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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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mahughes
171 posts
 

I have Soul Superfly and want to move from endless boxes to an integrated. They apparently don’t mate well with SS but do people have examples of good SS matches? I’m otherwise looking at Decware or similar with a digital front end of Innuos/Chord.

cat_doorman
236 posts
 

@mahughes Look for class A integrateds. The only SS amp I’ve used with DW and SS is the Schiit Aegir. Of course I used tubed preamps, Saga+ among others. I’m using the Aegir right now in fact. It’s only right after I switch back to my much more expensive tube amp that I find the Aegir lacking and then only by comparison. If you have the budget something like the Pass Int-25 would probably be great. 

ladavid
79 posts
 

I had an original set of Druids 10+ years ago - loved the sound of those speakers.  Have tried lots of others since but still good memories of the Druids.

I took advantage of the sale price on the Soul Supremes and should arrive in the new year.  They will replace Harbeth 30s - so very different speaker. 

I currently have a Hegel 390 amp so not sure how that is going to match with the Supremes in a fairly small room (12x13).  Have read S Casey's recommendation for power with his speakers but very few report on big power solid state amp with them - probably for a reason.  Love the functionality of the big Hegel - that would be tough to change but part of the adventure.. 

 

ladavid
79 posts
 

I have had my Soul Supremes about a year now.  One thing I have been disappointed with is that the speakers are not as dynamic as I had hoped.  I have not played with the floor gap til today - just put the speakers down when I received them - looking today it seems the gap was pretty minimal.  Maybe 3 mm.  Doubled the gap today so about 6 mm and amazed and how different these speakers sound.  There is a new lightness, sparkle and punch to the music.- should have played with the gap long ago!.  Heavy speakers to move around but play with the gap you will be surprised at how different just a little change makes.

cat_doorman
236 posts
 

@ladavid I played around with the gap quite a bit with the DW so I already had a pretty good idea where I wanted it when I upgraded to SS. Another surprising improvement was when I went to rubber feet on a platen. I don’t know if it was the decoupling or raising them a few inches off the floor. The gap with the feet is a little high for my taste, but that’s nothing a little cardboard couldn’t fix.

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