Soliloquy 6.2i vs VS vr4jr , Zu Druid & Usher 6371

Zu Druids will, alone among this bunch, give you holistic sonic presentation, uniform transient behavior top-to-bottom, tonal consistency and no driver integration issues. Aside from Zu's breakthrough full-range driver combining tonal accuracy, wide frequency range, good dispersion, with high efficiency, unlike Lowther and Fostex, the absence of crossover in the signal path cannot be fully appreciated in the abstract. You have to hear it.

Definition adds sub-woofer bass extension in a transient and tonally consistent way, and sonic scale that the Druid can't quite match. The trade-off is that the Druid communicates greater intimacy and can be used as a near-field speaker, which the Definition cannot support. Druid has some lingering colorations that are engineered out of the Definition, in part because the dual FRD array manages the high frequency output acoustically in addition to the FRD's upper range mechanical roll-off and the high pass filter for the supertweeter. Further, the dual FRD MTM array gives the Definition broader horizontal dispersion while limiting vertical dispersion, mitigating floor and ceiling effects. Together, this makes Definition more suitable as dual purpose music and home-theater speakers, for which you will see that 2 channels are exactly right. Definition also has higher absolute resolution.

No question Druid is more forgiving of the upstream chain, particularly mediocre sources and power amps. The Druid's 12 ohm load puts most solid state amps in a more tonally acceptable sonic zone. Definitions demand more careful selection of associated equipment, for they lay bare what's wrong elsewhere in your system.

Phil

Hmmm....I don't think anyone wrote that single driver speakers are new. Least of all Zu themselves. They freely admit their design themes are inspired by classic research from early to mid 20th century. What is new about Zu is easy to identify: a full-range driver that is aurally neutral 38Hz - 12kHz and absent annoying full-range driver "shout" or distracting beaming. Packaged in a tight-footprint form factor that can be easily assimilated in normal domestic environments, the products Druid and Definition are fairly described as "revolutionary," both for the phenomenal tonal, transient, dyanmic and phase-coherent fidelity, and the reordering of resource allocations in system design that they incite. Druids particularly make true high-end performance more financially accessible than any other speaker on the market so far. Perhaps someone will excel them in this respect, but not today.

Phil

Moderator: I see that one of my posts above got posted twice. I won't be offended at all if you remove the duplicate occurence. :-)

Miklorsmith, Tvad: Cheerleading is an established part of audio, indeed any passionate hobby, and is one of the things that makes the participation fun. But the extreme kind at least deserves to be called and pointed out.

Macrojack: I gave you examples of speaker designs themselves that were finalized to the point that the designers didn't tweak any more. Similar examples exist in other components. Of course, so do counter-examples, when a component keeps getting "improved" forever. I just prefer the former way of doing things.

Speaking of works of literature and music, one may buy 10,000's of books and cd's in one's life, but only a few speakers, so the standards have to be different. After all, nobody has held up one cd in his hand and said to me, "this is so revolutionary that you can stop listening to all other music now". With components, that happens with amusing or frightening regularity.

[Still, have you never read, seen or heard a real classic besides Rocky and Terminator variety? :-) For most of the classic poems, novels, stories, plays, symphonies, etc., once they were published, there was no Mark2, let alone Mark3 and Mark4, etc.]

In the end it is simply my personal preference to wait for a design team to stabilize their design, whether it is at Mark 4 or Mark 29, before I'll consider buying it. If that seems silly to you, so be it.

As for my being anti-Zu, consider this: I have not said one word against their sound, which I haven'e heard, only heard about. I have short-listed them in my own thread when inviting comparison among selected few brands. I just told a new manufacturer Daber Audio (another thread) that "Apparently, the guys to beat are Green Mountain, Salk, Silverline, Tyler, and Zu".

Could it be a sign of some unbalanced extreme edge in your thinking that even such complientary attitude sounds "anti" to you?

One concern I have with the Druids is that it seems to be a small handful of enthusiasts that rush to claim how great they are at every opportunity. The fan base does not seem as wide-spread as for components that I would consider true classics such as Quad ESL-57's. That said, I also very rarely hear negative comments regarding the Druids. Unfortunately, I haven't heard the Druid's, so I can't comment on the sound.

I plan to change that this weekend. I am finally going to hear the Druid's, and I hope they are as good as the claims. The Druid's are up against some tough competition for a place in my current system, but if they outperform my current speakers, Zu had better get a pair ready for me.

Jeff

It's interesting to me that each of these Zu vs. Whoever threads leads to the same types of discussions around the Zu's. Having heard none of these other options (but plenty like them), I'll postulate that the others will sound much more alike and the Druids will sound different from the group.

They don't sound like XO's in a box. XO's in a box can separate themselves within class but ultimately they will sound more like each other than the Druid. Further, the Druid will be happiest with completely different amplification than the other speakers. So, even if you had the same speakers in the same room, compatibility and preference would likely fall to the best amp/speaker match.

All that said, if one could optimize amplification for each speaker in the same room, I'd guess "the vote" for each listener would put the Druid first or last. What they do well, the others won't match, and the Druids won't do exactly what the others do.

I'm a cheerleader for Zu, sure. Skepticism is warranted too. If I bought every product people thought was the "best ever", I'd be $4m in debt and looking for a medium-sized warehouse to store it all.