Zu Soul Superfly

And of course I missed out the obvious question. Do you plan to replace your Druids?

Mike

Mike,

My Druids are Frankendruids, in some respects. I bought them used over five years ago, so they are one of the earlier cabinets in gloss red. First generation; and they had been upgraded to "Mk 2.5" status then. But they have the early B3 wiring and connector so with a pair of Ibis B3 cables I have Zu B3 cable geometry from the FRD all the way back to the amp outputs. This makes a clear difference. These speakers were upgraded to 4-08, with a further upgraded cap on the supertweeter, and the internal wiring is Ibis. So they sound better than standard Mk 4-08.

Even so, my friend who bought the first pair of production Soul Superfly has speakers that are now a bit better than my Druids, and they aren't even thoroughly broken in yet. You could order Druids to the same standard and get same sound except for the last stretch of bass extension, but the only reason to do so is if you prefer the Druid form factor as a visual statement. Druid costs more to make and is fussier to set up. Soul Superfly addresses the remaining anomalies of Druid by moving past the limits imposed by the now 10-years-old cabinet design. That iconic cabinet was not designed with the benefits of an eventual full Griewe model incorporation in mind. So you get sonic progress at a lower price, which can't be bad.

Phil

>>Do you plan to replace your Druids?<<

Yes. Although I may keep them for another use, for sentimental reasons.

Phil

For those of you who have heard the new Zus and the Cain and Cain Abbys, I'm wondering--how do the Superflys fare in terms of overall coherence.

While I can definitely pick and chose things I'd love to add to the performance I currently have, I certainly don't want to give this aspect up.

I auditioned Abbys (with and without the supertweeter) before I bought Druids back in 2005, and have heard them occasionally since. In fact, at the time it was my intent to buy Abbys for one of my systems, until I got in front of a pair of Druids. There's certainly no less coherence from the Zu FRD, and the latest updates to the Zu FRD as implemented in Soul only further improve its performance in this respect. The Fostex driver options in the Abby do not meet or exceed the Zu FRD performance in any way, though the Abby is a very good speaker, with remarkable tonal and transient coherence. However, its intrinsic single-driver coherence, where it is closest to being competitive with Zu, does not overcome comparative lack of drive, range, dynamic aliveness, and combination of power handling with high efficiency. I considered Zu Druids prior to the 4-08 upgrade clearly superior to Abbys, and the 4-08 upgrade to Druids rocketed their lead, then the further advance of Soul Superfly over Druids puts quite a lot of distance between Soul and Abby.

Phil