Gallo Reference 3.1 vs Zu Druid

Check out the 6 Moons reviews of the Zu Druids and the Gallos. Both were awarded the rare "Blue Moon Award". Srajan directly compares the Druids with the Gallos, I think in the Blue Moon Award write-up of the Druids.

I owned the Druids for several months but quickly sold them (after 300 hours of break in) because I could not get over the closed in sound they had, like I was listening through a tunnel. But others have praised the Druids, so maybe it was just lack of synergy with the several amps I tried.

Dave

I am sure it is much more to do with the amps used... and the space you have in the room. And yes 6 moons seems to have praised both pretty equal, but the owner has kept the Gallos for a backup to the Zu definitions he now uses after upgrading from the druid. 2 different sounds for different testing would be my assumption. Also the Druids take nothing to drive, the gallos are pretty low efficiency with I believe 88 db specs ?

Tricon dave, Thank you for finding the words that have eluded me wrt the Druid sound.

IME, the Gallos are definitely not low efficiency speakers, or I doubt that I could drive them in a large room with 12 WPC SET monoblocks. I do have the Gallo sub amps on the second voice coils to handle the 20-40 Hz range.

A large, hard-surfaced room means that the reverberant field will be stronger than is normally the case. This places higher priority on speakers that do a good job of generating a reverberant field that has a realistic spectral balance. In my opinion, both the Druids and the Gallos do a considerably better than average job in this respect. I don't know if you were aware of this, gsm18439 - but (imho) you're looking at two of the defiintely more intelligent choices for this application from among the hundreds out there.

Since I peddle one of these brands (though not outside my area), I'll refrain from the predictable. I will say that in my opinion given the room size and requirement to do justice to classical music you'd want the sub amp if you got the Gallos, or you'd want a subwoofer if you got the Druids.

Duke

Having owned both, I would choose the Druids over the Gallos ten times out of ten. They sound like music to me where the Gallos sound like HiFi.

You could hardly have chosen two more different sounding speakers.

When I moved to a smaller listening room I looked for a physically smaller pair of speakers to replace my Mag. 3.6
I narrowed it down to VS 4 Jr,Druids or Gallos I bought the Gallos.I believe that due to their design they add virtually no colouration due to cabinet resonances etc., kind of like the Maggies. Consequently they sound more"open" which may sound "HiFi" with overly aggressive amplification but with Tubes on top and a SS on the subs I have NEVER heard a better cone speaker anywhere close to there price,never.