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 miklorsmith

The Druids I owned showed no such spike. At all. They were tonally mellow and dynamically large. The Definitions I have in my room are activating some wierd room modes that I am working to deal with, but it's not a function of the speakers.

Sounds like a room issue to me. If you measure and take pictures of your room, Sean will be happy to advise you on the best ways to deal with it.
Well, the Definitions in my room currently are showing a 12 db rise in the same area you're talking about and higher. I'm measuring from the listening seat and the rise is obvious there. In fact, it's so obvious that I can hear it ringing off the glass bar and window that my listening seat are between. It is not pleasant and is something I'm working on through acoustics and will be aquiring a TacT to help as well.

With most music, the notes are not prolonged enough to pressurize that frequency. Piano and blazing guitar do light it up though. I assure you it isn't something I prize.

The Druids didn't do this, and I think they're actually rolled off around 2 db in the presence region. I'm no expert but I seriously doubt it's the speakers.