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Zu Soul Supreme Recap -- Owners, what are your preferred system pairings with them?

I'll save a long backstory, but in short I've got the Zu Soul Supremes and I absolutely love them for what they do, at least in my relatively small (13x15x9) listening room.  I've had them a couple years as a follow-on to previous Zu speakers (Unions and Cubes, which I still own).  Those followed some vintage Altec horns (16 ohm Valencias and 19s)--which I love, but love the Zus more for daily listening.  Sean recommended the Supremes over the Druids at the time for the size of my listening room, although I suspect the Druids would have been as good or better regardless.

My interest is to hear from other Zu Soul Supreme owners...not may posts in this forum from owners that I can find.  I'd prefer to focus this discussion on the Soul Supremes, as there is a lot of great info already on the Druids and Definitions (which I assume are more prevalent in the wild), even though I'm sure have a ton of overlap in system synergy.

So...

What system components are you finding to be great/phenomenal matches to the Soul Supremes, what have you compared them to, and what hasn't worked as well?   Anyone running them with what you consider to be really high-end gear?  I'm super curious to see how far these speakers can go before a speaker upgrade makes way more sense.

Jay
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keithr
1,304 posts
 
Great read - thanks for your feedback on the various amps and combinations.  Nice to read the LTA plays in that league - although reported QC issues prevented me from ordering one.

Did you roll the tubes on the Melody? Pretty important as the stock ones stink.

Fyi- Definitions have a higher power requirement than Druids...


parsons's avatar
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parsons OP
149 posts
 
I have rolled the tubes on the Melody a couple of times.  I'm running Elrogs in my Thoress monoblocks and they are the best tubes I've found for those amps, but they seemed to actually be slightly too aggressive in the Melody, oddly.  I got ahold of a new pair of PSVane WE Replica 845s and those are my faves between the 4-5 sets of 845s I own in this Melody amp.  Myself and others posted our thoughts on a number of these 845s in another a-gon thread if interested.  Agree, the Melody branded 845s are not awful, but can be improved upon IMHO.
rocky1313
80 posts
 
I am pairing my ZU Omen Mark 2 speakers  with upgraded drivers now 103 ...16 ohm .... they sound very good with my Kenwood KA 8100 integrated Amp.
hifi-buck
8 posts
 
So are you still enjoying your ZU Soul Supreme's?
parsons's avatar
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parsons OP
149 posts
 
Yeah, I still own them in spite of having sold almost all my other Zus (including the Druid 6s I "replaced" them with).  They are great little speakers for their size and purpose and really respond well to amp changes.  In the right room (slightly smaller rooms) they are extremely musical, but in too large of a room they may struggle to sound massive.  They do benefit a lot from a good sub in my opinion.

I may sell them someday, but for now they are a nice reminder of why I was really into Zus and high-efficiency speakers...I learned a lot from them and they have greatly influenced my speaker choices today.
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