Zu Omen or Tekton Lore


Best floorstanders under $999 for low power SET amp?

Thanks
mstark
Cwazz - Just curious, what speakers were you trying to replace with the Lores?
Has the bass improved any now that they have more hours on them? I'm in a small room so the bass is *almost* too much for me, but I did have them in a larger room (19 x 16 or something) and the bass was still pretty darn good. That was with a 100 watt tube amp (vs a 2A3 SET in my room).
I received the Lores a few weeks ago and am very impressed with their performance.

My room has poor bass due to room dimensions so I have added my REL Strata III sub, crossed over at a low frequency to avoid muddying the bass of the Lores. I find this fills in the low bass frequencies, impact, and weight very nicely. A subwoofer could be the remedy for those who like more bass.

Eric also mentioned to me that the sound of the Lore is often helped by putting them on hard platforms. This raises the drivers to a better position in relation to ear height for better coherence plus other benefits. My Lores were on a carpeted suspended floor and I put them on concrete flat blocks I already had from Home Depot. As a result, I now have deeper tighter bass, much better clarity, much better spatial information, etc. I found this to be a very significant improvement, providing much more of a "you are there" experience, and recommend this especially if you do not have a hard floor. Precise placement is needed to achieve the optimum spatial benefits. Precise in that 1/16" seems to make a difference. I assume there is better sounding material than concrete, but it is a very inexpensive way to test the benefit of this concept, just a few dollars. Plus I think it looks nice with my Lores in white satin.
I replaced NHT SUPER ZEROES paired with there sub.
Bass has improved a bit since I had them . Before I get the response that you can't compare a sub to the Lores , I realize that . I did not expect to , but in MY hearing , taste , the Lores do not live up to the claim of 30 hz. Nor do they live up to the NHT's any other way also , truely amazing speaker .
Cwazz, I found that I needed to get the room involved to get the 30hz from the speaker.
For a long time I felt there was a gap in my lower mids and bass.
I moved the speakers closer to the wall behind the speakers and closer to the walls on the side.
I had rear ported speakers before the Lore and can verify that you can't place a front ported speaker in the same place as a rear ported speaker and get the same performance.
I also toed the Lore in quite a bit to help in the depth of the soundstage.
Hope this helps.

John
Thanks Cwazz, I was wondering what speakers you had.
I had Paradigm Mini MkIVs at one time with the matching sub and liked them a lot. When I got them (when they were the current model) they were compared a lot against the NHTs. I never heard the NHTs but always thought they must be good speakers because of the direct compares to the Paradigms. The Paradigm sub integrated well with the speakers, I would guess the same goes for the NHTs.