zu audio Help


I purchased a used pair of pre-owned Omen Def speakers in fairly good condition I love the looks and idea of highly efficient loudspeaker I am not pleased with the sounds the bass is too thin and the midrange is quacky I use Rotel Michi amplifier with matching pre-amp and esoteric cd player I also have tube system but also the same poor result.

anyone have suggestions for playing zu speakers??
mountain-high
Zu Omen Defs should yield ample bass in your room, to their lower limit but keep in mind that the 10" drivers are full-range very low excursion units. They will deliver fast, tuneful bass but not with the artificial bloat and distortion of a longer-excursion woofer. The Omen Def cabinet uses Zu's proprietary Griewe acoustic impedance scheme and as others have mentioned, the height of the cabinet-to-floor gap is highly influential to the bass profile you will get. Very small differences in gap height yield large differences in bass character. Generally as you move closer to the floor, bass definition will improve but some lower limit is given up, while increasing the gap mximizes lower limit while gaining some bloom at the expense of definition. You can dial in the gap height to preference and somewhere in there is the right balance. Zu has clear directions on this.

I too do not think the Rotel Michi is an ideal sonic match for Zu, though of all the Zu speakers, the Omen series should be better for it than the rest. Top of the line for Rotel or not, the clean and capable Rotel is not strong in full-body tonal representation, which the Zu driver lays bare. You have the option of updating the older Zu FRD with the current nanotech drivers, but this may make the problem with midrange worse, as the new driver's transparency reveals more of the Rotel's essential character. You'd have to be more precise in describing what you mean by "quacky" for me to say more.

A tube amp with some discipline in the bottom end would go a long way toward optimizing Omen Def, but you may be able to find a better solid state match if that's important to you.

Phil
if you are on carpet, i would also recommend you put hard tile underneath your speakers. This improve bass for me. That and tuning the gap height.

Don't know about "quacky" midrange, but maybe you should experiment with toe-in. that can change midrange character a lots.
Phil,
I will set up my Rogue monoblock amplifiers and re posit the speakers with more space away from the walls and give a try. Thank you