight midrange congestion improved tremendously. Now they are completely grain free and extremely transparent. The Europas will definitely improve up until about 300 hours and in my case they improved a great deal.

Altho' I'm not an Europa owner, I'm a GMA owner. From what I can tell from my own experience is that the most significant improvement will occur until the 100 hrs mark. From the 100 to 300 hrs mark the improvement will be less dramatic i.e. you'll the speaker get more refined. How well you can perceive this will depend on your hearing abilities & your system's abilities to "show" you this. BTW, I'm in that 100-300 hrs period myself.
Atleast in my speaker there is internal cabling from both Audio Magic & Jena Labs. The Audio Magic wire needs 1000 hrs to break-in! *If* memory serves me correctly, Roy told me over the phone that the latest production runs of speakers are now using only Jena Labs as this cable is just as good but needs much less time to break-in.
My user manual informs me that I should exercise the speakers with both soft & loud passages of music to free up the woofer rubber surround. This will help tremendously in the speaker's ability to reproduce music at lower volumes - 65-75 dB SPL at 9 ft (for my situation with these 3-way floor standers). I can personally tell you that playing Bob Marley tracks & other Blues tracks at high volume has indeed helped me enjoy this speaker system at the above mentioned volume levels - I can hear all the details of the music at low volumes. This sort of trait is very typical of electrostatics & ribbon tweeter based systems but I'm thrilled to have it in my dynamic/cone-driver speaker!
FWIW. IMHO. YMMV.

As my Europa literature says (2003 edition), they will not break in with quiet playing. I discovered this to be true as I played them at modest listening levels with no significant change.

Break in calls for 200 hours at "moderately loud levels (30 watts)." To me, that's LOUD.

I know that Roy does not hesitate to really crank it as I personally discovered at his factory. We had it up to 106 dB, A weighted, at 2 metres (my measurement). He didn't flinch. The speakers didn't distort. Stunning.

So, according to my interpretation, and considering "30 watts" (a lot), "moderately" might mean: keep it below 95 dB. In other words, LOUD, just not insanely loud. If you want to discuss it with Roy, give him a call.

My experience with Europa's:
1) Since I had established an expectation from my factory experience, my Europa's out of the box sounded bad in comparison--gritty, edgy, "overly analytical."
3) With 200 hours of loud playing, they are dramatically improved, and I am very happy with them. Their coloration is nicely balanced, portraying the level of warmth as found in the recording--in short, neutral.
4) To trace back over their break-in history, I noticed perceptible changes at these loud playing intervals (counting only the really loud playing hours): at very roughly 2-3 hrs., 10 hrs., 30, 60-80, and then around 200-ish. The change from beginning to end was incredible. Only time will tell if they have finally stabilized for the truly long-run.

Low level detail is really remarkable. They play loud very well, too.

To answer your question about further break-in, Tcbannon, I suspect that you will find further change for the better. Keep 'em cranked when you can. That's what makes the difference.