Initial GMA Europa impressions and a few questions


I just recieved my Europas today and put them through their paces with a little jazz and female vocals. I bought a dealer's demo pair so they have around 100 hours on them so far. I remember reading that Roy recommends a good 300 hour break in period before they realy come into their own. How did your improve after 100 hours?

My initial impressions are that they sound incredibly natural. My other speakers always sounded bright and harsh on some music. The Europas have tamed probably 95% of this and the other 5% is likely due to other system issues. Do you think there will be a further smoothing out of the harshness as the speakers fully break in?

I am impressed with the bass. For a monitor, the Europas can provide a solid low end punch. I am looking forward to the rest of the break in period and seeing what the Europas can do.
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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.