Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

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.

Cwazz - I am all about diversity and to each his/her own, but that comparison is just silly. I have an NHT sub for HT. NHT makes great stuff! But is not in the same league for music. It is not even designed to be in the same league for music. That's a good thing if you prefer that, because it should save you lots of money down the road since you cannot discern differences in higher end speakers. My wife is that way, and I commend her for that – though I do not really get it.

But to say a couple $99 speakers and a sub sounds better than the Lore, is like saying my 2011 Ford Fiesta would outperform a brand new Mitsu Lancer Evolution. The Fiesta gets great gas mileage and handles awesome, but is not an evo, nor is it designed to compete with an Evo.

The fact that you prefer a $99 speaker tells me you either:
Are used to and perhaps after a HT type setup and are more of a background music listener than an actual critical listener (again, nothing wrong with that)
Cannot discern major differences in resolution (because there would be tremendous differences)
Or perhaps you are affiliated with the competition in some way. After such comments one must begin to wonder. You would likely be on an island all by yourself with that analysis :)

Lastly, I can promise you, if my $99 speaker with about $35-$40 worth of parts out performed my $1,000 speakers, you can bet that the $1,000 would have been sent back for a refund the next day.

Again, what is the logic and point of all of this negative feedback? There is certainly NOTHING wrong with you not “drinking the same kool aid." But seriously, you are on verge of losing all your credibility with a post like that. I've had many HT based speakers - most sound really good, but they cannot not even come near recreating the live event, nor are they designed to.