Anyone listen to Zu Audio's Definition Mk3?

It's always helpful to have more of your volume control's range be useful and accessible than less, if all other things are equal. But would you be happy with a preamp you like less just to get more useful range from your preamp's volume control? Unless the useful rotational range is very small, probably the answer is no. You have two feasible choices if you like your power amp:

1/ Get a lower-gain preamp if you can find one you like as much;

2/ or more feasibly, get a pair of Rothwell RCA inline attenuators (review: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0803/rothwell.htm) These can be placed in-line between your preamp and power amp, to scrub off 10db of gain before the audio signal hits the power amp inputs. If you look around, you can also find similar attenuators at 12db and 15db reduction. Simple, effective, cheap and you get more useable twist in your volume control. Don't obsess about having another resistor in your signal chain.

You could also get a TVC from Music First (expensive) or DIYhifisupply.com (affordable), for attenuation without gain.

I do hear the Berning as tonally leaner (a little too lean) than the Audion Black Shadow 845 SET. Audion electronics are uniquely fast among tube gear but fully fleshed tonally, so I don't agree that the Berning has more apparent speed than the Audion. The Berning sounds "faster" than the majority of SET amps outside of Audion particularly, and some Sophia. I have to extrapolate that Melody qualifies too. Others might. Audion's 2a3 and 300B amps are also impressive like the two top line amps that have silver content, for their quickness, so it's not just a top-line exlusive for them.

You can tune the Audion 845 SET nicely to preferences for warmth and tone or objectivity, via the 845 tube selection. The 845A, B, C, T, KR Audio, and NOS RCA/United/GE tubes lend the amp different voicings. With the Berning, your locked.

As for the Def4 cab structure vs. Def2: I haven't yet seen a drawing of the interior of 4, to see the actual strucure improvements beyond the obvious, but the obvious things are very significant. First, the speaker no longer has 4 ten inch holes cut out of its rear panel, where Def2 had 4 sub drivers. That by itself strengthens the tower box. Internal damping has been upgraded and I believe there is more corner and junction bracing. But the other obvious change is the speaker tower's foundation. The stronger box no longer compromised by cut-outs in the back panel is now firmly bolted to a 1-1/2" thick machined aluminum plinth that is vented for sound to escape and serves as mounting for the 12" downfiring sub. It's a robust, very stiff physical foundation for the more rigid box to rest upon.

I surmise the front panel is now marginally stiffer in addition to being damped by the considerable mass mounted to it. The baffle should be a little stronger in the upper half of the cabinet because the size of the Radian supertweeter forces the FRDs to be mounted further apart than on prior Definitions, reducing how much structural mass is lost in a concentrated area on Def 1 & 2 where the FRDs slightly overlap the supertweeter cut. But the big progress on reducing cabinet talk was between Def 1.5 >> Def2, with the upgrade to 15 ply voidless birch from MDF. That difference for intrusive cabinet resonances was dramatic.

Phil

I've been a Zu owner for the past 6 years going from Presence to Def2 with the new Nano drivers.

With all due respect for Zu as a speaker builder I have found AC/IC/SC from other brands have brought my speakers to their max.

SET amps are good for what they do but there are other amps that from top to bottom will out run them.

Having SOTA gear from power/source/amp/wire to speaker will unleash the Def speakers to their full potential. I see some Zu owners just plop down their speaker on the stock points. I have found a huge upgrade in Footers by Equarack/Stillpoint Ultra under the Def2 that transforms the sound of the speaker.

You can kick my butt, but the 845 amp with some OK wire and OK power on the Def4 will not keep up with Def2 with the new drivers and SOTA gear.

There is no other speaker in my sights than the Def4 for the future but if you have the Def2 with the new Nano drivers and SOTA gear you just might have better tunes than the Def4 owners with lesser gear.

213Cobra, will definitely try those attenuators. Now can I offer a little advice to you: please try the SpatialComputer Black Hole anti-standing wave device. All I'll say it has totally transformed the way my Def2s sound, by removing bass humps in the room (I have a node of 27.1Hz in my room), so much so that I often pop around to the back of the 2s to see if the bass is still pumping out (of course, it is). Sorting out the lowest octave has allowed bass definition (eg kick drum/plucked bass strings), midrange intelligibility and treble extension to improve, causing a real increase in transparency and soundstage. My guess is I'm experiencing a lot of what the improved bass in the Def4s is going to give me.
When I get the 4s, I'm going to investigate the possibility of more units to help at least a further 3dB (unless bass loading of the 4s really presents no issue).
My listening space is 22' wide x 27' deep x 13' high, to one half of the 22' width, a v.live industrial loft type space.
Re the Def4s, how are you getting on with the 5 way user controls on the back of the speakers? I know someone with open baffle spkrs whose active bass module has similar adjustments and he has relied on Behringer dsp shaping to maximise sound. Are Def4 owners likely to need dsp for the bass adjustments? My question is that do you settle on one setting at a time (from default), each setting independent of the next? If each setting DOES affect the next, surely there will be just too many combinations to try.

213 writes

Cables are the least urgent thing to get right.

As much as I love to read his thoughts I do believe the wires made by Zu is not going to bring out the very best in the Def2 or 3/4. I have the Verial IC and installing it in place of my Teo is a flat 2D sound that must be removed after a short listening session. Same for the Event SC. I do believe for the $$$ it is killer wire and think if you have it you have not been taken by the $$$ wire game. I do believe that you are missing a lot if you stick with said wire.

JPS Aluminata also will unleash the glory of the Def speakers.

It's more important to preserved Zu's B3 all the way to the amp than it is to futz with alternate cables, for getting the most out of Def4. This is the thing that All Def2 owners as well as Zu owners who have owned only their speakers during the "B3 Speakon interruption" -- you don't know what was left untapped when B3 was taken away. Even on the less resolving Druid, this is apparent if you have an early pair incorporating the Speakon interface, and upgraded over time to v4 status. You can clearly hear gains from exotic and even inappropriately expensive speaker cables, but when I then run B3 all the way from driver back to the amp outputs, rightness sets in.

So anyone enamored of cable differences and wanting to spend money on that path, knock yourself out. Cables do sound different, though landing on "better" is a crapshoot. Most are not improvements, occasionally one may be. The best non-Zu speaker cable I've heard so far is the Auditorium 23.

In ICs, if you're getting a flat 2D sound because you've substituted Verial for Teo, something else is likely wrong or there's something about the parametric qualities of the other cable that your listening mind interprets as dimensional. If the latter is the case, fine -- no one can argue with that. But it's far from generalizable that Zu Mission or Event ICs or speaker cables (or the older Verial/Ibis) are not capable of conveying the depth dimension information.

Still, cables are the least urgent thing to get right of all the variables you can pay attention to, but any given individual might prioritize a cable change benefit they hear, ahead of something else that to others makes a larger difference. This pursuit offers more ways to spend your money than most people have money, so if cables are your drug, go with it.

However, one of the best benefits of Zu speakers in all their architectural variants is their ability to be adapted widely and to yield excellent and convincing music fidelity with much less than state-of-the-art gear, and with fairly casual set-up. In fact this is elemental to the Zu brand. They want you to obsess less. They want to deliver exceptional value so you can spend less money on gear and more on music. They want you to be able to leverage ultra-fi gear but not mandate it you must spring for it. Just as Omen Def or Superfly can clearly leverage the benefits of associated amps, preamps and sources far above their price, Def4 can deliver its prodigious sonic presence when lashed to modest associated gear and still sound beautiful. My *advice* for how someone allocates their resources across gear categories will vary according to a buyer's goals, and it usually won't be to mate Defs with a cheap amp, but there are exceptions.

Additionally, while Zu does nothing to prevent the typical audiophile obsessions, they don't encourage them either. Like me, if they ran the world, their speakers wouldn't be hidden in dedicated listening rooms and man-caves -- they'd be out in the living areas of the houses of their owners, to be heard and seen in everyday living. So while a portion of the market buys Zu and installs their speakers and cables in systems located in dedicated audiophile rooms, Sean designs for the buyer who will install them in a living room where there's just one logical place for speakers, from a utility perspective for the way the room is used, and that setup is going to sound good too. Level 'em; get the toe-in right; you're good. In the true-fidelity speakers market, Zu is the "PnP" -- in speaker terms the Plop and Play" -- solution that also happens to reward obsessives and tweakers who are inclined to nth degree optimization.

Phil