you need to realize with Zu speakers they are prone to bad power hum, smearing etc... If not on very well tuned equipment and power supplies.. Atma-sphere uses Zu as a test on their equipment as they show everything up the chain, have incredible efficiency yet don't give the horn sound that can amplify other problems even further.. They are organic sounding paper drivers with extremley deep transparency, and simply way too fast for a bare walled hotel demo, At minimum I have found you can't be too close to walls, needing a couple feet to not get back a lot of echo or reflection from the wall re-enforcing already fast and high decible full range sound, they are not crossed over like a conventional design trying to create a curve they are the curve, and the Room causes all your problems even more amplified than a standard speaker... So keep that in mind, or Have a very large room so you can hear the speaker, not the room and re-create a boxy sound already difficult to defeat in any acoustic sound environment. Killing first point reflections just like any speaker helps a ton...
Beyond that they are a very 3 dimensional, yes most negatives I have seen on this speaker is they sound un-realistically Big in the soundstage.. I really don't understand why you want something compressed sounding in the center of the room, but if you want a speaker that breaths than this is for you.. Otherwise definatley look at the Standard audio speakers that are Well overdamped and compress at a certain point to keep things under control in the environment.
Also just a side not for Pro def users.. I found easily the back drivers Re-enforce much of the frequencies in the 250 to 800 hz range, that is a lot of extra re-enforcement to what the front drivers already are doing, this can add a lot of rock and roll midrange at high DB if you don't cut them off or filter a couple DB off them via the processor, not to mention you are firing these mid freq's right off the backwall which even adds more Delay and re-enforcement to it.
