Zu Soul Superfly

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.

>>When did you get a chance to hear the Soul?<<

A friend of mine here in L.A. bought what turned out to be the first pair, s/n 0001/0002. They were a custom order configuration and finish. He took delivery about a month ago and I've listened to them expensively. He came to me asking for a recommendation for assembling his first quality audio system, replacing 15 years old HT components. He wanted to get as close as possible to the sound of my Druids system for a specific budget. I knew Soul was coming so I had him order a pair while Zu was still working out manufacturing details, plus I found him a great deal on amplification. Our request for upgrades similar to the "off-menu" upticks that were available for other Zu speakers became the basis for the Superfly Edition.

Phil

Tim,

Occasionally a room poses too many problems to sound right with a given speaker, until you address the room. It sounds like you have done so.

The Druid floor-to-plinth gap was crucial to get right, to get correct balance out of the speaker below 100Hz. Effectively, the partial Griewe implementation in that cabinet delegated to the floor gap functionality that a full Griewe model handles within the speaker cabinet. Druid's sound balance was *very* sensitive to the gap setting. Differences as small as 1/16" could be heard. It was nearly impossible to fully optimize them on thick carpet on a thick pad.

If you liked the essential character of the Zu FRD in Druid, other problems not withstanding, I think you can be optimistic about Soul Superfly working well in your revised room.

Phil