Thanks for the comments guys!
M2500tvr- contact me about your layout, or request a new copy via e-mail of the Europa manual. The speakers are too far apart, unless there is something about your room we should discuss (I know we've spoken). Try the "equal-legged Tee" layout (10% narrower than an equilateral triangle) discussed in the manual. Then listen to audience applause to hear the most time-coherent axis. It ranges from being at ~the dome tweeter's down to the woofer's center, depending on how close you sit. This is in the manual, and we are urging all owners to contact us for the latest manual, to make sure they have no typos in theirs for this listening height. But the audience-applause test is best (quickest), as applause is half woofer/half tweeter. When the two drivers come into minimum phase, you can easily hear fat hands, flat hands, small hands, cupped hands... Crosby, Stills, N, Y "Four-way Street", "Jazz at the Pawn Shop", Patricia Barber "Companion (?)- her live album". Close your eyes and remove eyeglasses to hear this the clearest.
I am getting much more low end, and more accurate low end, with some new interconnects that have finally reached 400 hours. Didn't think it would be possible to get substantially better bass from Europas, after trying more equipment and cables and sources and recordings than you care to count.
Keep in touch! Thanks again to everyone for their kind comments.
Best,
Roy Johnson
Green Mountain Audio
PS: Lou, we did try the best Mills resistors in place of the wirewounds we use, and the sound was just noticably less grainy, a little more precise- on any equipment.
However, the increased costs of inventory would have driven up the price of the limited number of Europas we can make each year. We need to stock more than 100 each in 40 values, to have enough every month to match into pairs. You'd have to hear the difference side-by-side to tell. It is not a jump up & down thing.
Lou, by "OEM resistors", do you mean the unbranded ones from overseas- ewww... no way. We know who makes ours, and for how long they have, and what their tolerances are year after year, and the materials used. They are quite good.
It's not surprising you've heard differences in resistors, and the amount of difference depends, as you'd expect, on where they are used (amp, speaker, etc) and how employed, as well as how they are made/who makes them.
Hopefully, we'll see more advances in low-noise, high-power audio resistors, in the same manner as capacitors have evolved. The ones in flat-packs requiring heatsinks are not worth the extra cost for our simple crossovers, but, cost be damned- I'll likely be working with them on our flagship unless I can eliminate the need for them.