I'm going to come to the point quickly. I attended RMAF last fall. At the time, I'd heard of GMA speakers from several folks I've corresponded with who raved about them. However, for various reasons they were *not* on my list of components to audition at the show (partly because I was not in the market for speakers at all, still being enthralled with my Hyperion 938s).
People who have been to shows can probably relate to the large number of rooms sporting mediocre or even poor sound. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, but when you compute the price tag of some of these rooms, it actually is. $40K for that? Are you kidding me?
Only a handful of rooms had impressed me by the 2nd day of the show - the deHavilland/Wilson-Benesch room had stunning sound as did Kharma (seriously big bucks!) and Wilson/Boulder (ditto that). It was on that day that we wandered by the Green Mountain Audio/Flying Mole room and the sound *from outside the room* was so good that it actually drew me in. I am not kidding - I'd passed by dozens of rooms without a thought of entering but this one I could not. There was something "right" about the sound of this room even in the hall, and this with music that I was neither familiar with nor terribly fond of (and don't recall) and digital amplification that I usually find unsatisfying (I'm a SET wacko).
My girlfriend (now fiance!) spent about a half hour in the room, playing some of my music, and chatting with Roy Johnson, founder and chief designer at GMA. He was a most humble yet clearly brilliant host, and answered questions clearly and with a straight answer.
We were listening to the C3s he had setup with the Flying Mole amplification. The sound was supremely transparent, extended, fast, and detailed, and with a massive, engulfing soundstage. It just sounded *right*, like live music, that rather rare quality, and combined musicality and accuracy in a way that seems to elude the vast majority of audio systems.
Returning home, I began to do serious research about GMA. I learned that time-and-phase coherence was GMA's mantra, and that Roy's a most articulate evangelist of this doctrine. His design philosophy is rooted in real science - the physics of acoustics - to a degree I have not encountered before. There's only science here that makes sense and obviously pays real dividends, no marketing horse shit of the kind we see far too often in this industry.
I learned that GMA is one of only a handful of speaker manufacturers that consider time-and-phase accuracy to be a critical quality in a loudspeaker. At this point I endeavored to hear a couple other speakers from other companies on this short list and found them to be excellent reproducers of a live acoustic event, but still somewhat lacking in comparison. Because I wasn't ready to make a serious, major new purchase at this time, I bought a pair of Continuum 3s on audiogon a short time later. They don't come up for sale often and I was thrilled at the opportunity to pick up a pair at a substantial discount.
They exceeded my expectations in my home. First of all, they are extremely efficient - moreso than their 90dB/2.83V sensitivity and 12" woofer would suggest. I power them with 845 single-ended amps that are good for about 25W and this is plenty of power for them to reach 100dB peaks cleanly in a large room. Roy designs speakers that are an extremely benign load due to the flat impedance that results from correct enclosure design and the very simple first-order crossovers.
I believe the simplicity in crossover design has a lot to do with the transparency as well. We all know that active amplification with amps connected directly to drivers is considered the ultimate by many audiophiles, but when each driver has nothing more than a single cap and/or inductor in front of it, what's the difference? How many capacitors are in the signal path before that point?
What I was getting at home was what I heard at the show, but enhanced by the goosebump-raising realism that SET amplifiers provide on certain types of music. The sound is not warm or euphonic in the least - it is *fast*, clear, and dynamic. My amplification chain is built for speed and transient slam, being direct-coupled from start to finish with the simplest of circuits, and the C3s make the most of it. It was a slightly disconcerting change for me at first, coming off the Hyperions which are much warmer - I described them as "like butta" when I reviewed them - but in comparison I have no doubt that the GMA speakers are more accurate and they are definitely more enjoyable in the long-term as well. As I said, they combine accuracy and musicality in a way that is really very rare and very enjoyable.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if they're great speakers because of the time-and-phase accuracy or theyre just great speakers, but I do have very strong suspicions that this is an important part of their sound. What strikes me the most about t&p correct speakers is the way hard transients sound - sharp and entirely realistic, unlike any speaker I've heard that does not make this property a design goal.
Though Roy Johnson and GMA are certainly best known for their innovations in time/phase accurate loudspeakers, and the math and thorough explanations of the science behind this are very impressive, what impresses me as much or more is the attention paid to enclosures, to make drivers behave as they should without hokey crossover complexity. Read the design pages at
www.greenmountainaudio.com and then listen to the speakers and you'll know what I'm talking about. They *disappear* - they are NOT THERE - the enclosures are entirely silent, they are in the best league of imaging (spooky with SETs and maybe without) and the transparency is due, I think, to the special venting used on drivers where appropriate to neuter acoustic reflections, the extremely simple crossovers, and the perfectly chosen crossover points (note that the tweeter comes in around 3K, well above the meat of the midrange).
I'm going to end this here. I could describe what I hear with my music, but you get the picture. The speakers are nearly perfect - there is no perfect speaker, but for a transducer that reproduces live acoustic events at a price that is not insane and works with all types of amplification, I do not think they can be beat.
I have since also purchased a pair of Callistos for another system and these are also completely amazing loudspeakers at their price point. When the music is not busy, and blended well with a sub, they come amazingly close to the C3s in many ways.
It disturbs me somewhat that Green Mountain Audio is not better known as they deserve to be. They are a small manufacturer headed by people that care of sound reproduction to an extent that may be paralleled in the industry but not, I think, exceeded. The extent to which Roy, and Janet, their CEO, bend over to serve customers - even customers that have not purchased a new product as they transfer warranties - continues to nearly amaze me. Yes, of course, they want to sell speakers, but it really does go beyond that.
I think that anybody in the market for loudspeakers for any type of music at any price point ought to make a point to hear GMA. You will at least learn something in the process.
I have no affiliation with the firm or any of their dealers.
