Zu Tone/Druid Tonal Anomalies


I like to hear anyone with Zu speakers if they have had a similar problem. I recently acquired a pair of Zu Tone speakers. Certain aspects about them are very good, such as soundstaging and speed, but it seems to me that unless my pair are defective, there is a serious issue with tonal accuracy. Right away when I set them up, I noticed that they sounded quite hollow. I then made a lot of measurements, both close miked and at the listening seat, with both a Behringer DEQ2496 and an RS sound level meter (using both pink noise and frequency generation). In both cases, it fairly closely matches what I am hearing, which is a severe rise in the upper midrange. I am trying to use a Z-Systems RDQ-1 digital EQ device to correct this problem, and have gotten much closer to a natural tone and flatter curve. What this required was a 7.6 db cut centered at 1.4kHz at a width of 1.5 octaves. This is quite a cut! For reference, I've had two other sets of speakers (Monitor Audio GR60 and NHT ST-4) in the room at almost exactly the same position, neither of which had this problem. I spoke to Sean Casey at Zu about the problem, and he thought it might be room interaction, which might be true to a point, but the anomaly is just too severe, and makes this point less viable since my other speakers didn't show the problem. I noticed in another thread here, that a couple of people heard what seemed like a similar problem with the Druids.

I am very curious as to what others have experienced with any of the Zu speakers in this regard.

Thanks,
Stew
smeyers

Showing 3 responses by matrix

Don't Eq or you are not using this setup right but might need subwoofer, Guarantee its now showing you the equipment problems. If there is any hollow sound its my empty head with my system. But fact is using the druids or Tone I could not really comment much cause they are for very specific character music in my opinion, not full range rock music or anything with a lot of weight, cause they will sound not bright but etched. Definitions are perfect especially with the smoother midrange running 2 drivers totally spreads this out, and of course the powered 8 woofers round everything out to the max. So if you got something in the chain causing these spikes or whatever you need to try other preamps, cd whatever, cause it will happen, I had to move to extremly well controlled and very very smooth equipment, these speakers with 10" full range are like looking into large hi-definition window they will pick up repeat and amplify everything in your chain, and remember you have no compression circuit to cushion for you(no crossover) they are raw and will sound raw. For example if you have a sony CD or DVD player you will hear it. They are super sensitive, and by the way I do not like the Zu IBIS cables, they sound hard and etched too, the most warm cables in the lineup and perfect in my opinion are the Zu Libtec's. This could make a big difference, but I don't know what cables you are using. Beyond that yep a room will kill you if it does not like your speaker.
The only off and very un-likely thing is, are they wired in phase? cause that will give you the exact sound you are describing, even if you have them hooked right maybe the driver inside is not.
Yeah the definitions are pretty much drop in place and play, less issues with positioning and height and all that vs. the other 2, so I guess let her rip for a couple weeks and hope it starts to straighten out. However, I would remove the eq while breaking in so that they just do there thing and get all natural signal to smooth out.