Zu Soul Superfly

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

Tim, if you used the Druids on that floor without an intermediary 'platform', there is no way the gap would be right. IMO, Zu should not have included carpet spikes with those speakers, instead recommending a plate to be spiked to the floor, with hard-floor spikes fixing the gap to that plate. That's what I did and it made all the difference.

Good to see you still fighting the fight, Phil. I'm still loving the Def. 2s and the Superflys sound killer!

Miklorsmith:

I agree. I originally had the druids spiked to the carpet, but then put it on wood boards which sat on the carpet. made a big difference. In the future, I may swap the wood for stone.

One benefit of the wood was that I coulde slide the speakers about easily. Druids are very directional, and tiny differences to toe in and position made a huge difference to soundstage/imaging.

My room is large and impossible to fully charge. I liked the druid directionality because it enabled me to bypass some of the problems I had in the large room.