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In Reply to: RE: Green Mountain Audio Rio... posted by Nicholas Renter on August 15, 2009 at 15:49:10
The same exact midbass driver used in the Rio and also the Eos/HD is now available from Parts Express for $11.50!
Follow Ups:
I've been building my own speakers for a long time because of this very fact---the drivers used in commercial designs (in many cases--not all cases nor am I singling GMA out because I know they make fine speakers) are CRAP. I remember the look on my face the first time I de-constructed a pair of $8000 floorstanders only to find after some research that all I had was a $20 tweeter, a $30 midwoofer and a $35 woofer encased in a very beautiful cabinet (but not 7k beautiful, LOL!). And that was not as bad as some other designs I've seen that have used even LESS expensive drivers!
Sure, they ALL say their drivers are "different" or "modified" or "whatever" from the off the shelf drivers so that you THINK your getting something "special or different". But modified COULD MEAN they stuck a hunk of blu-tak to the driver basket and called it a day! There ya go---we use "proprietary drivers" LOL!
And even if they manufacture their OWN drivers (take B&W for example) its not any better. Have you ever measured the T/S parameters of an "in-house" driver?? They are no better then the $10-$15 dollar range drivers you can buy at MAD or PE! In many cases--much much worse!
Regards,
Joel
Boy was I pissed off when I cut apart my $1,000 oil painting, had the lab analyze it, and found the artist had used paints that only cost $8.75 per tube!
Get the idea? Anyway, nothing wrong with a ~ $1,000 or so speaker using a "$50" woofer and tweeter. What matters is, with the overall system, can you find another speaker that you personally like better for the same or less money? Do you have the time, knowledge, desire, and tools to build a pair for yourself?
If a speaker does cost more than a couple thousand dollars then I would expect it to use either high quality or custom drivers which are well integrated into a whole "greater than the sum of it's parts".
Nothing new to me, but I hear you. I've been building my own too, since the mid 80s. Currently I have maybe 60 or 70 drivers in house (garage). I'm working on several different projects and I just ordered 12 more tweeters from PartsExpress.
That AURA midbass driver looks very promising, especially at such a low price. The fact that Aura is liquidating so many of them probably makes the designer over at GMA turn "Green." Ha!
How do you know it's the same driver?
Take a look at this website (see link below), note the model number NS6-255-8A. I don't see any other 6 inch woofers except for the 4 ohm version. Don't know why their download link isn't working either, but the specs for the same model numbered woofer is available at the Madisound website.
It is only similar to the one we use. We also test and tightly match our woofers into pairs, then modify the chassis of each for increased stiffness and damping. What Madisound is selling is from a one-time overstock sale by the factory, offered at an excellent price certainly.
Best regards,
Roy Johnson
Designer
Green Mountain Audio
Thank you for the reply.
Similar is still pretty darn good. Oh yeah I'm all for grading and matching of drivers, not hard to do when you can buy them by the case. I've done it with tweeters. I remember way back, FOCAL/ORCA selling "perfect pairs."
I will apply peel and stick type of bituminous material to stamped driver frames for damping. Kind of makes you wonder why Aura didn't go ahead and use cast frames instead of stamped. I'm also wondering why they use a front gasket, when pretty much everyone mounts their drivers from the outside instead of from the inside of the baffle?
I cannot be absolutely 100 percent sure, but the general consensus from other forums is that it is. I'd be willing to say 99 percent sure.Anyway if you go and take a look at the Green Mountain Audio website and read their downloadable .pdf files you can see that it is indeed an AURA woofer and that it sure looks and specs the same. A downloadable .pdf for the driver is available from Madisound. The frequency response graph looks real nice.
http://www.greenmountainaudio.com/storage/speakers/rio/Rio-Design-Concept.pdf
Edits: 01/26/11 01/26/11 01/27/11
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