>> Phil, You caught my attention with your excellent description of the smallish but potentially significant differences between Druid and Essence which articulated my views on them better than I ever could. I would be happy to buy Essence but my inclination has always been toward Druid. I have always been especially taken by the presence of the Druid. The sense that a horn player is in the room and standing thus high and really moving air at you.<<
Yes, this is a specific advantage of Druid. Even the higher-resolution Definition 2, has to give up a bit of unity and coherence to the single-FRD Druid, on music that doesn't present significant scalar challenges. I have two systems with similar-grade components, but one has Druid 4-08 and the other Definition 2. I don't automatically choose to listen to Defs for everything. I default to Druids for some things, and for those choices really nothing else will quite do. Essence gained scale by virtue of its wider dispersion from the revised FRD and deeper bass along with the extended "hifi" top end. But it lost some of the magical presence of Druid when some efficiency had to be dialed back. I liken the difference as being similar to the sonic delta between same-quality SET and push-pull tube amps. The p-p amps might seem more impressive at first, but you soon notice a permanent reduction of focus.
>>but at the price I'm almost tempted to just plunge in there<<
I think anyone who likes Druids can just plunge in without risk.
>>My reservations are that, whilst the loss of a foot of height plays well with Mrs. H, how does the speaker perform in terms of image height especially as the frd is now below the tweeter?<<
I've always thought the Druid's image presentation is a bit on the high side with respect to its vertical center. Kind of like sitting 1st row in a club with the performer on a short-rise platform stage higher than you. With Soul, the FRD is on an angled baffle, pointing slightly up. It images well in terms of vertical centerpoint from a normal home seating position. The sound image vertical centerpoint is higher than the FRD. There is no problem introduced by having the supertweeter on top. For the footprint to be on target in a truncated pyramid column shape, the FRD had to be placed lower, but as high as possible on the baffle.
>>Does it still give that great sense of presence, which was the loss in the Essence for me?<<
If you get the Superfly Edition, it gives more. Now, even with Zu's factory abuse break-in, you'll still need some play-in to get them to a state of ultimate tone, but out of the box they have all of the Druid 4-08's presence and tone-density, plus.
>>Does it still have the lovely mid band 0f the Druid?<<
Yes, with less cabinet noise at high volume.
>>Essentially I guess I'm asking if it really is Druid plus or is it just a variation on Essence or Presence?<<
The only thing Soul Superfly really inherits from Essence is the wider horizontal dispersion made possible by the remodeled whizzer and cylindrical phase plug. Otherwise, the motor and cone mass are tuned for Soul, and the efficiency is restored. The ribbon-instigated compromises are absent because the ribbon is thankfully *not* possible at this speaker's pricing. And it achieves Essence level of Griewe model performance on the low end in a smaller cabinet than Essence. Zu started out intending to build a market-expanding "recession speaker" and ended up finding a way to slash price yet build a "Super Druid" in a smaller column.
Regular Soul will be good but Superfly is the ticket for this crowd, well worth the delta in price, post intro sale.
Phil
