Anyone heard Zu Druid speakers?

I own both the Druids and the Definitions. Go to Audiocircle.com and look for the Zu Druids thread under the Two Channel section, for some comparative comments. I intend to post a user review of both here soon. In the meantime, feel free to email me questions or post here after reading Audiocircle.

Phil

Soundstage on the Druids is fully-dimensioned (appropriately wide, tall and deep) when you have them positioned properly for your room and seating position, and you're seated to take advantage of the resulting soundstage. It's not difficult to find the right placement. A little intuition on toe-in for a start and progressive adjustment from there will help you snap them to spatial focus in 10 minutes or so. The imaging sweet spot isn't one-head-width's tight like a Quad ESL. For near and mid-field listening you have some latitude in your position but tightest focus is perhaps in the seating space of 2, maybe 3 people. That said, imaging fall-off outside the sweet spot is gradual, and when you can get away from the speakers, this issue becomes quite uncritical.

What will be noticeable on first listen from a near/mid-field position is that the soundstage is elevated somewhat, as though you are close enough to a stage to sense the reality that the performers are a little above you. The FRD is almost 4 feet above the floor.

The 6 Moons review pretty much nails the Druid. Surprising really, to see a product reviewed so closely to my actual experience with it. It is a speaker of unusual immediacy and intimacy that outputs coherent life-like sound, sacrificing nothing in terms of dynamics to produce real tone.

Phil

Missed this question. Answer is, Druids + Method sub are excellent but I wouldn't peg the combination at 90% of Defintion. The bass extension is only part -- and the smallest part -- of the Definition's improvement over the Druids. The flatter frequency response, greater articulation of fine detail and more effortless bloom of sound dynamics in the Definition are not equaled by adding the sub to the Druid. It barely closes the gap, IMO. I think subjectively that Druids alone are 60% of Definitions for <1/3 the price, and adding the sub maybe nudges the combo to 65% of the Defs. The Definition is more open, more projecting, more articulate, more dynamic, more scintillating than the Druid and that's before you notice anything about the bass.

Phil

I was at VTV. Now, keep in mind I own Druids. I didn't find any room at the show where equipment I was familiar with sounded anywhere close to what I know it can sound like in a home, so there was a general problem with lackluster tone, even in horn-based systems. The room characteristics were terrible in all respects. In the Zu room, the Druids exhibited flashes of the character I know them to have but most of what I heard was far below what I get out of my own Druids. Compared to what could be heard in other rooms, Zu's setup was competitive but not as convincing as it should have been. Sean and Adam also bring music strongly skewed to what they like, which is energetic, often musically dense and sometimes not well recorded. Their music choices are always fun, however, so people hang out and enjoy the content with not much obsessing about the gear itself. Also, the hotel carpet turned out to be thicker than usual for hotel carpet. On Saturday at VTV, the Druids in the Zu room didn't have the proper spike height for the conditions, which of course affects performance. This was corrected on Sunday with the arrival of taller spikes. Zu is still getting their act together with respect to refining their show configuration and practices.

Zu also uses a pro audio dac which they like alot. I've heard it twice now and I don't share their enthusiasm for it. It seems to bleed character from music, to me.

They did not bring Definitions because they knew the room would be too small for a proper demo. You really have to be able to locate your ears at least 10' from the Def to hear its sound integrate. It is definitely not a near-field speaker.

On the other hand, when Zu had their own demo session in L.A. in August in a ground-floor room with stable floor, 24' x 32' space, and all their speakers present, they were able to show stellar sound quality.

I did not like the sound quality in the Shindo room. It was clean but dry and bleached of character. The VRS front end may have been a factor in addition to the room itself, and the Shindo amps were an unknown to me.

I also don't know how broken-in either pair of VTV show Druids were. There's no substitute for getting then in your house and breaking them in for a month. I know Zu put the exhibited Druids through the factory blast for break-in, but it's also known not to be enough for a new speaker that is then packed up and shipped.

General reaction nevertheless by listeners in the Zu room was highly favorable and while I think the essential qualities were communicated by the demo, the startling qualities that give Druids a sense of intimate ultra-reality were not vivid except on a few occasions when a highly-energetic, dynamic, recording that was also nicely recorded was used. The room was just a black hole for acoustic energy.

Phil

At VTV, one recording Sean and Adam played in the Zu room delivered what I thought Druids are capable of, and that was a Chinese recording using a combination of western and Chinese instruments, and I don't know the name of the recording or the performer(s). Everything else played while I was in the room, while interesting and fun musically, impressed many people but did not deliver what I hear from my Druids every day. Zu did use the Consonance Droplet CDP but on Saturday was sending its digital output to the dbx DAC. On Sunday, when I wasn't there, they apparently spent some of the time demo'ing from the Droplet's analog outputs to the Melody preamp. I'll go so far as to say that if I'd heard Druids in that Arcadia hotel room before buying them -- and that includes in both the Zu and Shindo rooms -- I might not have followed through on the purchase. The truly impressive demo was listening to how much dynamic energy at decent tonal quality was available from the miniscule Z.Vex ImpAmp. Now that was a motivator because it made clear how much amplifier latitude one has with Druids.

I have tried many amps on the Druids and I don't find them especially sensitive to amp topologies, but certainly revealing of their character. A 300B amp with flabby bass will be revealed for holographic tonally rich midrange, smooth spray on top and, well...flabby bass. The absence of a crossover makes the loss of focus and detail in an otherwise good push-pull tube amp starkly evident compared to a good SET. A tonally neutral, smooth and unfatiguing solid state amp like a Red Wine comes through as exactly that while a high power silicon beast delivers tons of slam indelicately. An 845 SET sounds more objective and punchy than an equivalent 300B. Differences between EL34 and KT88 are obvious. There is lots of room for preference. BUT, in every environment except those Arcadia hotel rooms (and apparently at the Marriott in Denver) the Druid has an aliveness, tonal richness frequency accuracy and utter lack of fatigue that seems elusive to reproduce in the massively dysfunctional hotel setting. I wish it were otherwise. How Zu will create customer touch points in environments like shows where they can't control their circumstances remains a marketing problem to solve for them. Again, in my opinion, everyone at VTV was similarly handicapped and nothing there sounded good enough to me to compel a purchase if I had only those demos to go on. In general, the manufacturers in the industry should theoretically benefit from the direct exposure to customers, but it's possible that these hotel room shows for the public (as opposed to the dealers in the trade) actually slow decisions to buy, on products that absolutely require listening for evaluation.

I am willing to evangelize Zu speakers not because they are perfect, but because they solve in one stroke an intersection of many problems commonly cited here and elsewhere by audiophiles as causes for dissatisfaction. The catalytic effect of a 101db/w/m speaker that is frequency accurate, missing the shout of most HE designs, crossoverless overall and filterless 40Hz - 12kHz and with extended treble and bass with uniform transient behavior top to bottom transforms system character and makes the power amp the center of gravity of the system. You will find a lot of dissatisfaction and fatigue factors you might have once ascribed to sources and cable, preamp and power amp, have actually been instigated by crossovers in the mid-band of your speakers, along with speaker inefficiency and wild loads cornering you into restricted amp choices. The Zu design sets you free of all that, but frankly by far the best way to realize the benefits is to take the 60 day money-back offer. For me months later I am near the end of changes having cascaded through 2 systems because of Zu, and I have to ascribe to their speaker designs and my patience in assimilating all the downstream effects they drive, the greatest leap forward in fidelity I've been able to create in 30 years of making good choices. Someone else might bias their equipment array to steer their Zu system to have some different traits from mine, but that essential holistic character will be unmistakable. I just haven't heard it simulated in a hotel lodging room. Perhaps it can't be.

If you hear Druids or Definitions in my house and you don't like them, well then it's settled -- you just don't like them. Zu gives you the opportunity to settle the issue in the room you know best -- your own.

Phil

I don't know how long you've had your Druids, Stew, but that "hollow" sound is common when new, needing break-in. On first listen when I got my Druids, I thought the same thing but chose to give them time to get used because the rest of it -- the top-to-bottom transient consistency, tone, overall speed and lack of crossover effects made it right to give them some time.

Phil