Zu Soul Superfly

cobra:

sorry to join in the folks peppering you with questions, but here is mine:

i ordered a pair of mk-iv '08 druids a few years back. i loved just about everything about them. the sound, presentation, etc. i was pretty new to the high efficiency side of the hobby, but even got drawn into that. i could not, however, really get the druids set up in a way that worked in my room. i worked with a number of the folks there to try and get an ideal set up where i wanted them to live but fell flat. selling my druids was one of the few 'regrets' i had. even though i ended up with speakers that worked better in my room, i never like the sound as much.

you alluded to the souls being easier to set up. is it mostly driven by the design? i have since completely redone my room, changed the floors and walls and added treatment. just about everything sounds good in here now. are the souls that much less sensitive to placement? if so, i think i'm sold.

and, thanks for all of the impressions/thoughts/insights.

tim

phil:

yes, i know that infamous graph, but i am not a graph-only guy (or i would not have druid).

i was thinking of essence stereophle graph which was pretty ragged too. soul looked so flat i cannot believe it.

TIM, try get better sound by jim smith. great book

Tim,

Can you explain the conflict between Druids and your room? What did you hear that led you to believe you couldn't "really get the Druids set up in a way that worked" in your room? Yet you ended up with speakers that worked better but you never liked the sound as much?

What didn't work about the Druids?

There are three things about the Soul that should make placement easier and more plug'n'play:

1/ Unlike the Druid's fussy floor-to-plinth gap adjustment, Soul is fixed gap on spikes and unless you have some exceedingly tall and stiff pile carpet, I can't see running into any gap problems. The tapered finger vents on the bottom of the cabinet do not need precise location above the floor for the Griewe model to work correctly.

2/ For some people, Druid's acoustic center was too far off the floor and the FRD radiated too much energy unimpeded by furniture and buman bodies directly to opposite surfaces. Druid also had a bit of directionality that gave it a narrower sweet spot than Soul. Soul's greater horizontal dispersion makes it easier to get good sound throughout the possible listening positions in a room. Soul puts the FRD less than 3' off the floor and its output is angled slightly upward. The acoutstic vertical center of the soundstaging is more natural for many people when seated, and its output is more in the dissipating and diffusing line of sight to the normal contents of a room., which is good.

3/ Soul has fewer aural anomalies than Druid, and bass is more extended without rumbling deep into the zone most rooms handle poorly. It's simply a more neutral speaker. The buying public at large seems highly sensitive to perceptions of bass output. Soul gives everyone less to argue about in that respect. It goes deep enough but not so deep as to cause real trouble. And its bass character is toneful, highly-defined and textured.

Phil

Zanon,

I (or you) would have to ask Sean Casey about specifics on his frequency response/impedance graph. I haven't even discussed it. Perhaps the data informing the graph was normalized. Of course, to me, Soul *does* sound smoother than Essence, the "least Zu" speaker so far. But I've said straightforwardly I've considered Essence inferior to Druid 4-08 since Essence launched. I certainly never for a second considered giving up my Druid 4-08s for Essence, but I will replace them with Soul Superfly. But I understand why Essence appeals to a broader population.

There's a difference between ragged and wrong. I don't recall the Stereophile data graph on Essence (though I do remember something like JA conceding that it sounded to him as Art Dudley described, regardless of how it measured) but ragged response that shows short bandwidth abberations against a backdrop of general octave-to-octave balance can sound just fine and convincing, as opposed to a speaker with smoother curve but clearly visible octave-to-octave dysfunction, which can sound completely wrong.

At the end of the day, Zu's graph isn't actionable to me one way or another, but I've had the opportunity to both follow the speaker's development and hear at length in final form. It *sounds* about as smooth as Zu represents, but in a real customer setting it would never measure that way.

Phil

Hello to all from England,

I myself having only owned Zu speakers from early 2008 started with the Druid then progressed to the Essence in summer 2009.

Although I have not heard the Soul Superfly, yet. My experience with Zu speakers is that they show up anything that is wrong with a systems components, whether it be a defect or the tonal accuracy of the music.
Room differences can play a part, but these are usually very minimal, unless you have an overly damped room, then IMO you will not get what the Zu speakers do for the music.

I am currently running with solid state amplification from Rega with the Osiris and the Rega Isis CDP, which I find is a very good match/balance with the Essence over the Druid, the Druids sound very good on this system, but the Essence is a better match IMO.

I think Phil's posts and comments about tonal character of the system with Zu speakers is to be heeded, as this can make or break whether the Zu's work, this might change with the Soul Superfly.

Waiting in anticipation for the Souls to land in England.