Zu Soul Superfly

Themadmilkman....This is what I did......I mentioned this earlier.

I have Druid Mk4/08 and live in Oz......due to the cost of posting speakers i decided to mod them.....

I already had Mundorf silver oil caps and Duelund resistors in the Hi pass.

I purchased the Soul drivers from Zu and had some lengthy chats with Sean Via email.

Sean said to replace the 12 ohm resistor in the Hi pass with a 10 ohm Duelund.

He suggested that I paint the insides of the cabinet with Soundpaint or quiet coat...... a water based sound damping compound (same as Soul) I did and it added about 6-8lbs to each Druid.

Sean also suggested gluing a 1" dowel between the FRD and Tweeter and the back of the cabinet to stiffen it.....so I did.

Then he said to cut a Griewe wedge out of open cell foam (Sonnex or Melamine) this wedge is to leave a 3/8" gap all around the opening at the base of the Druid and to taper up to a point in the middle of the tweeter. The wedge is glued to the wire mesh covering the opening

These tweaks are cheap ($180ish).......bearing in mind that I already had the Hi Pass mod.....($150 ish from Partsconnexion) which all Druid owners should have anyway.....

The change is amazing.......the bass is much deeper and tighter......so much so i had to turn my Mini Method subs down. The speakers scale faster and seem more dynamic. The treble is more pronounced but still not bright......the Soul uses the same tweeter and Hi pass albeit without the Duelund brand resistor.

The mids are cleaner but not as warm as before, this may be what you heard between the Soul and Omen, Sean said the Omen uses the Mk4/08 FRD with the new phase plug .....there is more detail.......All in All about 95% of the Soul sound but with the higher and more distinct Druid Box.

These mods could be done to a Druid without changing the FRD........

For me it was fun to do and cheaper than the post for a new pair of Souls......my speakers are unique and sound really good.

>>...Superfly in the RMAF room to especially in light of the comment they tweeted that it was less than refined and not especially detailed. This doesn't chime with much that's been posted here....<<

I wasn't at RMAF and haven't heard Omen yet. But knowing the driver differences and other details, this isn't difficult to explain. First, hotel rooms are notoriously poor spaces for sonic optimization and don't closely match domestic conditions. Zu has a longstanding history of disappointing show conditions. Search comments on their show appearances for the past five years or so and nearly every public hotel demo results in minor or major eruption of controversy over their sound. Second, the high output driver in Superfly has an especially vivid sound fresh, that can be a little raw and forward until fully broken in. It gets more beautiful with break-in, without losing it's dynamic energy. The driver in Omen is closer to Druid Mk4-08 spec, which ships mellower then Superfly's and opens up with break-in, becoming more vivid and alive. The starting points are different with respect to the sonic attributes of early-stage aging. Most hotel construction tends to aggravate the rawness of the incompletely broken-in Supfly driver while havi somewhat more benign effects on the more Druid-like Omen driver that blossoms with age.

Sean believes the slight cant of Omen's front baffle is sufficient to mitigate the too-low placement of its super tweeter, and suggested to me that the cabinet can be further leaned back a bit by placing the front spikes on shims. By any measure this is a kludge, but Omen isn't intended to be perfect. It's intended to make a properly-packaged Zu FRD based speaker affordable, compact and easy to own. It might be that Omen is disappointing to some people who already own current Zu speakers, as Tone and Essence always were to me, though some who may have favored Druid over Soul or Essence will prefer it. But to the first time buyer coming into the Zu or even hi-eff fold for the first time, it should be appreciated for being the gateway to a complete and more satisfying reorientation of hi-fi priorities and results. Generally, an affordable Zu FRD speaker driven by a great amp at higher cost will yield more convincing music fidelity than a higher-cost conventional speaker driven by mass market amplification.

Phil

Naggots, your experience has a lot to do with my desire to perhaps experiment with a used pair of Druids. I think I would probably go with the Omen's driver and see how things played out. One of the nice things about Zu's simple designs is that these changes can be made easily without worrying about crossover networks and other things.

I do not think tilting speakers is a kludge.

i have often tilted speakers if I felt that there was something in alignment that was not doing what I wanted with sound. chairs and peoples are at different heights -- why accept the heigt of speaker out of box?

Soul is tilted already -- who says it will be tilted right for you and your room?

Themadmilkman.. I agree any changes are simple. Even changing the resistor value to reportedly the best sounding tweeter resistors you can buy only costs $16 each......

I like the fact that I've played a part and taken ownership in these speakers too, they sound great due to the few hours work I put into them.......