ZU OMEN speakers 12ohms??

Drift,

There is a long thread on audiocircle you may want to check out wherein a lot of owners chime in on what they are using to drive their Omens with. Some great information there--its in the 'cheap and cheerful' section.

The best solid state I've experienced with my Soul Superflys is a Redgum RGi120 integrated which I suspect would sound fantastic on the Omens. very fast, transparant and super musical.

Excellent choices for the Omens that I have enjoyed ( and none are bright at all as I am sensitive to the brightness) include:
1. Miniwatt EL84
2. Melody I2A3
3. Shuguang 300b from Grant Fidelity
4. First Watt F3 ( I have a Rawson clone and love it)
5. Virtue audio Sensation

I have a very bright room.....and I found that placement and the DAC choice where also very important for toning down the highs.....and now my brightness is non existent ( I use a Tranquility DAC).

Hope this helps.

how would a nad 356 amp be with these omens

It took me about a month to configure my Dennis Had Inspire SE amp (KT-150 w/ ~12 wpc) to sound 'right' with the Zu Omens. The bass was really woolly as supplied, and there was just no control in the lower registers - and seemingly very little power. For speakers with a sensitivity of 97 dB/W I was expecting to rattle the windows with 12 wpc.

After a few exchanges with Dennis via email, it became apparent that I needed to change the output taps from the transformer to a different impedance winding. This did require removing the bottom cover and resoldering a couple leads. I'm no stranger to a soldering iron, so this took all of about 2 minutes even for a relative novice. Since then, it's been a different world altogether. The power is thunderous and the bass is deep and solid. I just wanted to post this in case anyone ever ran into this down the road. With a 12 ohm speaker you need to change the output tap (or have Dennis do it to start with) to the high impedance tap for best results. He called the other tap the 9-16 ohm tap.

After an extended period with the Sophia Baby on Omens I finally determined the loudness did not have enough weight which I knew the Omens should support. Limited dynamic range might be another way to say it. The clarity was there, but a lot of the emotion was lost.

I moved the tubes to driving a mini-Lore set (omg - the Sophia extracts more weight and clarity out of the 8-inch mini-Lores than the 10-inch Omens) and relegated the Krell integrated to Omens duty. Available headroom brought the Omens closer to their ultimate capability. I have a hard time deciding whether I prefer the smaller room, smaller driver with tubes or the larger room, larger driver with ss. Very similar presentations due to the common wideband design.

Listening to Rene Marie's "Experiment in Truth" through the Krell/Omen combo - after seeing her club performance on Monday this week - the recorded tunes do impart a lot of the likeness of "being there".