Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

I enjoy reading posts on this forum but have only posted a handful of times. When I saw a steady stream of negative comments about Zu by one poster in particular, I was anxious to get Zu's side of the story. I alerted them to this thread and here is their reply.

Disclaimer: I own Soul Superfly speakers.

There seem to be a few misconceptions revealed in this thread, so here are some facts to stabilize the banter:

1. FOR THE RECORD

If there’s any notable inspiration behind our loudspeakers it’s Henry Olsen whose 1934 design for RCA set the template for full range driver loudspeakers of high efficiency.

2. ABOUT OUR FULL RANGE DRIVER. It’s made by Zu AND Eminence, with a few parts coming from other suppliers. It has many things finished by Eminence: the voice coil, the charging of the magnet, the riveting of the yoke / magnet / frame assembly, lay-up of the primary cone, the former assembly. Zu adds its own features to the platform by using modern materials to gain improvements to bandwidth, power handling, power transfer, etc. A quick check to measure the Thiele/Small electromechanical parameters, or even the weight of the driver will suffice to prove our Zu driver is not an Eminence B-102, which does use the same cone profile, voice coil diameter and frame.

Zu does much of the final assembly in-house; driver frame finish, phase plug assembly lay-up final cone processing and driver lay-up, final QC, batching, matching and burn-in. it’s a hands-on process that includes the hand removal of the center dust cap using an Xacto knife.

4. ABOUT OUR TWEETER. One forum posting quotes an ‘inverted tweeter”! We’re sorry to disappoint but there is nothing inverted here. We use the Eminence APT tweeter driver.

5. INCIDENTAL POINTS

We don’t mind that the Lore weighs more than the Omen.

Phase accuracy in a bass-reflex loudspeaker is phase accurate noise – if that’s important to you, no problem.

Any more info required, just ask us – we enjoy a good chat.

Cheers

Simon Matanle
Sales & Marketing Director
Zu Audio
simon@zuaudio.com

Since Audiogon is an audiophile’s forum I don’t intend to get involved in using it as a conversational tool with other manufacturers.

I also can only speak of what I know, which is Zu, not the products of other manufacturers. If there was an implication in my post that another manufacturer’s loudspeaker produces more distortion than ours, that certainly wasn’t intentional – does it really come across in that way? (I don’t think it does).

The idea of a golden-eared reviewer being enticed to do any one-on-one shoot-out is fanciful and pointless – what matters is what customers think, not reviewers. Last time I checked, reviewers had a pulse, which is to say they’re human and possessed of the same subjective sensibilities as the rest of us – so just because a reviewer might like something doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t, and vice versa.

We don’t design our loudspeakers to look good in measurement tests – we design them to sound great playing music. More than a few times I’ve come across people who say that a fantastic live gig is nothing to do with measurements and all to do with dynamics. That sense of ‘live’ is what we strive to achieve with Zu – more than enough people think we do it very well and that makes us happy, because they’re happy.

We offer a 60 day money-back trial for anyone wanting to hear Zu in their own home, playing their music. If they love it, great, if they don’t, that’s fine. What matters is, they’ve tried us out.

That’s the only shoot-out that matters.

Sincerely

Simon