Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

A testament to how well the Lores disappear...

I just had a friend over (someone who doesn't know an amplifier from a Walkman), and she was sitting in my sweetspot listening to jazz and asked, "where's the center speaker?" She wouldn't believe me that the music was coming from the Lores. And it's true--I'm listening to Jackie McLean and Kenny Dorham right now, and even though my listening position forms an equilateral triangle with the speakers, the music is coming from straight ahead of me. Someone earlier in this thread described the Lores' ability to image as erie, and now I see why.

Thanks for the advice everyone gave me on speaker positioning. It really came in handy when the Lores arrived this weekend. Happy listening...

Goraman, I don't even have the speakers yet, I never said there was a problem. I simply asked if others were finding characteristics they were trying to enhance or tone down.

It was primary related to DACs, as I was debating whether to go with a high clarity/resolving DAC like the Bifrost, or a perhaps something smoother sounding like a TubeDac-11. I went with the Bifrost.

And, FWIW, I really don't care about cables as dear ones are out of my budget at the moment anyway. I was merely fishing for people to describe their own perceived strengths and weaknesses of the Lores.

Truth be told, I'm just overanxious for them to arrive...

I'm quite interested in trying the new Red Wine Audio Signature 15 - it might be the best of both worlds and would save me from focusing next on cleaning up power to amp/preamp, allowing me to focus on cleaning up the power on my source.

I've heard good things about that amp, including from Eric himself.

for those that have ordered tekton speakers from their website, how long did it take to receive them? i placed an order on March 1st and Eric said they would ship in 5-10 days. then 2 days ago he says they will ship in 5-7 days.

I don't disagree with Goraman's comments about amps and other switching around not making more than minor differences, compared to what changing speakers offers in the equation. However, I would say that sometimes for me that 1% difference is all the difference in the world. That's really what I'm playing around with in my amplifier switching. I had a Decware Torii II over last summer for a weeklong trial, and I didn't get near the magic from that tube amp with my Lores than I'm getting with the SP3 right now. Slightly different flavors of the same base sound for me. The Ampino was my preference in the Decware shoot-out, but so far this SP3 is giving almost all of the strengths of the Ampino with some additional soundstage and tonal body to instruments.

Are they completely different animals? No. Do they give slightly different, but definitely distinctive lenses on the basic qualities of the Lores? Yes.

Granted, neither of these amps are what you would consider true high performance amps. They're both awesome for the money, and that's the level of money I can play with. I assume stepping up the ladder would lead to greater refinement, and right now I'm trying to decide which ladder to step up.

So, I guess I'd say that while I'm still experimenting, I have found in some of my trials that 1% is sometimes all you need to make the difference between good/interesting and truly involving.