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Zu speakers, listening imnpressions

ke4mcl

ke4mcl

Super Member
Banned
i got a chance to listen to 2 pairs of these this weekend..
http://www.zucable.com/

disclaimer..
this the opinion of an audio un-professional that has been an audio hobbyist since about 10 years old and currently maintains a planetarium theater for a living.

they are beautiful cabinets with an interesting driver setup. i wasn't very impressed with their sound. they sound very lively with lots of low end and crisp highs but the imaging was awful. they had amazing sound that could be pinpointed to each tweeter.

i gave each pair about 5 minutes and was quickly annoyed by the lack of spaciousness in the sound field. i think the weak point imaging wise is the tweeter. something is up there. they sound great but have zero spaciousness if that makes any sense.
 
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Hi, curious how they were set up and what electronics were used with them. I think the Essence is a pretty big step up from the Druid, especially with the new tweeter. I thought this brought about a more balanced sound, whereas the older super-tweeter just didn't get it for me.

I can see how this speaker is a love them or hate them type of thing. Nothing wrong with that! I find they sound pretty good fairly wide apart, but toed in towards the listener a bit, with space behind them as well. Every room is different too. While not the deepest bass, what is there definately kicks!

Tim
 
they ran the speakers off different electronics throughout the time i was there. i didn't keep much track of the sources but the pin point tweeter showed itself pretty consistently no matter what they hooked to them. they were toed in with the listening position being about 10 feet or so from the speakers.
 
On a positive note, I found they had an amazing lack of bass, terrible imaging, shrill, phasey, driving an icepick into your ears sound.
 
Man, I have to grab a set of these. :D

Maybe the "were only here for the music" means they are not there for the sound?
 
dnewma04 said:
On a positive note, I found they had an amazing lack of bass, terrible imaging, shrill, phasey, driving an icepick into your ears sound.
Click to expand...

Sounds like somebody at Zu maybe don't understand phasing real good. :D

Regards,
Gordon.
 
There are times when the sound of a speaker seems to belie it's response graph, but not often. The Zu Druid definitely doesn't fit in with that group because it's sounds almost exactly like the response graph.

frequency_on1530.gif
 
dnewma04 said:
On a positive note, I found they had an amazing lack of bass, terrible imaging, shrill, phasey, driving an icepick into your ears sound.
Click to expand...

So... state of the art early 21st Century audiophile loudspeakers, then?

;-)

dnewma04 said:
There are times when the sound of a speaker seems to belie it's response graph, but not often. The Zu Druid definitely doesn't fit in with that group because it's sounds almost exactly like the response graph.

frequency_on1530.gif
Click to expand...
uff da.
 
Yep, must have been those darned icepicks in my ears, after that I couldn't hear a thing.

I have only heard the Druids and the new Essence, while not for me, I thought they sounded pretty good overall.

I still prefer my Magnepans though. Enjoy the music! Tim
 
dnewma04 said:
There are times when the sound of a speaker seems to belie it's response graph, but not often. The Zu Druid definitely doesn't fit in with that group because it's sounds almost exactly like the response graph.

frequency_on1530.gif
Click to expand...

Good God, did something throw up on the high frequencies of that graph?
 
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