Zu OMEN - hmm

I hear what you're saying Mapman. But this fellow has held on for a good long run with his speakers and has gone through a roller-coaster of performance (SQ), amp changes, and tweaking, to no avail.

Yeah, as we all know, sometimes it just does not work out no matter what.

I think of high sensitivity speakers though as like listening under a magnifying glass....every little detail, good or bad becomes magnified and bigger/more significant. SO I think that puts getting things exactly right higher up on the difficulty scale for the end user, in general.

Compare that to a high efficiency amp. There, the designer/maker has handled the task of delivering high quality efficient performance for you. You may or may not like the results, but it is what it is, whereas speakers are always a function of how the owner sets tehm up overall.

Took me some time, and eventually the help of of a friend in the audio business to get my Druids working well - that was 5 years ago and I have no wish to change

MOST important, for me was getting the 'speakers W-I-D-E apart. Where I had them (too close together) they squarked.

I my room they are 11' apart and I sit ~11' from the midline

Having the 'speaker axis pointing directly at you tightens the focus, and more toe out opens the sound, which is where I have mine

The music fills the room almost completely like this and very submersive. It's a beautiful sound

Rest of system consists of Leben CS-300 and a 47 Lab CDP

I owned the Druid 4 for a year, give or take. Never figured out how to get the most out of them. I read and reread reviews, posts, swapped gear and cables in and out. May have been my listening area/gear/ears but they always seemed thin sounding.

Since then I've been happy with Usher cp6311 and Sonus Faber Concerto Grand Piano. I have Monitor Audio Silver in my home theater setup that I prefer over the Zu as well.

Very subjective hobby....

Dear all,

Thank you for chiming in with your experience on the Zu speakers fussiness. The OP was more of a tongue-in-cheek at the cheeky marketing totally disconnected from customer. Your comments took the discussion in a more constructive direction.

With your encouragement, I did more tweaking.

I finally (for now, in my room) found the gap for most satisfying musical rendition be about 9.5mm with about 0.0mm tilt. Now when I say "about" I don't mean "set it to some value around 9.5mm". I mean "set it within about 1/10mm of the perfect value (which I cannot measure accurately due to hardwood / speaker bottom imperfections, but seems to be around 9.5mm). Changing the gap from "perfect" even by 1/10 changes the tone (the vocal sss and th and ch turn dull - very easily identifiable as the soundstage tilts towards the other speaker).

Which brings me to the method (admittedly imperfect): first I tweaked the gap of both speakers (one at the time) and listened for clarity and soundstage tilt. At one point, one of the speakers sounded clear and provided the view into the detail of the performance. I left it alone, measured with an upside-down nut and bolt the gap under each foot (turned the bolt until the combination nut/bolt matched the height at that point) then transferred it exactly to the corresponding foot of the other speaker. And did some more minute adjustments to the level of 2/10mm.

Finally - I can understand why a solid plank of wood (or granite) under each speaker with 3/8" screws passing through and providing the gap adjustment might be better than speakers directly on hardwood: the bottom seen by the finger ports (the solid plank) can be made perfectly flat (whereas the room hardwood is what it is), the gap can be tuned much easier, and set for good (so the speakers can be moved without spending days on gap fine-tuning). I might consider this solution at a later time.

Is the Omen providing now the perfect experience? Hard to say (I'm still reminescing the CAS). It does provide a high level of detail with this gap setup, and the sound does not harden at any volume level. The soundstage is not perfect (possibly due to speakers being too close together, also possibly due to residual gap imperfection that might slightly tilt different frequencies towards either of the speakers) - in other words then do not disappear completely. So - is probably still not as good as it can get in a perfect world.

If I decide to fiddle with it more I'd probably go the bottom plank route instead of keeping them on hardwood.

Thank you again for all the help.

C.