Green Mountain Europas....

My Europas have changed quite a bit. I'm at 50 hours presently and in the beginning the Europas sounded a bit restrained and lacking some refinement. They have opened up quite a bit in the last 10 hours and I'm told they will steadily improve up until 200 hours. The dynamics were lacking right out of the box and that's because the woofer is very stiff and needs time to loosen up and break in. I'm very impressed with their sound and prefer them to the many monitors I've listened to, some of them costing substantially more. Microdynamic shadings and vocals are especially noteworthy, very live sounding.

KcClone - I echo phasecorrect's comments. I think over time you will find that they are musically very involving, and have a very articulate character. This is a tough balancing act. Just as a frame of reference, these have repaced a pair of full range electrostatic hybrid speakers in my system. These stats garnered rave reviews in quite a few of the hifi rags. The stats had some qualitites which were superior to the europas (mainly transparency - soundstaging is a tough call - its close), but overall I think the europas are better at many things (musical invovlement, coherence, prat, off axis response, waf, less maintenance) and at about 1/10 of the price.

Kclone,
You'll definitely hear improvements as the woofers loosen up and then finally as the tweeters break in. If I remember correctly, at the 80 hour mark the sound was noticeably better and then again at around 150 hours I noticed significant improvement. Run 'em all day if you can and beat'em up real good.

I recently received a pair of Europa's from Green Mountain last week. I am waiting on a pair of the latest C-3s and in the interim bought the Europa's which I will later move to the bedroom and alternatively maybe use for recording monitors. I admit to being predisposed to liking Roy Johnson's designs. His phase and time coherency goals along with minimized cabinet contribution and simplified crossover schemes seem to result in a more clear communication of the musical artist's intent. Spending time once a week on the live mixing side of a console at my church (9 piece band plus 7 vocalists)has provided me with some insights into listening to music that I did not have when I was only an audio hobbiest.
In terms of the Europa's, which are not yet broken in, I am quite please with their performance. They are easy to drive (tried Anthem AMP2-SE, VIVA Aurora SET and Sharp SMSX1 50 watt digital integrated). They can play quite loudly with no strain, go reasonably deep in the bass (kick drum and bass are solid with impact), develop a well defined soundstage (varies recording to recording...good indicator), seem very low in coloration as far as I can tell so far. On good recordings, I can more easily hear the techniques and skill of the artists that truly separate the good from the great artists. Pretty reasonable price for all it delivers. I will post another report once they are broken in and I get over that initial honeymoon effect you experience with a new toy.