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 2 responses by mihilli

I've never heard the Tones but apparently they have the same tonal signature as the Druids with a bit less bottom end. I had a pair of Druids for about 3 months which I then traded up to the Definitions.

Like you, when I 1st got the Druids I thought they were basically crap. No bottom end, the tonal characteristics were all over the place, I was pretty much ready to send them back. But after talking to the boys at Zu and a couple other people who hang out on various forums (including A'gon) I decided to give them a bit more time settle down.

And the transformation after a couple hundred hours was startling. After around 400 hours, I just plain thought they were a damn fine pair of speakers and would have been quite happy to live with them as my primary speakers (but I was so pleased I wanted to see if the Defnitions really were "that much better").

After breakin, the Druids had a nice tight bottom end and were very balanced across the entire tonal spectrum. Maybe a slight hump in the upper midrange but nothing that jumped out at you and persoanlly I like midranbge so I didn't mind.

And the dynamics are just stunning. Probably 1 of the things I enjoyed most about the Druids was at low volume, it still sounded like music and not just background noise. The reality is, most people can't listen to music at hi volume alot of the time so to be able to listen at low volume and still enjoy the experience is a wonderful thing.

Anyway, if you can, I would recommend hanging in there awhile longer to see how the Tones develop, if possible, give tehm a good blast for a few days to speed up the breakin process.
Yeah Stew, I was pretty dubious that they would change that significantly as well but change they did!

Good luck.