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Green Mountain Audio Chroma HX

Hi, Folks,
Do any of you have any experience with the latest iteration of Roy Johnson's Green Mountain Audio Rio stand mount? He's upgraded the crossover and internal wiring, and it's now called the Chroma HX.
Any impressions?
Thanks!

rebbi
dbb
198 posts
 
I strongly disagree with the negative comments on the Chromas. Overall, these speakers have a very natural musical sound. They are for music lovers.

I recently had Gallo Strada 2s for a home trial. With a subwoofer they are comparable in price to the Chromas.  The Gallos' are impressive speakers in terms of dynamics, resolution, and sound stage, but not even close to the musicality, imaging, and over all listenablity of the Chromas. I used the Gallo subwoofer with both the Chromas and the Strada 2s

As far as the parts, the Chromas use Seas 29TTFF/W tweeters. They are fine sounding 6 ohm tweeters. I have a pair of the Seas Excell Millennium tweeters, the companies finest from a speaker kit project. The specs are similiar. They cost about $305 each. I swaped the Millenniums in to the Chromas. Yes the sound did improve, but by a small margin. Arguably not worth the increased cost. 

My conclusion is that the Chromas are brilliantly designed to get maximum bang for the parts used. Better parts yield only marginal improvement.


kenjit
1,771 posts
 
@dbb

Interesting that your Green Mountain Audio Chromas use Seas 29TTFF/W tweeters.

Mine uses the seas H1462-06 27TDFNC/GW.

Have you tried swapping out the woofer or modifying the crossover?

Despite the usual rule that ferro fluid damped tweeters dont need impedance compensation I do not agree that it applies to this tweeter. You can hear and feel the amount of energy coming through by touching the tweeter dome.

The only way to improve this speaker is by replacing that woofer in there. It’s not just that it's low quality, it’s not designed to work in small boxes like the chroma.

That’s why youre not getting any decent bass weight out of these speakers.
audiokinesis
2,747 posts
 

"I just upgraded from the chroma 2 to the HX version of the GMA RIO . The results were amazing!! much better cohesion across the frequency spectrum . The detail was also improved. I have owned many highly rated speakers and none of them come close to the overall musicality of the RIO HX." - Steven Cochran

"...these speakers have a very natural musical sound. They are for music lovers." - dbb

"Yes I have owned chromas and I hated them." - kenjit

Hmmm.

Kenjit, can you describe your room and amplifier? Assuming dbb and Mr. Cochran are not deaf, it is possible that there is a serious problem elsewhere in your system that you are mistakenly attributing to the Chromas.

"Do it on any other high quality speaker and you wont feel a thing because they use a sharper order crossover slops which are much more phase cohesive."

Sharper crossover slopes are NOT "much more phase cohesive". The fact that a steeper crossover can be in-phase at the crossover point does not make the system itself more "phase cohesive" across its passband. And the "phase coherence" that is claimed by everyone and his brother originates in the marketing department: Almost always such designs have either 180 degrees of phase shift with the tweeter’s polarity inverted to put it back "in phase" at the crossover point (but not elsewhere), OR 360 degrees of phase shift which puts the drivers back "in phase" at the crossover point (but not elsewhere) while the woofer lags the tweeter by one cycle, which is hardly "phase coherence".

Duke

dealer/manufacturer/competes against Green Mountain Audio

kenjit
1,771 posts
 
Kenjit, can you describe your room and amplifier? Assuming dbb and Mr. Cochran are not deaf, it is possible that there is a serious problem elsewhere in your system that you are mistakenly attributing to the Chromas.
Audiokinesis,  it's been a long time since I bought the chromas. It's beyond the point where I'm trying to figure out why they don't sound good. I have already discovered why they don't satisfy me.

The main mistakes / reasons are :

1. Wrong box / woofer combination 
2. The tweeter used in mine were not impedance corrected and not rolling off sufficiently. 
3. Crossover was not optimised 
audiokinesis
2,747 posts
 

Kenjit, when you ignore reasonable requests for relevant information that could undermine your position, it starts to look like you have an agenda (aside from your pattern of attacking Green Mountain Audio on this site, as shown by a glance at your posting history). 

Your analysis of the phase characteristics of the Chroma is completely incorrect, demonstrating that you are not qualified to critique the design from a technical standpoint.  (If anyone else is interested I can respond to kenjit's other "technical" criticisms.)

Speakers + amp + room = a system within a system, and blaming one without looking at the other two and how they interact is incomplete at best.  

You have gone well beyond "I didn't like these speakers".  You are clearly not qualified to critique them from a technical standpoint, you clearly have a agenda, and you are evidently averse to divulging information that would undermine your attacks on Green Mountain Audio. 

Duke

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