Which speakers did you find bright, fatiguing or just disappointing in some way?

@bdgregory 

I heard what I heard, and have no reason to make it up. Not sure why you think my claim dubious.

I didn't suggest that you made up the claim. I simply found it odd, given both my experience, and the relative lack of similar opinions from other owners whose feedback I have read.

How is it odd that some people dont like the sound of a speaker? It happens with every speaker.

It's not odd at all, but you have predictably produced yet another dishonest straw man. I responded to a specific objection to the speaker, not a broad one. 

Why don't you do readers a favor now, and stop polluting this thread with your biased, and frequently dishonest posts. 

Green Mount Audio Europa. Bright and fatiguing describes the perfectly.

@bdgregory I consider your claim to be dubious, and if accurate, almost certainly related to your associated equipment.

I had the Europas, followed by the Callisto, and while the latter was certainly a step forward, I would never have characterized the former as "bright and fatiguing". I was using a Jeff Rowland Concentra integrated amp, and Electrocompaniet EMC-1up CD player.

There is a very detailed review of the Europas here on Audiogon, entitled "Review: Green Mountain Audio Europa Monitor". That user's experience is far more in line with most, I would say.

There are many more opinions on a thread entitled "A few questions for Green Mountain Europa owners", and the words "harsh" and "bright" are never used to describe the sound.

@kenjit

Setting aside your absurd claim that you are "reporting the truth", a claim that has been demolished by Johnson’s detailed recounting of your behavior, your responses on this thread have one, deeply ironic thing in common: dishonesty. The most recent example:

If you read the hifi reviews of the green mountain Eos and Rio, you will find that the reviewers certainly do allude to the same problems I and others have heard.

The original poster’s claim, and my objection to it, were about the EUROPA, yet you reference two entirely different models, which are obviously irrelevant.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anyone who might agree with the original poster, but it very much does underscore your tendency to be dishonest, which is why I have called you out repeatedly on this thread.

And as the old saying goes, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. That’s a piece of advice that you would be well-served by following.

They had a very small following and the reason they existed for so long without ever growing as a company is because their speakers weren't good enough to compete on the same level as B&w, Magico, Revel, Kef and the like.

That's false. There are many different reasons why, or to what extent companies grow, and the quality of the product is only one variable. There is no compelling evidence that GMA failed to grow to a particular level because consumers were disappointed in their speakers. In fact, a very high percentage of all of the feedback on their speakers was positive, as anyone who cares to engage in a broad internet search will discover.

You should be ashamed that you are trying to prevent anybody from expressing a negative view of Green mountain audio. Everybody is entitled to their views whether its good or bad.

It is true that everyone is entitled to their views whether a product is good or bad, but your many posts on this manufacturer reveal an obvious and extreme bias. All that I have done is to point out that fact. You were also dishonest in your dealings with Roy Johnson, as he spelled out in detail on the thread that I linked above. 

Ironically, it is you who should be ashamed, not I.

Note, readers, that @kenjit did not deny the facts of Roy’s (above) claims on the original thread, nor on this one. That tells you all that you need to know about who is, and is not honest.

As to his attempts at misdirection directly above, it further reveals a lack of honesty. The first link that he provides leads to this "complaint":

08/01/2019

I sent my ************************* to ***********, owner of Green Mountain Audio for repair/upgrades. He has had them in his possession since March 2019. He has been ill and has apparently died. I am wondering how I can get my speakers back from his shop.

A "complaint"? Ludicrous.

The second is a thread from which he extracted the excerpt in his above post. It is apparently true that a small number of customers of Roy’s were left in limbo after his demise. It is also apparently true that a small number had some difficulties with him prior to his death. Neither of those issues are relevant to the obvious fact that kenjit is biased, nor to my initial criticism on this thread. I had simply questioned the "bright and fatiguing" claim of another poster, as I never had that experience, nor can I recall having heard of others having had it.

No one has suggested that everyone liked GMA speakers, nor that Roy was perfect. But kenjit’s "contributions" should be understood through the lens of his obvious bias against both the manufacturer, and Roy himself.

kenjit –

Your extreme bias against GMA and the late Roy Johnson, and ludicrous attacks against them, have been well-exposed on this forum. Any readers who think that I am being hyperbolic should refer to this thread, on which Johnson himself exposed kenjit's claims for what they are:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/warmest-sounding-green-mountain-speaker

The fact that the manufacturer no longer exists is completely irrelevant. GMA had a strong following, and for a small, boutique manufacturer, did well enough to make owners of its speakers happy for ~20 years, prior to Roy's unfortunate death.

Nobody on this forum will take you seriously on this topic, and for good reason.

I'm afraid it is you who is being dishonest. Just because he disagreed with my criticism of Green mountain audio, it doesnt mean I was dishonest.

I'll simply let readers decide who the dishonest one is, by copying Roy Johnson's summary of your behavior from the linked thread:

Your Green Mtn. speakers were not setup for you by a retailer. You purchased them from us, directly. I have your invoice, emails, Paypal receipt and shipping documents.

They are Chroma speakers, with the time-domain improvements in the crossover circuits compared to original Rio.

Upon delivery and for years afterwards, you had the speakers in a very poor room, quite acoustically inferior in every way. I have your cell phone video showing this and your emails describing it. And you have my helpful response suggesting the best and least-expensive ways in which to fix its acoustic problems and what (and WHY) you would hear along the way.

Six months or more later, after I had not heard from you for quite a while, you took these speakers apart and removed their fiberglass linings. I have your email describing this. In it, you also remark how you cracked at least one marble cabinet by not putting a screw back into its correct hole.

You removed the tweeters, laid the cabinets on their sides, and set the tweeters on the 'new' cabinet tops. I have your email.

You removed the crossover circuits and modified them to second-order circuits, which negates any time-coherence. I have your email.

More than a year after your purchase, after I informed you that these modifications voided your warranty, you lied to American Express by telling them you had been promised a refund. I provided proof to them that this was false and they denied your request for refund. I have the emails on this.

Another year passes without contact, and you lie to AMEX again. This time, their agent did not contact us or Paypal, so AMEX leveraged Paypal to give you a partial refund of US$1200, which you accepted. Paypal removed these funds from our account with no notice. I have the emails to Paypal showing them how you were not promised a refund, and that you had already owned these speakers for YEARS, and that you had modified them. They agreed with me, then told me their contract was with AMEX, not us, so they had to do what AMEX told them. We had to take this financial loss and so I decided we could no longer accept Paypal from any customer, thanks to you.

After receiving this false refund, YOU KEPT THESE SPEAKERS.

Two years later, with no provocation, you began new threads on Audiogon attacking me. Audiogon removed them at my request, after many others posted their responses that something was 'not right' with you, as you would not answer their questions and instead began insulting them. These folks did not even own Green Mtn!

There is no evidence that Johnsons account is actually true. Has that occurred to you? Do you realize how biased you are by simply taking his word for it while rejecting mine? 

I almost feel sorry for you, as you flail around desperately, attempting to defend your repeated, dishonest claims.

No evidence? Roy had emails and correspondences with you, AMEX and Paypal. There is ZERO chance that he was making those claims up, and, in fact, you did not dispute them. Anyone reading that thread, and Roy's compelling recapitulation of your disgraceful behavior, would believe his account. He also had your subsequent, unfounded attacks on the forum deleted, which further underscores your pathetic bias.

I'm not going to waste readers' time further by addressing your wildly hyperbolic claims about GMA speakers, as they absolutely REEK of bias, which is plain for everyone to see. 

I ASK AGAIN: PLEASE NO MORE ARGUING OVER A SPEAKER BRAND THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE! FFS!

@greg7

With the exception of my very first post, I haven’t really been arguing over a speaker brand, but rather pointing out the bias and dishonesty displayed by a very active member of this community. You may not care to read about that, either, but they are two very different things, and the exposure may have value in helping some members to view kenjit’s comments on other topics with a circumspect eye.

@kenjit

If I had a nickel for every time you were dishonest in your posts, I’d be able to purchase some very fancy cables.

Of the many archived posts relating to the subject speaker, the "bright and harsh" complaint is almost never found, and the vast majority of reactions are quite positive. It’s that simple. The specific criticism is very uncommon, hence the logical question of whether or not the problem may have been related to something other than the speakers themselves.

But wait … let me guess. Your next painful (for all readers) contortion will be to argue that all of those who liked the speakers may have been suffering from hearing loss, and were therefore unable to discern the brightness and harshness.

smh

What stopped me was the way they reproduced John Lennon’s vocals on Across the Universe. They were simply plain wrong. I’d never heard Lennon’s voice sound like that in the mid/lower register before.

Very interesting, and reminds me of this interesting quote from Alan Shaw, designer of Harbeth speakers:

The core issue is this. Forget music entirely. Imagine that it never existed, had never been invented. Play well recorded human speech on those so-called high end speakers and the vast majority - practically all of them - have colorations, peculiarities, weird subjective characteristics that are in many cases simply laughable.

So then, why will you never find a hifi reviewer who even attempts to grade loudspeakers by listening to human speech over them? Absurd and pathetic, considering that we are surrounded by speech - not music - all day and every day, and unsurprisingly, our ear/brain is finely tuned to interpreting extremely subtle nuances in speech, even on a telephone line. If we were to be talking now on the restricted bandwidth of a phone line, we could understand each other’s emotions, guess at our age and education, probably income, detect if we are being truthful or concealing something, decide if we are friendly or trying to deceive us or sell us something and so on just by microscopic nuanced changes in loudness, pitch, strain and delivery. Human speech is the ultimate loudspeaker test tool because of the way it can impose its own nature on the underlying subtleties of reproduced speech, changing the listener’s interpretation a little or a lot.

@kenjit 

If self-parody were an art form, your work would be in high demand.