Zu Soul Superfly

A friend of mine received s/n 0001/0002 last week. I had a chance to listen to his speakers, which are Soul Superfly, extensively, with a few different amplifiers. The FirstWatt will be fine. That is to say, if you like the FirstWatt F1, you'll like it on Soul. If you don't like the F1, Soul won't make you like it, except for one thing: This is a nominal 16 ohm impedance speaker. Most solid state amps will output less power into this load but also sound smoother.

You can assume any amp that works well with Druid will work well with this. Soul has deeper bass response, and it is more projecting and more vivid than Druid Mk 4-08, but it is the essential Zu holistic tone presentation. Using the some further refinements to the FRD learned from development of the Essence, this speaker has the widest midrange dispersion of any of the Zu single FRD speakers. It also has the best implementation so far of the Griewe cabinet, and now the floor-to-cabinet gap is non-critical, without the complication of the Essence double plinth.

Think super Druid 4-08 in a more compact form, rather than Essence. Forgoing the ribbon tweeter allows Zu to run the FRD at normal Zu efficiency, and the dynamic supertweeter contributes the meatier more musical harmonic information that the ribbon thins. Soul Superfly is a vivid, punchy, neutral and tone-rich speaker that resets your assumptions about how much cash to allocate to power amplification, yet its impedance and efficiency allow some vanishingly cheap amplifiers to make music instead of noise.

My friend has built new a $10K system around a pair of Superfly Soul, and results easily demonstrate it was exactly the right thing to do.

Phil

>> Phil, You caught my attention with your excellent description of the smallish but potentially significant differences between Druid and Essence which articulated my views on them better than I ever could. I would be happy to buy Essence but my inclination has always been toward Druid. I have always been especially taken by the presence of the Druid. The sense that a horn player is in the room and standing thus high and really moving air at you.<<

Yes, this is a specific advantage of Druid. Even the higher-resolution Definition 2, has to give up a bit of unity and coherence to the single-FRD Druid, on music that doesn't present significant scalar challenges. I have two systems with similar-grade components, but one has Druid 4-08 and the other Definition 2. I don't automatically choose to listen to Defs for everything. I default to Druids for some things, and for those choices really nothing else will quite do. Essence gained scale by virtue of its wider dispersion from the revised FRD and deeper bass along with the extended "hifi" top end. But it lost some of the magical presence of Druid when some efficiency had to be dialed back. I liken the difference as being similar to the sonic delta between same-quality SET and push-pull tube amps. The p-p amps might seem more impressive at first, but you soon notice a permanent reduction of focus.

>>but at the price I'm almost tempted to just plunge in there<<

I think anyone who likes Druids can just plunge in without risk.

>>My reservations are that, whilst the loss of a foot of height plays well with Mrs. H, how does the speaker perform in terms of image height especially as the frd is now below the tweeter?<<

I've always thought the Druid's image presentation is a bit on the high side with respect to its vertical center. Kind of like sitting 1st row in a club with the performer on a short-rise platform stage higher than you. With Soul, the FRD is on an angled baffle, pointing slightly up. It images well in terms of vertical centerpoint from a normal home seating position. The sound image vertical centerpoint is higher than the FRD. There is no problem introduced by having the supertweeter on top. For the footprint to be on target in a truncated pyramid column shape, the FRD had to be placed lower, but as high as possible on the baffle.

>>Does it still give that great sense of presence, which was the loss in the Essence for me?<<

If you get the Superfly Edition, it gives more. Now, even with Zu's factory abuse break-in, you'll still need some play-in to get them to a state of ultimate tone, but out of the box they have all of the Druid 4-08's presence and tone-density, plus.

>>Does it still have the lovely mid band 0f the Druid?<<

Yes, with less cabinet noise at high volume.

>>Essentially I guess I'm asking if it really is Druid plus or is it just a variation on Essence or Presence?<<

The only thing Soul Superfly really inherits from Essence is the wider horizontal dispersion made possible by the remodeled whizzer and cylindrical phase plug. Otherwise, the motor and cone mass are tuned for Soul, and the efficiency is restored. The ribbon-instigated compromises are absent because the ribbon is thankfully *not* possible at this speaker's pricing. And it achieves Essence level of Griewe model performance on the low end in a smaller cabinet than Essence. Zu started out intending to build a market-expanding "recession speaker" and ended up finding a way to slash price yet build a "Super Druid" in a smaller column.

Regular Soul will be good but Superfly is the ticket for this crowd, well worth the delta in price, post intro sale.

Phil

>>I am just curious why did they already abandon the Ribbon Tweet from the essence after one new speaker with it and go back?<<

They didn't abandon the ribbon. You can still order Essence, and when that speaker is revised it will have a ribbon tweet again, but perhaps a different one. No credible ribbon supertweeter could be accommodated in the economics of the Soul speaker. Below Essence, I'm sure you'll continue to see dome-behind-lens, Druid-style.

Phil

Mike,

My Druids are Frankendruids, in some respects. I bought them used over five years ago, so they are one of the earlier cabinets in gloss red. First generation; and they had been upgraded to "Mk 2.5" status then. But they have the early B3 wiring and connector so with a pair of Ibis B3 cables I have Zu B3 cable geometry from the FRD all the way back to the amp outputs. This makes a clear difference. These speakers were upgraded to 4-08, with a further upgraded cap on the supertweeter, and the internal wiring is Ibis. So they sound better than standard Mk 4-08.

Even so, my friend who bought the first pair of production Soul Superfly has speakers that are now a bit better than my Druids, and they aren't even thoroughly broken in yet. You could order Druids to the same standard and get same sound except for the last stretch of bass extension, but the only reason to do so is if you prefer the Druid form factor as a visual statement. Druid costs more to make and is fussier to set up. Soul Superfly addresses the remaining anomalies of Druid by moving past the limits imposed by the now 10-years-old cabinet design. That iconic cabinet was not designed with the benefits of an eventual full Griewe model incorporation in mind. So you get sonic progress at a lower price, which can't be bad.

Phil

>>Do you plan to replace your Druids?<<

Yes. Although I may keep them for another use, for sentimental reasons.

Phil

I auditioned Abbys (with and without the supertweeter) before I bought Druids back in 2005, and have heard them occasionally since. In fact, at the time it was my intent to buy Abbys for one of my systems, until I got in front of a pair of Druids. There's certainly no less coherence from the Zu FRD, and the latest updates to the Zu FRD as implemented in Soul only further improve its performance in this respect. The Fostex driver options in the Abby do not meet or exceed the Zu FRD performance in any way, though the Abby is a very good speaker, with remarkable tonal and transient coherence. However, its intrinsic single-driver coherence, where it is closest to being competitive with Zu, does not overcome comparative lack of drive, range, dynamic aliveness, and combination of power handling with high efficiency. I considered Zu Druids prior to the 4-08 upgrade clearly superior to Abbys, and the 4-08 upgrade to Druids rocketed their lead, then the further advance of Soul Superfly over Druids puts quite a lot of distance between Soul and Abby.

Phil

Gopher - A friend of mine got the first pair of Soul Superfly on an advance special order for a custom finish. Zu's first regular production Superfly speakers should begin shipping in the next week or ten days, so perhaps there will be some Audiogoners among the recipients.

Phil

Naggots,

If you have Druid 4-08 with Mundorf silver oil in the network, you're quite close to Soul Superfly, and of course stereo Mini-Methods will outperform Superfly on bass - albeit at expense of space and complication.

The FRD in Soul has wider horizontal dispersion and more vivid, punchier dynamic behavior than what you get from Druid 4-08. It's a refinement of the Zu FRD, so essential character isn't changed. But it's clearly an evolution that makes the FRD better, and not in any way worse. The tone density is similar between the two, but the newer FRD is burstier and sounds faster on transient attack. The motor is stronger, the cone a little lighter than older versions, and the phase plug is not only cylindrical but the detail on the face of the cylinder is essential to its role. The last trace of darkness in the Druid's sound -- much removed by the 4-08 upgrade -- is now gone. In many rooms, given the trouble most rooms pose in the deep bass region, Soul's 30Hz lower flat limit will be both easier to manage and more truthful than the deeper subs, but if you have that sorted, OK. But sans subs, bass from the Soul is in all ways better than what's possible from the Druid form factor.

I plan on replacing my Druids with Superfly Soul, though I don't use subwoofers. The price is right and the improvement is of sufficient increment to be worthwhile to me, for the system I use Druids in. But it is an evolutionary upgrade from your speakers, not a dramatic one.

Phil

I don't need much time to judge a new speaker, or anything else for that matter. But I've had several hours with Soul on 845 monoblocks, and more coming up. Nothing I heard in the so-far last hour contradicted anything I heard in the first ten minutes, and vice-versa. My experience with various Zu speakers so far suggest that a pair of Soul Superfly will continue to improve for the next 18 months, and in no way get worse as they break in.

Phil

>>I am curious about the differences between Superfly and Definition speakers.<<

Having both Definition 2.0 and Druid 4-08 in two different systems, and having heard Soul Superfly at length, along with Essence and Presence, I can give you my view of the differences between Def 2 and Superfly:

Some background as I see it, from the standpoint of a customer who has followed the company closely. In some respects, all of the work Zu has done in single FRD speakers during the past three years has been directed toward narrowing the performance gap between Definition and everything else in their line. When I first bought Druids and Definitions over five years ago, the two speakers were seriously different in character though united by a common thread of coherence and phase linearity courtesy of the wideband FRD. But Druid at that time was a "dark" sounding speaker, a little beamy while Definition 1.X was explosive, open, and sparkled. The first step to narrowing the gap was, ironically, the release of Definition 2.0. It removed the primary disadvantage Definition had compared to Druid at the time -- the Def's sealed MDF cabinet produced resonant glare at high SPLs, whereas the Druid's open "partial Griewe" cabinet had far, far less MDF glare when pounded with current.

Then Druid 4-08 opened up the top end, smoothing out most of the known non-linearity to the high-frequency contour of the simpler Druid, and removed much of the sense of compression under high SPL that separated that speaker from Definition. There was less directionality in Druid 4-08 as well.

Essence, a speaker not fully realized in my view, did force Zu to resolve several lingering limits in particular elements of their speakers, which while not known for outcome at the time, made Soul possible. First, with Essence there was a clear objective to fully implement the Griewe model for managing the FRD's backwave while keeping to Zu's ideal "1 square foot of floor space" mantra. This was achieved, yielding flat response down to 30 Hz from a single FRD architecture. Then, a ribbon tweeter was incorporated to improve top-end dispersion, linearity, extension and apparent speed. This decision, in my view, was less successful, but it made the speaker appeal to a wider audience than Druid. However, regardless how you feel about the ribbon supertweeter, accommodating it led to a key Soul-enabling improvement. The FRD was revised (though it mostly looks the same) in the variables of cone mass, motor strength and high frequencies management via the phase plug. The cylindrical phase plug, especially the machining of its face, enabled a single FRD Zu speaker to bahve much more like the double FRD Definition in terms of horizontal dispersion and high-frequency linearity. Some of this benefit was obscured by having to dial back the FRD's efficiency to match the less efficient ribbon, but the stage was set for the next project.

The low price point objective for Soul forced more innovation and a serious holistic re-evaluation of how Zu builds speakers. To get under $2000 required detailed re-examination of labor and how it's used, the prime cost factor. Essence was a breakthrough in Griewe implementation but the boys had to find a cheaper way to do it if they wanted Essence bass performance out of a speaker costiing half as much. As a host of a Zu house party, I saw and heard some early prototypes for varying directions and where Zu ended up is a loooooooooong way from where they started.

Freed from the constraints of matching a ribbon and returning to the familiar dynamic lensed supertweeter let Zu take everything they learned from Essence refinements to the FRD and apply to Soul, without detuning the main driver. So the motor got stronger and the cone lighter, with the new phase plug incorporated. The Zu-standard 101db/w/m efficiency is restored. They conjured a way to not only get *better* Griewe performance than from Essence (same bass response from a smaller cabinet) but to do it in a more affordable but not compromised package.

The net result is that Soul Superfly, specifically, is the single-FRD Zu speaker that most narrows the performance gap with Definition. It's more dynamically explosive than Druid and presents more scaled soundstage when the music demands it. There's enough weight to the bass underpinning to obviate the need for a subwoofer and the spatial discontinuity resulting when you add more boxes. Superfly has more of the openness and top end reveal that Definition does so well, and horizontal dispersion is much more like Definitions, so it doubles as an excellent home theater speaker better than Druid, in broad rooms with scattered seating. The overal octave-to-octive tonal balance is far closer to Definition's neutrality than was Druid at the start, and audibly better than Druid 4-08. Yet, Soul retains Druid's advantage over Definition in near-field listening and small-performance ultra-coherence courtesy of having only one FRD. The inimitable directness of Druid is fully retained for intimate listening while resolution pushes up the scale closing perhaps 40% of the former detail gap between Druid 4-08 and Definition 2.0.

Now, this won't last. Definition 2.0 is still easily worth its greater cost. And that cost multiple over Soul Superfly will make more people choose to settle with the simpler, smaller, lighter speaker. Another friend of mine here in Los Angeles took delivery of a custom-ordered pair of Definition 2.0 with the Soul-type FRDs. This is the only pair in the field with this configuration, AFAIK. They widen the gap and are better than my early Def 2s. The overall advantage of scale, ease, linearity and explosive dynamic rise intrinsic to the dual FRD Definition architecture fully inherits the advantages of the Superfly-style FRD, and so it goes. Plus, Definition will be redesigned completely, eventually.

Soul Superfly will never catch Zu's best but it is more than good enough to make the point that if you hypothetically can afford a system at the cost of Definitions + $2,000, a pair of Superfly on the right $10,000 of amplification will yield a more convincing stereo than a pair of Definition 2s powered by good $2,000 amplification. Move the spending scale for amps into the $3500 - $5,000 range paired with Definitions and the advantage moves to Defs plus, however.

Soul Superfly is game changer in how you allocate resources to a system and assemble it. It isn't a Definition but you can consider it a "Definition-enabled" Druid. At least until Zu figures out what to do in the middle of the line.

Does that answer your question? If not, ask for what's missing.

Phil

Roscoeiii,

There is no crossover in a any Zu speaker. In Soul, the amp connects directly to the full-range-driver, and the supertweeter is wired on a simple high-pass filter. The amp doesn't "see" a crossover at all. No dividing network before the speaker. It sees the FRD voice coil. The upper limit of the FRD rolls off electro-mechanically with intrinsic behavior.

Phil

Definition has always measured quite flat and yet it is a deeply toneful speaker. Flat-measuring speakers that get that way through complex crossovers with steep driver contouring do tend to sound like anything *but* flat and are irritating for many people (like me) to listen to, for other reasons than measuring "flat." It's all in how the designer gets to "flat" on the graph.

The Druid in some respects ruined Zu's credibility on measurements because Zu didn't measure it early, while some reviewers did, not understanding how to measure its real-world use. The infamous Canadian review of early Druid, in which the publication complied with Canadian practice of measuring a speaker suspended in mid-air, yielded a disastrously ugly graph that had nothing whatsoever to do with how a Druid sounded in a real residential room when properly set up. But the empirical audiophile brigade couldn't (or wouldn't) grok the fact that Druid's partial Griewe loading requires placement on a floor (you know, the way you'd actually use the speaker) with some attention paid to a fussy floor-to-plinth gap, in order to sound and measure right. Since then, Zu owners haven't cared a whit how the speakers measure, and Zu critics won't bother hearing them, or grant that they can possibly sound good, let alone great.

Superfly sounds like it measures, objectively. But since it gets to a reasonably flat graph without a crossover and most of its range is produced by one coherent driver, it won't sound like most flat-measuring speakers sound.

As the graph indicates, Superfly will be revealing. It is a bit more "accurate" speaker than Druid 4-08. A grungy amp will sound grungier on Superfly than on Druid. But the high impedance makes most amps, even grungy ones, sound better than they normally do, and not driving a crossover before the voice coil puts them on better behavior too. So Superfly is both revealing and forgiving, all things considered. But conversely, an excellent amp will be even more appreciated on Superfly than on Druid 4-08.

The changes over Druid aren't that small, given how much the FRD has been massaged. The full Griewe model seriously improves and extends bass, but it also affects the driver's performance well into the midrange. The cone and motor changes to the FRD make it considerably more vivid. The high-pass filter to which the supertweeter is wired is both more linear and cleaner owing to the selected components. And the cylindrical phase plug markedly linearizes and improve dispersion of the FRD's high-frequency output from the whizzer. What a lot of other designers would try to upgrade through multiple drivers and a more complicated crossover, Zu has attacked by refining the main driver's capabilities directly.

A frequency response graph is only a facet of a louodpeaker's performance indicative of an ability to transduce convincing music. It tells you nothing whatsoever about tone density, timbral acuity, dynamic aliveness, transient speed, spatial projection, phase coherence, or other non-frequency fidelity factors. And since the speaker's interaction with actual room and amplification factors aren't at all captured by frequency response measurements, you can safely limit how seriously you take such representations of performance.

Do I believe "those numbers?" Numbers imply a precision to speaker performance that's not remotely sustainable in actual deployment into a customer's system. It's not that I don't believe them. I believe Zu attained that curve. I just don't think it's relevant. Superfly sounds neutral and extended in the ways Zu's graph suggests. That's easily the least influential reason to buy the speaker over the myriad other speakers that also measure "flat." in the same price range.

Phil

Tim,

Can you explain the conflict between Druids and your room? What did you hear that led you to believe you couldn't "really get the Druids set up in a way that worked" in your room? Yet you ended up with speakers that worked better but you never liked the sound as much?

What didn't work about the Druids?

There are three things about the Soul that should make placement easier and more plug'n'play:

1/ Unlike the Druid's fussy floor-to-plinth gap adjustment, Soul is fixed gap on spikes and unless you have some exceedingly tall and stiff pile carpet, I can't see running into any gap problems. The tapered finger vents on the bottom of the cabinet do not need precise location above the floor for the Griewe model to work correctly.

2/ For some people, Druid's acoustic center was too far off the floor and the FRD radiated too much energy unimpeded by furniture and buman bodies directly to opposite surfaces. Druid also had a bit of directionality that gave it a narrower sweet spot than Soul. Soul's greater horizontal dispersion makes it easier to get good sound throughout the possible listening positions in a room. Soul puts the FRD less than 3' off the floor and its output is angled slightly upward. The acoutstic vertical center of the soundstaging is more natural for many people when seated, and its output is more in the dissipating and diffusing line of sight to the normal contents of a room., which is good.

3/ Soul has fewer aural anomalies than Druid, and bass is more extended without rumbling deep into the zone most rooms handle poorly. It's simply a more neutral speaker. The buying public at large seems highly sensitive to perceptions of bass output. Soul gives everyone less to argue about in that respect. It goes deep enough but not so deep as to cause real trouble. And its bass character is toneful, highly-defined and textured.

Phil

Zanon,

I (or you) would have to ask Sean Casey about specifics on his frequency response/impedance graph. I haven't even discussed it. Perhaps the data informing the graph was normalized. Of course, to me, Soul *does* sound smoother than Essence, the "least Zu" speaker so far. But I've said straightforwardly I've considered Essence inferior to Druid 4-08 since Essence launched. I certainly never for a second considered giving up my Druid 4-08s for Essence, but I will replace them with Soul Superfly. But I understand why Essence appeals to a broader population.

There's a difference between ragged and wrong. I don't recall the Stereophile data graph on Essence (though I do remember something like JA conceding that it sounded to him as Art Dudley described, regardless of how it measured) but ragged response that shows short bandwidth abberations against a backdrop of general octave-to-octave balance can sound just fine and convincing, as opposed to a speaker with smoother curve but clearly visible octave-to-octave dysfunction, which can sound completely wrong.

At the end of the day, Zu's graph isn't actionable to me one way or another, but I've had the opportunity to both follow the speaker's development and hear at length in final form. It *sounds* about as smooth as Zu represents, but in a real customer setting it would never measure that way.

Phil

>>When did you get a chance to hear the Soul?<<

A friend of mine here in L.A. bought what turned out to be the first pair, s/n 0001/0002. They were a custom order configuration and finish. He took delivery about a month ago and I've listened to them expensively. He came to me asking for a recommendation for assembling his first quality audio system, replacing 15 years old HT components. He wanted to get as close as possible to the sound of my Druids system for a specific budget. I knew Soul was coming so I had him order a pair while Zu was still working out manufacturing details, plus I found him a great deal on amplification. Our request for upgrades similar to the "off-menu" upticks that were available for other Zu speakers became the basis for the Superfly Edition.

Phil

Tim,

Occasionally a room poses too many problems to sound right with a given speaker, until you address the room. It sounds like you have done so.

The Druid floor-to-plinth gap was crucial to get right, to get correct balance out of the speaker below 100Hz. Effectively, the partial Griewe implementation in that cabinet delegated to the floor gap functionality that a full Griewe model handles within the speaker cabinet. Druid's sound balance was *very* sensitive to the gap setting. Differences as small as 1/16" could be heard. It was nearly impossible to fully optimize them on thick carpet on a thick pad.

If you liked the essential character of the Zu FRD in Druid, other problems not withstanding, I think you can be optimistic about Soul Superfly working well in your revised room.

Phil

Zanon,

The actionable part of Atkinson's empirical evaluation of Essence was this:

"In many ways, the Zu Essence is an underachiever, measurement-wise. But the surprise for me, when I auditioned it in AD's room, was how much of its measured misbehavior was not too audible, other than the rolled-off highs and the lack of impact in the lower midrange. I suspect that Zu's designer has carefully balanced the individual aspects of the Essence's design so that the musical result is greater than the sum of its often disappointingly-measuring parts.—John Atkinson"

I don't have a 150Hz problem in my installation. "Lack of impact in the lower midrange" disappeared after months of use. The Zu FRD does need to be USED to fully realize its potential. I had a 60Hz anomaly -- what you call "freakiness," a term I expect to see Atkinson adopt in his empirical counterpoints -- that took awhile to learn how to tune out to the point of irrelevance. My Druids were early versions with the pleated-paper cone. I could hear meaningful changes in bass to mid-range performance in gap-height changes of less than 1/16" inch. Essentially the Druid's partial Griewe implementation delegated to the floor and the floor-plinth gap some of what functionally is fully handled in the enclosure and at the finger vent in Soul's full Griewe model.

On Druid, that floor-plinth gap forces trade-offs. Too high and the deeper bass you dialed in is euphonically fat. Too low and that definition and tautness you dialed in gives up some bass extension. The original pleated cone FRD was more Draconian in these trade-offs than the roll-edge cone of later versions. The 4-08 upgrade gave me more tunability, but in less space. The Zu-spec for floor gap on the older pleated cone was 2 CD jewel cases. For the newer roll-edge cone, it was 1. The increments for sound changes became minute, while the trade-offs were more elastic.

I never understood the claim that Druids have "no bass." My Druids system is on the narrow wall of a 21' x 12' space in an open plan house. The "back" of the space flows into the kitchen. A 38 Hz wave is just shy of 30 feet long. That sounds about right when I stand in my kitchen.

Last fall when Sean Casey visited for a Zu house party I hosted, he was listening to my Druids system and suddenly started rifling through a stack of magazines by the couch. He pulled out two identically thin issues of "American Photographer" and slid them under the center of the plinth, further modifying the gap after I had cranked the plinth studs all the way in. Magazines under, perfect. My 60Hz problem was for practical purposes gone, at least in my room, and I got more extension and definition in the bass region.

The Zu boys are very practical about finding the sweet spot in inevitable trade-offs between sound, target customer environments, manufacturability, economics. They know what sounds good in real world residential rooms and have delivered something that works well in the widest range of room, construction and system types of any speaker family I've used or had experience with in 40 years of spending my own money on audio. Few loudspeakers in home audio are universal but a Zu speaker, the BBC LS3/5a, and the original Quad electrostatic come far closer than most.

Phil

>>Am I being a jerk for saying "Zu is too perfect!!"? Maybe, although that is not my intention. I am big fan of company and speakers. I am simply pointing out that this change is so dramatic, I'd love to see it verified by an independent third party even though I will trust my own EARS for how the speaker sounds, which is distinct from how it measures.<<

Not arguing with you. I have to ask Sean the origin of his graph. I just don't know and wasn't interested enough to ask. I view speaker response graphs as dubious marketing. And I say that as a marketer. Lots of speakers measure out ruler flat, uncorrelated to how they sound, so I pay no attention to this. I don't know how you measure a speaker for performance in the customer's room, so I've *never* put credence to speaker measurements. Almost every speaker I've heard that sounds natural is seriously compromised on paper in some way, and so has every speaker that sounds atrocious to me. The real trouble is the sheer mediocrity of most speakers that measure well, at any price. You're unlikely, for instance, to see me write anything even remotely positive about a Wilson, McIntosh, Coincident, PSB or B&W speaker, regardless how they measure and yet a company that consciously voices its products, like Sonus Faber, can often float something outstanding into the market. On the other hand, most Fostex-based hi-eff designs sound as ragged to me as they measure, but I don't need measurements to tell me that. So I think overall the industry has never developed an empirical representation of a loundspeaker's sound that is worth a damn in making a buying decision. John Atkinson sure hasn't.

>>I disagree with you that Zu works well in widest range of rooms. I think EVERY speaker seriously needs care with placement to get the most out of it. The number of bad installations I have seen are ridiculous, and while it may be more fun to buy new hardware, spending a weekend (or month) sweating while you carry your speakers about the place will do more for sound. Sweat beats money. The port tuning does reduce one variable and that legitimately makes things easier of course.<<

My statement regarding the unusually wide latitude of room and system types a Zu FRD speaker can be easily used in doesn't in any way contradict your view that "...every speaker seriously needs care with placement..." Yup, if you're up for it. But how much obsession should this quest for realistic music reproduction have to take? I abhor man-cave dedicated listening rooms. They're killing audio as an economically-viable hobby. It's a signpost of social dysfunction most people can't identify with. All my life, my systems have been in my living spaces. I have two full-blown SET vacuum tube Zu systems out in the open living areas of my home now - with turntables. In any room I'm going to put a stereo, the available space that reconciles sound with room usability is going to be a pretty tight box. There are not going to be any tube traps in my house. Micrometer-precise speaker placements. I'll use normal household items like furniture, books, art, etc. to "tune" my rooms. In other words, I'm going to make it as good as reasonable effort can make it, within the constraints I set by making hi-fi part of my *visible* life. When people visit, it's there, so anyone can experience it. This is how I got exposed to hi-fi 50 years ago, and audio would be in a healthier state if we returned it to a public place in domestic life.

Jim Smith's "Get Better Sound" has an audience, and yeah even a casual listener can benefit from some of it. But it misses the whole point of audio in the first place. If you have to read that book to get good sound, the whole industry has gone awry. Well, it obviously has, already. Maybe a hundred-thousand people in the whole world of six billion folks want the fuss. Want to know why audio is dying? The answer is in that book, and it's not related to the sonic consequences of all the things Jim thinks people do wrong.

So, on a relative basis, with the exception of Druid's fussy gap height, it's very hard to get bad sound through inexact-but-reasonable placement of a Zu speaker, and this is especially true of Soul. They did a great job of making it "drop-and-play." Dial it in if you're interested enough, but if you're a music lover who cares about room function and aesthetics over sonic bliss, and you plop your Souls where you planned to put speakers and nowhere else, you're still going to get good sound. THIS audience is more obsessive, but Zu's whole point in life is to make it easy for THAT audience that isn't.

Phil

>>What can you say about the cosmic carbon?<<

I think it's black, with highlights and character. I haven't seen that finish. My friend ordered his speakers with a custom color. I have seen other Zu colors in the kind of paint used for Cosmic Carbon, and it's a smooth matte, highly durable and chip-resistant, and tends not to show fingerprints. If black speakers are your thing, you'll probably like it. And standardizing on it keeps Zu's costs in line so the price can be maintained. But personally I'd pop some extra for a color.

Phil

I've seen the predecessor finishes to the Soul matte standard finish, on other Zu speakers. Sean Casey assures me this is better still. Every time he's told me that in the past, regarding improvements to their paint, he's proven correct. For anyone who can afford it, I think one thing hasn't changed -- gloss automotive finishes change the look of Zu for the better in absolutely every respect. So that's what I recommend for anyone whose finances allow it. The matte finish, however, does not look cheap in any way. It's stable, smooth-for-matte, durable and consistent.

Phil

Regarding the Soul Response Graph:

I had an email exchange with Sean Casey regarding the smoothness of his published Soul Superfly response graph and its credibility in the context of prior measured response of other Zu speakers, most notably JA's empirical evaluation of Essence in the Stereophile review, because the question was raised here and I didn't have a definitive answer.

Sean promised to post notes on the measurement scheme in a FAQ on Soul. Here's part of his narrative to me in an email exchange:

"Yeah, several have questioned how we have achieved such a more or less smooth amplitude response with Soul when Essence had large “problems” in the presence region as measured by JA in Stereohile. Essence is not Soul, nor Druid. But before I get too far into things, let me say that Zu uses tests and measurement technology to assist in the designing of a good sounding, to-the-max-shove, tone-rich loudspeaker.

'We use tests and measures as tools to speed the process and fine-tune what we hear or what we want to accomplish. Building a good-sounding loudspeaker is best done with the ear as arbiter of tone, using tests and measures to assist in drilling down on a problem, realizing new insight, and absolutely in matching and quality assurance systems. Amplitude response without such things as phase and group delay measures are just a fraction of the equation. Essence runs the ribbon tweeter down lower in the bandwidth than Soul. Because of this the 10" full-range driver has significant overlap with the ribbon tweeter, and because of this there will be constructive and destructive interference between them. These interferences and their graphed patterns are highly “point measured” dependent. With Soul we focus the electrical high-pass filter very high, essentially 20kHz (note impedance graph, blue trace), and also reposition phase to better match the unfiltered FRD. There is still overlap between the two drivers, but much less. And the overlap that is there is phase matched and time-aligned. The results are a much less ragged looking presence region in the amplitude graph, than JA measured with Essence. Is all this audible? Maybe, and it depends on other factors, but for sure it makes for a good looking amplitude response!"

That's the preamble to the tech notes you'll eventually see on Sean's web site but I thought some of you might like to see his initial comments now. I will say that Sean's explanation regarding reduced overlap between FRD and supertweeter, plus the attention to phase-matching the overlap that's present, corresponds to what I hear as a distinct cleaning up of the midrange through top-end anomalies remaining in the Druid 4-08. When combined with the sharply-improved bottom end and the overall increase in dynamic aliveness, Soul Superfly comes out in all ways a better speaker than its older brother.

Phil

I think the prior gloss charges proved insufficiently profitable to be sustainable for Zu, because meeting their standards skyrocketed the labor input to production. People are more demanding about finish quality of flat surfaces in their homes, under interior lighting than they are with automotive finishes on outdoor-lit compound surfaces objects like cars. The pair of Soul Superfly I heard were painted in a custom gloss color and it's an aesthetically transformative upgrade. They're above Wilson finish quality and look sensational. Whether it's worth $2K to you, only you can say but the gloss charge reflects the labor, materials and capital investment reality once the company truly examined the economics of custom gloss.

Phil

Gopher,

I don't recall which First Watt amp you have, but keep in mind that the Abby is an 8 ohm nominal impedance speaker, whereas Soul Superfly is 16 ohms. So you're -3db on power into the higher impedance at a given volume setting (though up 6db on power transfer efficiency). This combined with the somewhat incomplete break-in that sets in during shipping probably explains the extra volume rotation you're getting. The speaker will begin sounding more dynamic and subjectively a little louder for a given setting as break-in of the internal wiring and the cone/motor proceeds.

You'll also hear more detail emerge in the mid-band as the cone limbers up. Further, while the Soul doesn't have the floor gap fussiness of the Druid (which you now hear by getting real bass despite the speaker base sitting directly on carpet), installation of appropriate spikes will allow the Griewe model finger vents to properly function, and when the Griewe model is working properly, it affects sound right up through the mid-range. It's not just a bass performance feature.

Last, for now, if you really want max mid-range detail punch, borrow an 845 SET amp, or lacking that availability try any decent tube amp with 20w-60w of muscle. See how you like that compared to the First Watt. The only solid state amps I've heard give the Zu FRD the dynamic drive detailed shove of a jumpy tube amp are McIntosh autoformer output amps. You can get more jump factor and detail smack from tubes at a given budget than you can from transistors, if your ears are really hungry for smash-and-grab attention. But First Watt amps have specific sound assets and you'll hear them come through more vividly as break-in proceeds. Zu has told me in the past that the toughest break-in factor for speakers that go through factory break-in and aren't cold-weather shipped, is the internal cabling dialectric. Crank it when you can.

Phil

Gopher,

I had an email exchange with Sean Casey this morning, regarding what should ship with Soul:

a set of protective dust covers
a set of stainless hard surface footers (installed)
a set of stainless jam nuts (installed)
a set of long carpet spikes
guidebook

Sean wrote that everyone whose Souls shipped without the usual owner kit will get what's missing. Remainder items (FRD covers, carpet spikes, guide in your case) will be shipped this week.

Also, the oddball Zu speaker referenced by Avonessence above is a recently-built one-off pair commissioned by one of Zu's suppliers, which essentially funded finished prototyping of an idea Zu had for a Definition-scale, Griewe-cabinet speaker (no powered sub). Consider it an exploration, not a product.

Phil

>>The only thing Phil hasn't come back on is the type of music he listened to. It would be really good, if you can tear yourself away, to hear about what you're listening to and what they're doing to it.<<

Music selection has been omnivorous. Specifically, listening to Soul Superfly, variety of full symphony, Pink Floyd, Natalie Merchant's masterfully-produced "Leave Your Sleep," variety of chamber music and opera, harpsichord, M. Ward, Andrew Bird, Jimi Hendrix, Sinatra, Ray Charles, The Jayhawks, The Band, Blu-ray movie chapters. Of course my total Zu listening ranges far beyond this but if your question is about Soul specifically, they're not mine, so my access is more limited. I heard them again just yesterday, now further broken in.

Blu-ray really opens a window on these speakers in a way that CD can't quite equal. Watch the opening scene of "The Watchmen" on Blu-ray, right through the title sequence/opening credits that follows. Crank it for full theater effect. Just 2ch Blu-ray is all you need. HT2.0 is done right with Soul.

What are the speakers doing to the music? Exactly what they should. In general, ZU FRD-based speakers are egalitarian about extending their benefits to music genres. It's not a rock speaker, nor a solo singer speaker nor a classical music spaker. Soul is a loudspeaker with remarkable tone density, octave-to-octave accuracy and frequency extension that lends its jump factor and rich tonal realism to music in equal measure, regardless of the genre. If your amp scales for full symphony, so will Soul, in normal living spaces. If you want holographic presentation of a solo performer, whether singer or instrementalist, Soul will deliver the spatial and tonal focus to make the fully-dimensioned presence of the performer believable within the limits of the recording. Listen to Frank, or Ray LaMontainge, Natalie Merchant, Julie London or Nora Jones if you want confidence that the human factor in music is intimate and organic. Zu's FRD is a fantastic transmitter of electric guitar tone, and if your amps have the energy, when a full amp stack comes down on your head, Soul is up to it.

There's really nothing limiting to say about Soul with respect to one form of music or another. What makes the Zu FRD remarkable on full tonal projection of a solo voice works same for an instrument, and its ability to stay sorted as complexity comes into the mix makes it omni-applicable to your full range of music interests. Dynamic life with retained definition, holistic sonic projection with convincing and involving tonal density, and excellent frequency accuracy benefit everything, aggregated.

The real key is your amplification. I've said before that with Zu speakers in the mix, amplification will determine the character of your system, more than anything. Even more than sources. There are CDs, like Natalie Merchant's newest, or a 1969 field recording of bluesman Joe Callicot, that played on a $100 CD player can sound mediocre on mediocre amps, or stellar on the right watts.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more synergistic with a Zu speaker than a muscular 845 SET amp. 25/25w of incandescent sonic glory, right in the 25w sweet spot for Zu efficiency makes just about any amp using that tube a great match. 300B PSET amps work well too. In push-pull tube, 25 - 60w is the sweet range. Push-pull amps will give you more bass grip, but the midrange sound is a comparative remoteness to it relative to well-executed SET. An exception is the excellent Quad II Classic monoblock. Still a toneful circuit decades since debut, these are the most SET-like push-pull amps around. Even though they're only 15w each, they're high on my list of tube amps for Soul Superfly, for tube newbies in particular or anyone who wants a trouble-free amp to live with a long time. The Quad Two-Forty is also excellent.

But truth is there is a huge range of amps for this speaker. Its 16 ohms load will make lots of affordable integrated amps, from the Peachtrees and King Rexes and up sound their best. Exotica like LFD, YBA, Lavardin as well as McIntosh autoformer amps are options for high-end simplicity. The entire single-ended triode universe is open to you as well as mainstream brute-strength solid state and new gen tech like NAD's M2. Pick your bias for sound or topology or both, but put some resources into good amplification. Soul Superfly can leverage the best, even that which is disproportionate to the cost of the speakers.

The reason I have Zu speakers in three systems is that on four decades of spending money on hi-fi, they are the only speakers I've ever listened to that will play the full range of my music collection with equal satisfaction. That's been true of Definition 1.5 and 2.0, and Druid since v4-08. And it's true of Soul Superfly. From Houndog Taylor's intentionally cheap and nasty electric guitar tone to the full glory of the Boston Symphony *with* The Tanglewood Chorus to the quiet tone of Wes Montgomery's Gibson L5 to the screaming scale of Procol Harum's "Conquistador" with the LSO; from Jeff Beck to Peggy Lee, Charlie Christian to Warren Zevon, the full wail of "Highwy 61 Revisited" and DSOTM to Sharon Isben's nylon strings, Zooey Deschanel to Janis Joplin, Marshall Tucker to John Hartford, Jimmy Bryant Link Wray, Vaughan Williams to Dean Martin, Hank III and Justin Townes Earle to Patsy Cline, there's just no favoritism in what kind of music a Zu speaker can effectively convey.

Phil

>>Are there any particularly good inexpensive amps you've heard with Zus?<<

Yes. EL84 tube amps are a surefire success. If your room is small enough, the Almarro A205 is only 5/5w SEP, but sounds irrationally good. Sophia Baby. Glow amp. Lots of Chinese tube amps using EL84 and similar tubes in 5 - 25w SEP and push-pull.

The NAD C3XXBEEE series of integrated amps. A used NAD M3 is a great solid state alternative. Red Wine Audio does well. Cheap T amps are not my thing but they really clean up and get some tone on Zu speakers.

Prima Luna - whichever you can afford. Same for Melody. I'll make a special note for Jasmine Audio. This is a Chinese maker producing well-built, well-thought-out circuits. Their Jasmine LP2.0SE solid state phono stage is a genuine giant killer. Most of their electronics are tube circuits. Their various integrated and power amps are affordable and deeply musical. The designer is musically sophisticated and highly competent. cruzeFIRST Audio in Florida is a dealer online, but he doesn't always have inventory. You can buy direct from China. Prices are low and execution quality is beyond reproach. They make affordable but excellent EL34, 156 and KT88 integrated amps. Everything that company makes sounds beautiful. Look at www.jasmineaudio.net.

Stepping up, the full Sophia line. If you find *any* Audion amplifier, it's a golden synergistic match to Zu. Lots of options in McIntosh autoformer amps, and used or new Pass/First Watt. Dyna ST70 will be musical but if unmodified, bass will be euphonically flabby. Atmasphere OTL amps -- perfect for Druid and Soul. But in the hundreds, NAD, Almarro, Xindac, the occasional Dared and Jasmine are foolproof.

Phil

>>I'm curious about the flaws of this $1700 speaker.<<

No one has heard the base version yet. Only the Superfly upgrade, $2600, has been shipped so far. A limited number were sold at an intro price of $1800.

I haven't heard the perfect speaker at any price. The flaws of the Zu Soul will make themselves apparant relative to individual expectations that are difficult to anticipate. What do you expect for $2600 or $1800? Someone somewhere will think a speaker of that price should have usable output below 30Hz. OK, Soul doesn't have that. Someone somewhere might think a speaker at this price should have perfect semi-polar dispersion. Nope, not Soul. It's dispersive but compared to some speakers it's still a little directional. It pays to play with placement. Someone somewhere will say Soul isn't revealing to the nth degree of detail. It's not -- its design prioritizes tonal truth over scintilla.

But it's hard to fault a speaker under $3K with this level of balance, tone density, dynamic life, overall fidelty, unfussiness in placement, fit, finish, reliability and construction, as well as adaptability to such a huge range of amplification.

One does not have to be a sycophant to like this speaker. It's just plain convincing, accommodating, compact and well-executed. If I thought it is less than that, I'd say so. I thought Zu Essence was a mistake, for example. The speaker is shipping now, so let's see who shows up having heard it who doesn't like it, and why.

Phil

>>Biggest potential dissappointment with Zu Speakers is that it does not have HF extension, and so does not create hi-fi "air" "detail" "pin-point imaging" etc.<<

Hmmm. The supertweeter goes out to 25kHz before roll-off. The original Druid certainly lacked HF detail but this problem was pretty much solved in Druid 4-08, and has never been an issue with Definition. Soul Superfly sounds extended. I have no trouble getting pin-point imaging from Soul or Definition, and Druids are much improved in this respect since 4-08. But, right, it isn't the emphasized top-end sound characterized as "hi-fi." It's more like music actually sounds in real acoustic spaces.

Now for anyone who wants that "hi-fi" sound, there's a ribbon-supertweeter Essence to take care of that.

>>With my druid setup in very large room, I think Zu needs more watts than Phil suggests. You will need to make your own call. Also, in my room, I have suckout at upper bass, which makes presentation dry. I have engaged various strategies to fix that with placement etc.<<

Lots of variables, room to room. The good thing is, if you need more power to really load an acoustic space, Zu speakers can handle it. I will say, however, that loading more power into Druids can deliver a sense of compression sooner than Soul Superfly. That is, unlike the more scalable Definition, Druids can reach a point where more power doesn't seem to be doing any more for you. I usually find this point in the 80 - 120w range with Druids. Whereas Soul just feels like it can run with more juice. It has more dynamic elasticity and throwing more watts at it will make a difference in how a large space is loaded. Both the stronger motor/lighter cone and the full Griewe loading contribute. Also, to get the same apparent dynamic life from solid state and tubes, you'll need more solid state watts generally.

>>I totally disagree with people who say speakers should be "unfussy about placement" simply because, at lower frequency, you will have room interaction and either it is working for you or working against you. Druids benefitted greatly from placement but did not need much treatment, soul are less directional so maybe they need more treatment but less placement help?<<

I'll write it again. There's no conflict between a speaker being unfussy about placement and potential benefits of precision set-up. An unfussy speaker like Soul nevertheless benefits from dialed-in placement, not to mention that the room does too. The point about unfussiness in placement is that the music lover who can't be bothered -- and that's the market Zu would really like to wake up -- can plop them down and get good, rather than crap, sound. WE here on Audiogon might not think it's right, but there's a market that just wants to put speakers where they look good or can be accommodated by the room. That crowd will like this speaker.

>>Finally, i find, contra phil, that on really massive orchestral work at high volume they overload poor single driver somewhat.<<

See prior comment about difference between Druid and Soul. Druids, somewhat, sure. Soul far less. Also, it could be your amp running out of headroom.

Phil

>>Maybe music lover who cannot be bothered with setup is actively listening to music where actual sound is not so important. Again, I wonder why they bother buying $2000 speakers.<<

There's more to music enjoyment for many people than audiophile imaging and mitigation of room issues. Put a pair of Zu speakers down where they work in the room, aesthetically or for room function, and you can still appreciate the tonal honesty in the midrange and the jump factor giveing them dynamic life. We shouldn't discount the music lover's appreciation of a good speaker just because they aren't interested in set-up to audiophile standards. $2000 can be cheap to the music lover looking for realistic tone and dynamic life.

>>But coming back to Bjesien question -- he asked something honest and reasonable and we should do our best to answer it honestly and reasonable too.<<

I'm pretty sure I did.

Phil

>>So, you will see people complaining about dynamics when, in fact, they are running them with flea amps and Zus, while sensitive, are simply not that sensitive. Maybe horns will work with 2W SET. Not Zus.<<

I've had 2w 45 and 2a3 amps in my living room, wired up to Definitions, Presence and Druids. It's not my idea of perfection but the flea-watters in the room were fully satisfied. Zu speakers really are 101db/w/m, but they're not 114db/w/m like some horns. Big difference, with other compromises. The true 2w aficionado is realistic about dynamics and listens for tone within the power limits of their amp. The people who think 2w isn't enough likely wouldn't like 2 watts on anything in that efficiency range. On the other hand, you can blow minds with the sound available through Definitions powered by a ZVex ImpAmp, which is kind of sheer dumb fun when you do it.

>>It is perfectly OK that we have different opinions about speakers, music, Zu etc<<

I don't think we have are apart on any significant issue regarding Zu speakers. Your observations of why some people perceive them as they do are correct. I only add that there is a music lover audience that will never cotton to audiophile obsessions, and they too can find Zu plug'n'play. Which I've witnessed.

>>An audiophile who does not care about placement should just buy headphones.<<

But there is a non-audiophile market that just loves music and will pay for good gear. Zu designs to be inclusive, not exclusive. It's one of their core objectives, to expand hifi appeal beyond audiophiles.

>>It makes no sense for someone who plans to just "plop them down" to pay extra $800 and buy Soul Superfly over Soul standard.<<

Over 30 years ago when I worked in high-end audio my best customer wore hearing aids in both ears. He spent gobs and of course only heard midrange, and felt bass. But his sense of tone correctness was uncanny, while his spatial perception was useless. People buy for lots of reasons. There will be people who buy Superfly over std. Soul just to get the metal hardware where plain Soul will have plastics, for example. What "makes sense" to audiophiles is irrelevant outside our little circle. And it *is* a little circle.

>>But, would anyone buy speaker where left channel is 5db louder than right? Would anyone pay extra for speaker where one channel is louder than the other? Would you say "tone is so real, I do not care that left speaker is louder than right speaker!"<<

Perhaps you'd be surprised about the number of people for whom a 5db difference of any kind just doesn't register.

>>Audiogon is full of people who go one about "detail, slam, air etc. etc." but seem deaf to fact that left ear is listening to whisper while right ear is listening to speech.<<

We agree. What passes for accuracy in hi-fi today is usually excessively detailed, over-resolved. The normal attenuation of top end in real acoustic spaces is replaced by close-mic'ing and rising top end, spraying out sounds you never hear from live music in real acoustic spaces. We agree.

I place my speakers by millimeters within a functional rubric in a room. Some people think that's excessive and they've spent much more than me. Even on Audiogon it's a diverse little circle. What can you do? There's no component for everyone.

Many of the risks you cite regarding reactions to the sound of unoptimized Zu installations are mitigated by Soul. I'll say it's one of the easiest speakers to place for good sound that I've ever worked with. Much less fussy than Druid. Dialing in Soul is more about choices for what kind of staging you want, presence or reticence, and room factors to mitigate, than about going from "ack!" to "ahhhh."

Phil

I can't say how well Rawson clones or emulates the sonic character of Red Wine. I've heard Red Wine and other various Class D architectures on Zu speakers. In Red Wine's case, the sound is very smooth and listenable, certainly preferable to many far more expensive and ghastly solid state amplifiers. Their sins are of omission. While less so than many of thier ilk, the Red Wine amps still sound desiccated, spatially flattened and a little bleached of midrange tone compared to alternatives in their price range. It's not a sound I can live with if I don't have to, and I don't. On the positive side, Rossi's amps are quiet, dynamic, smooth on top and bass is fast and well-defined.

If Rawson builds a good clone, depending on his price and how you view the competitive options financially, you might value the positives over the negatives. Zu thinks Red Wine Audio amps are good matches to their speakers. Others here do, too.

Even at under $1000, I'd rather have a number of affordable Asian tube amps or some used tube and solid state options from Audiogon if I were financially tapped and needed amplification.

Phil

>>is there an amp i can find here in the $500-$800 range that can power my Soul's? i agree that my cambridge 540 and HK 3490 are lacking in the lower midrange/bass arena.<<

Make the best deal you can on an NAD integrated amp in that price range. You'll also find some pretty good sounding Chinese EL34 tube amps under a variety of obscure brand names on eBay that will do fine. You can buy an EL34 amp with your eyes closed and not fear. It's very hard to screw up an EL34 tube amp, and many of those unknown (to us in the West) Chinese tube amp designers know exactly what they're doing with simple circuits and good parts.

Phil

>>If you check with 213Cobra he will agree with the musicality of an EL-34 amp.<<

Yup. No doubt. Takes me back. I ran a pair of Dyna Stereo 70s strapped as ~70w monoblocks 35 years ago, when you could still buy Stereo 70 kits new and real West German Telefunkens and Siemens EL34s were plentiful. I built many for friends. Today, there are inexpensive upgrades, in parts or even replacement of the input circuit. But even stock, a well-maintained Stereo 70 will be euphonic in beautiful ways, and have a lot less push-pull grunge than most modern push-pull tube amps. As I just wrote in another post, almost any EL34 tube amp is a safe bet for good sound, and Zu's efficiency means a single stereo amp pushing out 30 - 35w/ch goes far. Most days on Audiogon there are a couple of rehabbed, modded or hot-rodded Stereo 70s. Other great, but more expensive, vintage iron: McIntosh MC2225, MC240, MC30 & 60 monoblocks. No cheap Marantz 8Bs left, but that would sound gorgeous. Lots of Chinese El34 and EL84 amp options.

In vintage solid state, you'd get music from Quad 405, 405-II and even a 303, which are around for mad money these days. Sweet into 16 ohms.

Phil

>>...and people who say 3-6db difference between left and right channel make no difference, and toe-in (for massively directional HF speakers) makes no difference.<<

Now, Zanon. I don't think we had anyone in this thread say any of those things. But some people do like their 3 watts and are willing to live within their limits.

Phil

Zanon,

No, I meant what I said. Which wasn't that a 3db - 6db difference in channel balance doesn't matter to me, or you or many other people here but that there are plenty of folks in the non-audiophile music-focused crowd that either don't notice it or don't care enough to change what's causing it even if they drop two Large on a pair of speakers. Their comparative indifference to one quality that matters to us may not compromise their enjoyment of music from their hi-fi whatsoever.

As for flea-power SET amps, that's the whole point. 2 - 3 watts aren't convincing to me and I suppose not for you, but for someone who values specific attributes of a 45 or 2a3 SET amp enough to listen within the dynamic limits of a third clean watt on a 101db/w/m speaker, the midrange won't be congested. It just gets congested quickly if said listener pushes even a skosh beyond that. So someone like me doesn't have to recommend flea power to appreciate why some folks are satisfied by a narrow performance attribute. After all, Quad ESL57s don't have much dynamic range, nor power handling worth mentioning, plus they beam like lasers, yet they still have a fanatical following after more than 50 years.

I have no defense however to offer for the sound quality of Class-D, thus far in its evolution. Except that it gets some people out of earbuds and into speakers, which is a first step for bringing fresh blood into our interest. Does a cheap Tri-Path sound any worse than, say, a grating Dynaco SCA-80Q did circa 1970? No. It sounds better and it's vastly cheaper and more accessible too in real dollars. Give the kids and anyone else with thin finances a break. If we get them in in the tent, we have plenty of time to show them old school.

Phil

I haven't heard the Tiny Triode monoblocks on Zu, but I would proceed with confidence. I have yet to hear an EL84 amp not sound musical powering the Zu FRD. Within its power limits, for example, the very modest Almarro A205 single-ended EL84 embarrasses many more expensive amps of various types on Druids, and therefore I'm sure on Soul too. And it's only 5 to 8w.

The Tiny Triode should prove both toneful and quite versatile on Superfly. You'll have around 20 honest watts in pseudo-triode mode with four EL84s running into 16 ohms from an 8 ohms tap, and perhaps 35w in normal tetrode mode, so at the flip of a switch you'll have the laid-back sound of triode mode with adequate power, and able to call up the more vivid and punchy tetrode sound when you want more oomph.

$700 seems to me a great price for those amps, which were limited production, no longer made, and quite scarce.

Phil

>>PHIL: Non-audiophile people who don't notice and don't care are probably better served by $500 polks or $100 speakers available at any garage sale than $2000 Souls. Anyone who cares enough about sound to spend for the Souls really should care enough for at least modest placement.<<

No, I don't agree. A non-audiophile music lover can easily appreciate the tone and dynamic superiority of a Zu speaker over what's possible from Polk-bracket speakers. They don't have to care about anything else to love Souls. "...at least modest placement..." conforms to my contention that such a person can put their Souls where they work for them in terms of room function and still appreciate the value of their purchase. They can learn about placement after they buy, and decide for themselves if any effort at optimization of the room for listening is worth the effort and possible inconvenience, to them.

>>I shake my head that you recommend tiny triode monoblock for Soul.<<

The Tiny Triode is 25/25w of EL84 power with ability to run in tetrode mode at closer to 40/40w. Come listen to what 20/20w of 845 SET muscle does on Soul. The 845 will outmuscle the EL84 but those amps will be just fine at the poster's budget and in most rooms.

>>Whomever follows up this advise is setting themselves up for disappointment.<<

He asked whether those amps will sound good on Soul. They will and they won't sound choked in the midrange in any unusual way. An 845 SET amp will sound better, but he's looking at a $700 option. At that price, given the options, the Tiny Triode will sound beautiful and even within its dynamic limits listening volume will be high enough. Like any push-pull tube amp, it will let you know through escalating congestion and compression (unlike most SS amps which will simply degrade precipitously) that you're running out of dynamic headroom as you raise volume. But the clean watts are going to give him a punchy, fulfilling sound. Soul sounds substantially more lively than Druid at moderate power, due to the shove of the newer driver motor.

>>That is his business of course.<<

Ain't that the truth.

>>Miklorsmith: 45W is OK. 5 or 8 is just not.<<

Read more closely. He didn't say 45w. He wrote "45 SET," meaning his single-ended-triode amps using the 45 triode tube. He's referring to 2 watts or so on his Definitions.

***

Again, the point of contention here is that you want all the advice here to be "audiophile" targeted. I'm happy to give the audiophile view but my larger objective is to remove perceived barriers to interest in high-end audio. People who aren't yet in the tent but are investigating our realm use Google, Yahoo and Bing to explore and they find what we write here, in AudioAsylum, AudioCircle and similar. We aren't just talking to ourselves here.

Zu expressly designed Soul to be unfussy, for anyone who loves music in their life to buy and appreciate without complication. It's designed to sound shockingly good on a $300 receiver taking signal from a PC/DAC or a $49 CD player, as well as be worthy of the full gamut of obsessive audiophilia and the best possible gear that can be associated with it.

Zu succeeded, even beyond their prior such success with Druid 4-08.

In the grand scheme of available amplification for a person on a budget, used Tiny Triodes or anything else similar to them are going to sound impressive and convincing on a pair of Superfly. They really do simplify. Let's open doors, not shut them. Now if someone has a question about $7000 amps rather than $700, my answer might reflect a more demanding POV.

Phil

>>A non-audiophile music lover should stick with their 128kb mp3 and their ipod earbuds. Not that they need my encouragement to do this, as they are doing it already.<<

This is the surest way to make sure hi-fi dies as a discrete interest in the panoply of passions people can take up in life, beginning when they are young.

>>Anyone who is thinking about dropping $2K for speakers should care about sound, otherwise they are simply fool with money who wants to show off. In that case, there are flashier looking (and sounding) speakers I would point them to.<<

$2,000 isn't the same thing to everyone. To some people of little hi-fi enthusiasm but enormous music enthusiasm, it's a minor expense. There are far more looking for unfussy speakers who can deliver good sound than there are audiophiles, if they can be made aware of their options. Soul isn't a show-off speaker. It's the Model T or '32 Ford coupe with a flat-head V8, of high-end sound -- and that's a compliment. Such a buyer can care about sound and still not want to obsess on placement, or orient a room's function around their speakers. They can appreciate tonal correctness in a seriously umoptimized installation.

>>Contrary to you, I do not think this individual should not care about placement or flea watts. Room interaction and time smear with high dispersion soul FRD will blur attack and kill sustain. You will have no tone left, or very unremarkable tone, just as my Druids are off axis. There will be nothing to appreciate.<<

For whatever reason you're not reading what I write. I have never written that such a buyer "should not care about placement or flea watts." What I've written is that they should hot have to, to enjoy the essence of their loudspeaker choice. And in fact, Zu has customers who don't and won't. Terrific. At least they're in our tent and can move forward while exposing still more uninitiated people to hi-fi.

It's not a binary result. It's an overstatement to say there will be nothing to appreciate. Room interaction and time smear? The customer I'm referring to has no sense of those nuances, nor interest in getting bogged down by them. Yet they can still hear their system as spectacular to them. Get them interested, then educate.

>>Flea watts kill dynamics with congested midrange at very low listening levels.<<

No, in fact, they don't have to. In some cases, flea watt amps suffer from so much circuit simplicity that they lack sufficient voltage gain. You need a robust preamp, something more in the 18 - 22db of gain range, rather than today's all-too-common 12db gain preamp. Drive it well and a low listening level on a flea amp can be quite robust tonally and dynamically, within the power the amp can deliver. The congestion people are hearing with too little gain in their signal chain is sometimes coming from the source.

>>The congestion has to do with ease and comes long before you are anywhere close to clipping.<<

Many parameters to consider here. You can listen to flea-power amps that exhibit no discernible midrange congestion on Zu speakers, within natural limits and driven properly. Call up Gerritt and tell him his Yamamoto 45 amp is congested.

>>While Souls eliminate fiddling with gap height (which I like) I fear higher dispersion FRD will require additional room treatment (which I do not). But I have not heard so cannot say.<<

Room treatments. Another typical hi-fi botch. Many treated rooms sound worse than they started. Look, hi-fi isn't supposed to be this difficult. Use normal furnishings, bookshelves with books, blinds, curtains, whatever, to adjust a room. But what natural music performance environment is remotely close to perfect or treated for perfection? A grand total of *none.*

I installed a pair of Soul Superfly in a friend's room that has absolutely zero treatment and they sound sensational without further attention. Dispersion is better and considerabily less directional than Druid, but certainly narrower and without floor/ceiling effects mitigation of Definition. Getting the amp right with Zu speakers trumps by a wide margin anything you can do with room treatments or placement.

>>It is interesting you say Souls are "substantially more lively" than Druid as people went on and one about how lively Druids were. This must by massive hyperactivity. Although they are both rated 101dbW, in practise my Druids sounded like mid to high 90s, so it is possible that Souls are more sensitive even though their "official" rating is the same.<<

Druids, in their moment of sunshine, were a revelation in dynamic aliveness. But Soul is better although I'll say that it took my Druids three years to fully wake up. The efficiency -- or as Zu correctly states, the power transfer -- is the same but the "shove" is different. Shove and prevailing efficiency arent' the same. Two 101db/w/m speakers can differ in transient dynamic aliveness. Soul Superfly improves on Druid in this respect, and it's both an updated driver issue and the full-Griewe implementation in Soul that Druid lacks.

>>If Miklorsmith likes Definitions at 2W all I can say is his tastes differ widely from my own. I would not recommend his path to anyone.<<

Yes and yes. But Mike keeps higher power solid state amps around when he wants to rock out.

Phil

>>... I don't believe many of us actually put the work in...I actually broke out the laser ...<<

Funny. I'm tearing down both of my Zu systems tonight as I'm having custom maple tables delivered for my gear, and the laser is on the coffee table in front of me, ready for its assigned task when I reinstall everything tomorrow.

Phil

>>It seems you are dead set on setting up potential Soul owner for disappointment. I cannot dissuade you. There is no tone without proper alignment, it is dead. And I will not honor your "loud preamp" argument with response. If you want dead tone with the type of "dynamic" you get with loud pre-amp, and pay $3K+ for pleasure, then please do buy Soul, plops down, and pay flea watt tubes. Phil will appear and try to sell you more stuff.<<

In fact, no. You do not accurately represent my point of view nor what I wrote, and perhaps you haven't even read it thoroughly.

For you and I, tone can be dialed-in from where it starts with the speaker's and the system's intrinsic qualities. But a non-audiophile music lover can easily avoid what you refer to as "dead" sound or absence of tone. Alignment cannot create tone where it isn't intrinsically present. On the other hand, alignment can improve tone that is already intrinsic to the gear. It's just degrees. You and I might need more because we know it can be extracted. But we're not going to enlarge the community by insisting that everyone must be so precision-oriented to have fun with music via hi-fi. And certainly, that's not what Zu wishes to enforce. I want people to buy the right amp for any Zu FRD-based speaker so they have intrinsic tone, and then they can choose how far they want to go in system optimization themselves. You won't find me recommending endless incremental purchases to reach a goal.

I didn't recommend a "loud preamp." What I wrote explicitly is that some low-power SET amps (not all, and not always low powered) have lower-than-normal total voltage gain. If you pair a low gain preamp with a low-gain power amp, wherein the input sensitivity of the power amp will not allow it to be driven to full power from normal sources via said preamp, you will have more noise, less tone, and "dead" dynamic life. It's not a matter of having a "loud" preamp, but having one with neither too little nor too much gain. Too much gain presents its own problems, but if you don't have enough gain for a particular source to drive the amp to full power, you won't even get those full 2 or 3 watts.

Now, you haven't found me recommending flea-powered amps. Not once. I've written the opposite. 20 - 60 watts is the sweet spot. Although there is a strong argument for McIntosh MC501s or even MC1201s on 101db/w/m Zu speakers. The sense of complete lack of dynamic restriction from 500 - 1200w is sonically valuable if the rest of the amp is right. But, again, there is a group of people whose commitment to a tube (e.g. 45, 2a3, 50) is so firm that what they're really looking for is a speaker than can leverage their amp, rather than an amp that can leverage their speaker. I understand this. Gerritt at Zu loves the Yamamoto A-08 for reasons that satisfy him. There are many others. For that kind of listener, a Zu speaker will perform beautifully, and in fact if you are set on having only 2 watts, Soul Superfly will work better than anything Zu has built to-date.

People who like flea-power in amplification usually arrive there after having had more conventional amp topologies and power levels. So, they know what they are doing. I'm not concerned about the 2 watt crowd, because very few neophytes start their hi-fi evolution with 2w SET. Those that end up with flea power and like it, will be happy with Superfly. It's just not me. I use 25w 845 SET monoblocks on Definitions, and 25w PSET 300B monoblocks on Druids.

Phil

My basic position is that Zu Soul is a "very big tent" speaker. A huge range of people can / will find satisfaction with it. I also take the position that with Zu FRD speakers, the most important decision after buying the speakers is the amp to drive them. This decision will drive the character of the system and it overwhelms room tweaking or anything else. It doesn't saddle the Soul buyer with a high expense -- there are many affordable amps that will sound good -- but anyone inclined to spend for extraordinary quality will find that Soul can fully take advantage of outstanding amplifiers.

Buy them for music, learn about hi-fi through what they can show you if you care to, regardless how much experience you bring to the transaction. If you don't care about the hi-fi aspects, you'll enjoy them anyway (perhaps more). Music enjoyment is the first objective. No one cares about imaging when out hearing a bar band, but jump factor and dynamics definitely count.

Phil

>>Placement and room is how your low MF, upper bass, and bass will sound, regardless of amps.<<

Nope, don't agree. Especially with tube amps the range of driver control has a large effect on the full spectrum of low-frequency sound. Lots of minor, non-audiophile ways to mitigate room behavior, but the amp/speaker interface is set and with Zu, no amount of room optimization will change the character imposed by the amp/FRD synergy (or not). With Zu, it overwhelms room factors as a first order priority and driver for what you'll hear.

>>We listen to a combination of speakers + rooms and the industry has yet to create a speaker system that manages rooms in a truly easy way. It would be, I imagine, something with omni bass, plus very directional HF, plus some kind of automatic dEQ. I do not like dipole bass (which can get pretty omni) nor do I like dEQ, but this would be true "plop it down" system. Bose I imagine might have something like this but I have no interest in them either.<<

No one hears music in a perfect room, not even the primary performance. I am close to the investors in Audyssey, and have heard their consumer, commercial and behind-the-scenes developments. They'll "correct" your room. Whether doing so sounds better is debatable. It's not that they don't make the corrections they claim to make, it's what they have to do to the original signal to make them.

I've heard treated rooms, "advanced" acoustics concert halls. All of it disappointing. Anyone old enough to have heard a performance in the allegedly "perfect" for its time Avery Fisher Hall? Despite referencing attributes of Symphony Hall in Boston, BBN hosed the sound. It never really got fixed.

Rooms have acoustic anomalies. They can be mitigated with minor adjustment and normal furnishings. If someone wants to go further, have at it. Not me. There's another way: live within the room. I want hi-fi out in the open living spaces. I want people to be able to relate to it in their own homes. Obsessive audiophilia is knifing hi-fi for a steady bleed-out. Do what you want to optimize your Superfly installation, but don't fear you can't get good sound if you don't. Wire them up; place them logically; start having fun. They work with anything from a $300 HK receiver to $25,000 SET amps to big McIntosh power. It's as worry-free as a speaker gets in 2010. Have fun.

Phil

>>Enjoy playing with your amps and preamps. And cables.<<

Well, I've made no changes in preamps, amps or cables in five years, and that's for two complete Zu/SET systems. I did upgrade my Druids to 4-08 parts and I traded in my Definition 1.5s to get Def 2.0s, to get rid of the MDF cabinet glare in the earlier version. My turntables are 30 years old.

The positioning of my speakers in both systems has not changed since two hours after first installation. There are no room treatments other than the mitigation of normal household furnishings. Meanwhile, by far the best time I spent on audo outside of listening to music in the past 25 years was the solid week of investigation of coupling, isolation and general resonance control I was able to carve out last year.

Of several families of options, explored in combinations and in isolation, what came out on top? If you use a turntable, placing it on cones in turn resting on Aurios media bearings will be a revelation. The improvement exceeds any cartridge and tonearm upgrade I've ever done, by a wide margin. If you use a digital disc player, magnetic levitation (when space and low player weight render it feasible) drives more improvement than upgrading to a player 10X the price of the one you have. When the player is too heavy for that, go with Aurios Classic media bearings or similar. THESE were the vivid, dramatic improvements, once Zu speakers were in place.

Point is, by getting the amp/speaker combinations right, my systems have been quite stable in configuration as well as where I placed them. The one area of changeout has been digital players. The other area of interest prompting acquisition is analog, for which I indulge in more phono cartridges that I actually need.

A speaker designer and maker (not Zu in this case) visited me after I got Zu speakers and revamped my amplification. He looked at my systems and after registering his objections about having coffee tables in the listening area of each system, and lamenting the presence of flat panel TVs, he asked me how I arrived at my speaker placement. I told him the truth. I bought Zu shortly after moving into a new house. I looked at the rooms, and on visual assessment identified where the speakers would go both for best sound and functional compatibility with each room. I also showed him how far I'd moved the speakers from their initial position during the first hour listening. There was less than three inches of movement in any direction, from first plop down.

He said he was sure he could do much better if I'd allow him to. I marked the floor with masking tape to reference the original position and let him have at it. He was competent and he makes good speakers. We ended up back in the same spots, he admitting that I had already found the right and best locations for the rooms. Of course I knew this when I let him indulge his confidence. Now, I've been doing this for decades and have moved around a lot, faced with having to sort many rooms as a result. I also once worked in the business and sorted placement for many customers. But I've never found it even remotely difficult, time-consuming or esoteric in any way. Live with the room and appreciate its voicing. Tone is intrinsic to the gear or it's not there at all. You can get tone from a jail cell if the gear is toneful to begin with. Put another way, you can hear when a guitar player has achieved exceptional tone in acoustically unfavorable circumstances -- and they're almost all acoustically unfavorable. You can hear it walking down Sixth Street in Austin almost any night before you even enter a room. Zu speakers are like that. They have intrinsic tone under even the worst circumstances.

My time spent on hi-fi now is almost all music listening rather than gear futzing. Druids were easy for me to sort out, with respect to amplification. With Definitions I willingly ran through five months of experimentation before settling on 845 SET. After that, all set. Here's one thing you can count on: from the best sound you can get from your new Zu speakers in the first three days, everything will meaningfully improve for the next two years if you do nothing more than play music.

I've been spending my own money on hi-fi for 40 years now and the most significant thing about Zu speakers is that they arrested the search for better sound and eliminated the frustrations of audiophilia, with the result that I've bought more music in the last five years than in the prior 20. I think Soul will make this true for many others. Given its compact size, price, amp-friendliness and low-tweak set-up, after a single astute amp choice within your budget (or perhaps you already own one), music will regain its rightful claim on your money and time spent on audio.

Phil

>>I have spikes coming from Zu, hopefully tomorrow but am wondering if I should just place it on some 13x13 mdf with the hard floor footers.<<

I don't recommend this. It's better to have the speaker on an MDF or other material tile on carpet via the hard floor nubs than setting them on carpet directly without spikes, but spikes planted firmly into/through the carpet will give you and audibly more planted, firmed sound. Now if the MDF tile has spikes driven into the carpet and then the Soul on nubs is on the tile, that loosely emulates the Essence' double plinth. But why complicate things when spikes in the Soul cabinet will solve the problem in the simplest way. A 13"x13" tile lying on carpet still allows movement by the speaker sitting on it.

If you do take the tile-on-carpet option, forget nasty MDF and do it with maple.

A friend of mine partial to carpet once solved this problem in an interesting and effective way. He had his carpet cut out for his speaker footprints, inlaid parquet on the exposed floor, and put his speakers on firm footing directly on wood. Sonically, better than carpet spikes or a tile-on-carpet.

Phil

I've been using mostly tube and occasionally Class A ss amps continually since buying my first component amp in 1970. Other than advising anyone to keep such an amp away from the HVAC thermostat, I've never had an amp put out enough heat to determine how often my AC runs. So other than the room being very small and the amp sitting next to the thermostat, it's hard for me to imagine a different amp for climate control reasons.

I know people who use tube amps except when they run their "summer" configuration around solid state. I haven't sensed any difference in their incidence of AC. Anyway, I know the F1 releases some heat. If you like Nelson Pass amps, you might like the M2. Very clever and voiced to be more like a tube amp, including passive magnetic gain in the input stage.

You already have a great amp. If you really need a cooler running solid state amp, consider a Quad 909, an evolution of Peter Walker's excellent current dumpiing amp, the Quad 405.

Phil

>> I did not get the "more planted" sound that Phil refers to, my bass was just even more eaten.<<

Right, you won't. Druid and Soul are different. Soul has tall spikes and the finger vents in the bottom are insensitive to floor gap, unlike Druid. Druid on spikes in carpet -- takes some real attention to get right. Soul on its spikes on carpet -- simple.

Phil

>>What is the appropriate height for the Superflys?<<

Hard to say what's going on without knowing more about your overall situation. Soul is intended to be fairly insensitive to floor gap; generally no user adjustment needed. In setting up a Soul Superfly system in the buyer's carpeted room, I found height adjustment proved both unnecessary and not meaningful, short of killing sound by taking out the spikes and placing the speakers directly on the carpet.

Phil

>>Insensitive as in "not as critical" or insensitive as in irrelevant?<<

Meaning not critical, verging on not relevant. Large differences can have some effect but the design doesn't intend requirement for futzing with floor gap height. The Griewe scheme is now primarily internal via the cartridge and the finger vents on the bottom. You can find *some point* in the gap range where approaching no floor gap is not good but short of heading hard for zero, it should not be a critical factor. You need 1/4" gap or more. You'll notice in Zu's own photographs of the speakers, the spikes are quite tall.

>>Also I feel like presentation has been different higher vs. lower, though in fairness I didn't have it perfectly balanced when they were higher. I broke out the bubble level when I was working for the jewel case height.<<

Depending on many other acoustic factors you might be sensitive to differences in presentation associated with small changes in driver height. Or, as I said, if you head for zero on the floor gap less than 1/4", things will change. You may notice diffrences without having a clear idea which is actually better from a fidelity standpoint. No one can tell you what you're hearing isn't heard, but from a physics standpoint, Soul's design removes the floor gap from performance influence from 1/4" and taller.

Phil

>>Phil does not believe that room impacts sound, especially in bass.<<

Uh...I haven't written or said this, ever. I said some people may not care enough to do anything about it, yet still find $2000 - $3000 speakers worthwhile.

>>he says that what you put your Souls on does not matter.<<

Nope, didn't say that, either. I said I don't recommend placing speakers on an MDF slab on top of carpet, and explained why.

>>It is "floor height insensitive' because it say so on the box.<

What I said is that Soul is gap height insensitive by design. And it is, above 1/4". At 1/4" or less, it isn't.

>>In reality, put different speaker on carpet, wood, stone, you hear difference in bass.<<

That's a different issue than the question raised, which was a query about the right gap height. But placing any speaker on different surfaces and hearing a bass difference is more a matter of anchorage, speaker-to-floor interface chosen, than specific material. You can manage different material interfaces to the same end.

>>Also, height of speaker can have impact on what you hear because super tweeter is very directional, and that impact tonal balance.<<

Which I stated, in different terms.

>>This is not about controlling gap height (which happen in druid) but about placement and room interaction effecting tone.<<

It is about controlling gap height if that's the variable by which he's hearing differences. As I also said, there are many other factors, room properties being merely a subset of influences. A given user may or may not care to mitigate them.

Phil

>>You say one thing, then you say opposite thing. This zig and zag you do, it is like talking to serpent.<<

I think you must simply not be reading carefully what I write. Maybe your busy or just don't want to; I can't say. But in nearly every rejoinder you've misstated a position I clearly articulated in a prior post. My POV in this thread has been consistent. But I've separated things that I might worry about (which is not as much as you're concerned with) from the realities of others who see no reason to be so precise about their sound. Like this comment/question of yours:

"I am curious as to why you are interested in having sound good in all positions, ie. have bass be smooth while walking around."

An audiophile might grok it, but it's a ridiculous question to a music lover - more of whom Zu would like to sell to.

>>My suspicion is that wide dispersion FRD will improve sound at all positions but make sound worse in listening position.<<

I'm sure you'll find this not to be true if you decide to spring for Soul Superfly. I noted that the new FRD has "widER" dispersion, which is not quite the same as saying "wide." It's not nearly as wide as, say, Definition. It's wide enough. You still can get a focused, toneful, room-minimizing sound in a single listening position if that's what you really want to set up for, which I understand. Many do not want that and won't feel victimized by a beamy speaker.

>>Druid FRD which measures ragged (and I only between above upper bass but below HF where Greiwe loading and essence tweeter should not be issue).<<

I went roundabout with Sean and Adam on this once. They objected to juxtaposing the terms "Griewe" and "loading." It was reminiscent of trying to get a succinct explanation of B3 in their cables. Lacking a more precise nomenclature, we used the combined term "Griewe Model" for the rest of the conversation. Well, it turns out the Griewe scheme has influence on the behavior and sound of the FRD right through its range. Druid really didn't have much Griewe model in it, but just enough to be beneficiary of an idea. Essence and Soul are full Griewe model speakers, Soul being a further refinement over Essence, which you can hear in the nearly same bass performce of Essence in a smaller cabinet, and an audibly smoother more open midrange than Druid or Essence.

Phil