Zu Soul Superfly

Phil,

Just to clarrify, this is not built by Tim Rawson and it was probably unfair for me to call it "Rawson-esq" as Tim act(ed) with Nelson Pass' blessing using his actual schematics. The gentleman building the Wineclone appears to be bootlegging and after actually exchanging messages with Vinny today, it is without his blessing.

Notwithstanding, I'm curious if you have actually heard the 30.2, Phil. From the reviews I've read of the clari-t amp and even the 30, your position seems to be supported regarding a slightly bleached midrange, but from what I've read of the 30.2 it sounded as if it had a warmer tonal balance than most tube amplifiers along with being very harmonically full. Hmm..

I'm also curious about the debate over power needs. My First Watt is a transconductance amp, so it may not count, but its only what? 10wpc and it controls the drivers with tremendous authority.

On a side note, I spoke with Gerrit at Zu today (his favorite amps for Zus is the Yamamoto A08s and Melody i2a3) and they got my carpet spikes in the mail. He also highly recommended that I work on getting my speakers properly situated before even considering a change of amplifiers. I've been doing precisely that for the last hour or so and its paying off. Perhaps I'd do best to put off an amplifier 'upgrade' until I can afford to make an improvement rather than lateral move.

One of the amps I used on the Essence was an 8 watt Luxman EL84. It powered them very well, though this amp with the ribbons on the Essence made them bright. I agree with Phil that the Essence was a mistake.

Although I am critical of Zu because I had a bad experience with the Essence I admit that I took a blind chance on the drop drawer praise by strageon ebane and a few other reviewers. I had my doubts but am glad they sold well and many people like them.

Anyone planning on a Mastersound amp on the Zu's? Talk about a value speaker with a seriously undervalued used market amp! I had the 24 watt 300BPSE and found it to be an amazing integrated. I'm thinking about getting a second system going, and this looks like a fun match.

Phil:

You seem to have me confused with salesperson or marketer. I am neither. I am a Zu fan, and I think that they would benefit from people being more honest about their products.

A non-audiophile music lover should stick with their 128kb mp3 and their ipod earbuds. Not that they need my encouragement to do this, as they are doing it already.

Anyone who is thinking about dropping $2K for speakers should care about sound, otherwise they are simply fool with money who wants to show off. In that case, there are flashier looking (and sounding) speakers I would point them to.

So you want to spend $2K, and you care about sound, and you are considering Soul. Good. That person can now read discussion between me and you and make up own mind about what is helpful and what is not.

Contrary to you, I do not think this individual should not care about placement or flea watts. Room interaction and time smear with high dispersion soul FRD will blur attack and kill sustain. You will have no tone left, or very unremarkable tone, just as my Druids are off axis. There will be nothing to appreciate.

Flea watts kill dynamics with congested midrange at very low listening levels. Now, maybe some people don't care about a midrange sounding like a chest cold -- their taste of course -- but it will not seem "dynamic" to anyone. If someone has small room then OK, they can go to 30W or better 40W and might be OK. And please, my issue with flea watt has nothing to do with level. The congestion has to do with ease and comes long before you are anywhere close to clipping.

While Souls eliminate fiddling with gap height (which I like) I fear higher dispersion FRD will require additional room treatment (which I do not). But I have not heard so cannot say.

It is interesting you say Souls are "substantially more likely" than Druid as people went on and one about how lively Druids were. This must by massive hyperactivity. Although they are both rated 101dbW, in practise my Druids sounded like mid to high 90s, so it is possible that Souls are more sensitive even though their "official" rating is the same.

If Miklorsmith likes Deficitions at 2W all I can say is his tastes differ widely from my own. I would not recommend his path to anyone.

Anyone who comes here from Google Bing whatever: you should get Soul as they represent excellent value and are wonderful speaker. But, to get your $2K value you will have to care about placement. I am sorry. But I hope you will find it rewarding like me, as I learned so much about music through this. And for gods sake, get amp with at least 40W

Its funny, even as we regurgitate the importance of proper setup and room interaction, I don't believe many of us actually put the work in.

I've spent the last few hours making small adjustments to my speaker placement (and doing the best I can with the hardwood footers on carpet) and its made a positive difference. I actually broke out the laser site to help with toe in and I think the efforts were worthwhile.

Staging is better and from my listening position and the sound is better balanced and perhaps a touch more nuisanced. I think the biggest change I'm detecting though is that the presentation just seems a bit smoother.

One problem I am running into is the arm of one chair kinda blocks my right channel a little (see most recent system in my profile) but we are getting there!

>>A non-audiophile music lover should stick with their 128kb mp3 and their ipod earbuds. Not that they need my encouragement to do this, as they are doing it already.<<

This is the surest way to make sure hi-fi dies as a discrete interest in the panoply of passions people can take up in life, beginning when they are young.

>>Anyone who is thinking about dropping $2K for speakers should care about sound, otherwise they are simply fool with money who wants to show off. In that case, there are flashier looking (and sounding) speakers I would point them to.<<

$2,000 isn't the same thing to everyone. To some people of little hi-fi enthusiasm but enormous music enthusiasm, it's a minor expense. There are far more looking for unfussy speakers who can deliver good sound than there are audiophiles, if they can be made aware of their options. Soul isn't a show-off speaker. It's the Model T or '32 Ford coupe with a flat-head V8, of high-end sound -- and that's a compliment. Such a buyer can care about sound and still not want to obsess on placement, or orient a room's function around their speakers. They can appreciate tonal correctness in a seriously umoptimized installation.

>>Contrary to you, I do not think this individual should not care about placement or flea watts. Room interaction and time smear with high dispersion soul FRD will blur attack and kill sustain. You will have no tone left, or very unremarkable tone, just as my Druids are off axis. There will be nothing to appreciate.<<

For whatever reason you're not reading what I write. I have never written that such a buyer "should not care about placement or flea watts." What I've written is that they should hot have to, to enjoy the essence of their loudspeaker choice. And in fact, Zu has customers who don't and won't. Terrific. At least they're in our tent and can move forward while exposing still more uninitiated people to hi-fi.

It's not a binary result. It's an overstatement to say there will be nothing to appreciate. Room interaction and time smear? The customer I'm referring to has no sense of those nuances, nor interest in getting bogged down by them. Yet they can still hear their system as spectacular to them. Get them interested, then educate.

>>Flea watts kill dynamics with congested midrange at very low listening levels.<<

No, in fact, they don't have to. In some cases, flea watt amps suffer from so much circuit simplicity that they lack sufficient voltage gain. You need a robust preamp, something more in the 18 - 22db of gain range, rather than today's all-too-common 12db gain preamp. Drive it well and a low listening level on a flea amp can be quite robust tonally and dynamically, within the power the amp can deliver. The congestion people are hearing with too little gain in their signal chain is sometimes coming from the source.

>>The congestion has to do with ease and comes long before you are anywhere close to clipping.<<

Many parameters to consider here. You can listen to flea-power amps that exhibit no discernible midrange congestion on Zu speakers, within natural limits and driven properly. Call up Gerritt and tell him his Yamamoto 45 amp is congested.

>>While Souls eliminate fiddling with gap height (which I like) I fear higher dispersion FRD will require additional room treatment (which I do not). But I have not heard so cannot say.<<

Room treatments. Another typical hi-fi botch. Many treated rooms sound worse than they started. Look, hi-fi isn't supposed to be this difficult. Use normal furnishings, bookshelves with books, blinds, curtains, whatever, to adjust a room. But what natural music performance environment is remotely close to perfect or treated for perfection? A grand total of *none.*

I installed a pair of Soul Superfly in a friend's room that has absolutely zero treatment and they sound sensational without further attention. Dispersion is better and considerabily less directional than Druid, but certainly narrower and without floor/ceiling effects mitigation of Definition. Getting the amp right with Zu speakers trumps by a wide margin anything you can do with room treatments or placement.

>>It is interesting you say Souls are "substantially more lively" than Druid as people went on and one about how lively Druids were. This must by massive hyperactivity. Although they are both rated 101dbW, in practise my Druids sounded like mid to high 90s, so it is possible that Souls are more sensitive even though their "official" rating is the same.<<

Druids, in their moment of sunshine, were a revelation in dynamic aliveness. But Soul is better although I'll say that it took my Druids three years to fully wake up. The efficiency -- or as Zu correctly states, the power transfer -- is the same but the "shove" is different. Shove and prevailing efficiency arent' the same. Two 101db/w/m speakers can differ in transient dynamic aliveness. Soul Superfly improves on Druid in this respect, and it's both an updated driver issue and the full-Griewe implementation in Soul that Druid lacks.

>>If Miklorsmith likes Definitions at 2W all I can say is his tastes differ widely from my own. I would not recommend his path to anyone.<<

Yes and yes. But Mike keeps higher power solid state amps around when he wants to rock out.

Phil