I need help from GMA Europa owners

Thanks- let me know if particular cones under the Europas do any good. Always curious.

The Europa marble is quite thick at the bottom, and it would be easy enough to put in four (three?) dimples with a drill bit (1/8" diameter probably) to locate the tips if the cones point upwards. If tips are down, eventually stick the cones to the bottom of Europas with Scotch 3M very thin double-sided tape (thin like Scotch tape).

Y`all have a good weekend. And you're right- there's little reason pick too hard on Warren.
Best,
Roy

Hi Rich- glad to hear you like the Europas.
Mdf stands, even with sand filling, have a "fuzzy" resonance in the particles of the wood themselves. A stethoscope would reveal this as stimulated by tones in the AM radio/nasal voice range.

If you are going to keep the stands for a while, then consider placing a thin sheet of firm rubber-gasket material from the hardware store (in the plumbing dept) between the Europa and the stand. The Europa's marble cabinet does still have resonances in that tone range, but at a much lower level than a wooden cabinet. The rubber sheet should minimize the transfer of those "marble particle" vibrations into the mdf, yet be rigid enough that the cabinet does not wiggle on bass notes (which would also blur the image). Again, a stethoscope tells you a lot.

Possibly four 3/16" balls of BluTack between speaker and stand instead would be fine, squished out with the speaker's and your body weight. But you'd find after a few weeks, the BluTack has entered the pores of the mdf- it rips out a big chunk when you try to remove the speaker. Seal the stand-top with a semi-gloss or gloss, paint/polyurethane to prevent this penetration.

Next, examine the way any cones/spikes are mounted under your stands' bases. Most cones/spikes are attached to, or simply setting under, the bottom skin of that mdf platform. Thus, the vibration in the mdf particles BETWEEN the upper and lower skins of that base will be a weak link. Bolt those cones/spikes through to the upper side of the mdf platform- with a nut on top. This clamps those two skins together, minimizing that "shear mode" vibration between the two skins. This shearing, btw, is a front-to-rear mode, so a fuzziness to the image, in the depth dimension, would not be surprising.

After all that, look at new cables- usually the interconnects from the CD player first. The rest of your gear is certainly worth keeping for a long time. This is not a slam against your existing cables- I haven't heard them. But most interconnect cables are pretty fuzzy I find. The ones which are not, I'd be happy to suggest privately.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Roy Johnson
Green Mountain Audio

Thanks Scott.

Tom- the Audiopoint cones may be designed to be "direct coupled", but that may not be the requirement for the system in which they are to be tried. The tape I mentioned is very thin- just a few thousands inch of adhesive, only. You think this interface would be a big issue, compared to the problem at hand? This is a 40+ lb cabinet on top of that thin layer, driven by a 6" woofer.

I postulated direct coupling could be part of the problem, with what to listen for, pro and con. Do you have a suggestion for Richs, and what he might listen for, when trying a particular 'device'?

Couple more ideas for Richs: Consider cleaning the contacts of your cables and jacks, even the digital ones. Rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol- the kind without added lanolin, with a cotton swab and pipe cleaners, should be enough to knock off the sulphurs and other compounds deposited in a house which cooks, where people breathe, etc. However, use it sparingly, as it contains water. Shut down all the power if you are feeling particularly sloppy. The next better stuff would be Caig De-Ox-It, thru PartsExpress.com.

Some of what you are hearing could certainly be the soft dome vs. hard dome, but I don't think that's the entire answer. The Europa's foam grill obscures some of the clarity, adding an overall haze, from blunting leading edges, and smearing out trailing edges. This may be part of what you are hearing, especially if you're used to hearing the Thiels without their cloth grills.

By removing the Europa's foam grill, the tweeter is too loud by .5dB, audible after 10+ CDs. We would send 2 tweeters measuring 0.5dB softer. But then the speakers would be slightly dull with the grills back in place... let me know.

See if all the screws are snug, including the three 2mm Allen bolts near the dome of the tweeter (don't put a lot of torque on those). Note the two different-size screws around the woofer.

Any chance the tweeters half fried? I've done that here.

Do the speakers need to finish breaking in?


Remember that fuzz or haze is a broadband problem, not a single-frequency resonance. Some 'solutions' induce single-tone resonances, like placing metal cones under a CD player (heard on a few notes in the right-hand of the piano).

Hope you can get some resolution to this (out of this?).

Best,
Roy

Thanks Tom-
I'm not sure that I follow you on two points:

How is either sand, lead or rubber a storage medium? They each turn HF vibrations into heat. Since stored heat can never be reconstituted as coherent energy, i.e., as signal (as a ringing), these materials cannot store this HF energy as vibrations. Am I missing something?

Also, to me, Energy "sped to ground" means turning it into heat. Is that what you mean by getting the noise to exit?

Sorry I need the clarification, but audio vocabuluaries are still developing for all of us.

Since I'm asking
What is an APCD?

What do you hear happen if points are up instead of down?

Thanks,
Roy