Zu Soul Superfly

I gave the Virtue Audio TWO.2 4 days straight to burn in with my speakers while I was away from home and things have improved greatly. Class D amplification may be a very legitimate option for these speakers.

Its a trade off of strong points between the two amplifiers.

The presentation of the Virtue is musical warm and relaxed with the Zus while the F1 is more neutral and aggressive leading to a more raw presentation.

The Virtue seems to throw a larger soundstage than the Firstwatt and may be a little more delicate and neuanced while the Firstwatt kicks the Virtues' tush in the bass impact department although the Virtue is still nice and extended in the low end.

I should mention this Virtue TWO.2 is using batteries rather than AC.

I'm getting the feeling that it will be difficult to make these speakers sound bad.

Well, I for one have broken down and ordered these without a preview session. After reading some of the posts here, I can hardly wait until "mid to late August" to receive them. It is promising when I hear comments about how versatile they seem to be.

I took delivery of Superfly #'s 21 and 22 (11th pair, presumably) on June 29 and am still putting some break-in time on them. They have replaced a pair of B-rated (Stereophile) speakers that I still like very much, but not nearly as much now as I used to. I have listened to them with both SS and lower powered tube amps (the latter is typically sweeter, though for me not necessarily better). The only music source tried so far is digital (Apple TV) running through a Theta DAC. All I can say is that for $1,800 (plus $109 shipping), the Soul Superfly's are the best audio money I have ever spent. I had not previously listened to Zu speakers, and ordered the Superfly's based upon comments/reviews of other Zu speakers. Construction and finish are excellent, and the overall listening impression is (for me in my room) much bigger than their size would suggest, and they go much lower than I had imagined they could. Detail in the highs is very good, not great, but where they REALLY shine for me is in the mids. Voices and single instruments are particularly clean. If there is something else out there that is even close at this price, I'd be very surprised.

So the questions are surely:

Would you feel the sane if you'd paid $2,600?

How big is your room?

How is it furnished?

What do you think is missing from the top end and what would we have to pay to get that?

Sorry, for all these questions but I'm an impattirnt purchaser waiting for my own and I am craving detail and pics from others.

Actualt, how about some pics :)

Mike

Kenp88,
I would just pull the tweeter on that myself, normally Zu hot glues the single capacitor to the back of the supertweet with the resistor, mills normally, you can remove it, and replace with a much better cap to get the highs more extended and silky. I believe their current cap in most models is the Kimber cap on the standard setup, its not bad, but I don't like them, to hard and flat sounding in my opinion. They use to use the Solen fastcaps 10 years ago and then started using Mundorf Silver/oils for the higher end models and special editions.

This model obviously comes in the "Superfly" with a Mundorf cap I believe. I would just do this yourself if you want for much less money, a pair is not too bad for these caps, but pricey.

I found the better caps for the money are the Clarity MR's and the Jantzen superior Z's. You can do a pair of Jantzens for about 20 bucks! Most of the Zu super tweets have a single resistor and a 1uF cap or 2uF cap and thats it. Easy to find out calling them or pulling it yourself by just removing the 4 screws. One caution however is that the Big time Mundorf, Clarity caps etc... Are PHYSICALLY as large as the tweeter, and when mounted to the back they take up the entire size and just fit thru the tweeters mounting hole. This is just he same if Zu does it for you, I have modified several in the past.