Zu Soul Superfly

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.

Phil,

When did you get a chance to hear the Soul?

Shakey

Phil:

I could never really get an image that was coherent. I had problems with at a couple of different octaves in the room. I think that the height of the Druids was a big factor.

I agree that there could have been other things going on (a lot of which I addressed) and with some up line part& pieces, but I think that a lot was driven by the room.

The (pre-renovation) room: 10.5w x 22l x 9.5 h. It had very soft, old carpet on a thick pad and an uneven subfloor. The room really only allowed for the my system to be set up in front of a bay window with the speakers around 18" from the rear walls and 15" from the side walls. One long wall was built-ins (effective reducing the width to 9.5") and the other was windows with brick on the back wall. The rack was between the speakers.

I have since gutted the room: installed hardwood floors, broken up the shelving on the side wall, installed treatment, run a dedicated circuit, moved the rack to the side wall (with the amps still near the speakers. It's allowed me to put the speakers on the opposite wall and improved the sound of the system overall. I now have the speakers 3' off the back wall and almost 2' off the side walls.

I had an enormous problem getting the low end right before. I think a lot of that was driven by the flooring and the sensitivity of the Druids to the 'gap'. The vertical center seemed even higher than in other druid setups I had heard. I'm not sure if that was, in part, driven by the lack of treatments/reflections and the near equality of height and width or perhaps by a dead floor and bright ceiling.

I have to say, I'm excited.

Tim