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
Glreno, I'm trying two different sets of tube amps.

1) AES Sixpacs with KT-66 tubes

2) Wright Sound Mono 10's with EH Gold 2A3 tubes, and now with Sophia Electric Princess 300b 2.5v tubes

Both are connected in balanced mode from a BAT VK-5i preamp. I also use a Muse 296 DAC fed from a Krell MD-20 transport.
All good. I have a Mons Audio PSE 2A3. It wouldn't drive the tweeter in my Decware 3s, and I ended up with a sound something like a bad tube in the mids. I was able to use the tweeter attenuation to get rid of it, but had no headroom at that point. That's why I bought the Druids, which work very well now with the Mons amp. I also borrowed a pair of the Mono 10s to try, and they worked quite well with the Decwares.
Smeyers, You have a problem upstream. The speakers are not hissing - they are conveying hiss generated elsewhere in the system. This problem only occurs because your speakers are so efficient.

Drubin, The "sweet spot" is as wide as my sofa. When they are set up properly the Druids are magical. The words to describe what these speakers do have already been wasted by irresponsible reviewers on decidedly inferior product.
There is no hype on these at all. They really rule.