Zu Soul Superfly

Phil,

When I say the decorator arrived I simply mean I was having some of the house painted. He had doors and windows open all day so a big temperature drop. Didn't work in the living room at all but had the door open and did go in for a listen each morning as he's a big music fan and into hi-fi too. Can't believe he's done driver damage for example as presumably a lot more than bass would have gone. He certainly hasn't moved them and I should be clear, there is bass there but it's nowhere near what it was.

Yes Naim is SS but they work incredibly well with Zu and prior to getting Superfly I'd heard Druids, Essence, Presence and Definitions on Naim. Have been talking to Avonessence on this and he reckons burn-in can be quite erratic having had Druids and Essence and he found it especially so on the Druids. He thought the temperature drop may be of some significance. I'm deliberately not moving them until I have plenty of hours on them. Been doing 10 hours a day on medium volume since mid January so they've probably got 200-250 hours on top of the factory hours.

Can't see how it can be the bass loading. Would have to have gone on both speakers at once and as I said it has been accompanied by the loss of cuppy vocals and a gain in detail so it's not like the FRD has gone silent.

Further thoughts?

Mike

Any other thoughts.

The missing bit from my previous posts was that I don't think the positioning is an issue for the bass. Prior to this week it was just fabulous. There was a lack of upper mids and that was it.

Mike

The missing bit from my previous posts was that I don't think the positioning is an issue for the bass. Prior to this week it was just fabulous. There was a lack of upper mids and that was it.

Mike

It's not my experience that Zu break-in is anything other than progressive and uni-directional. That is, it's a one-way street with no backtracking wih the singular exception of significant thermal changes.

Zu itself has had the experience of doing 200-400 hours of intense factory break-in only to ship speakers from Utah in the winter months and have them arrive sounding stiff and not broken in. Sean has contended in the past that break-in of the internal cabling (especially the dielectrics) is actually more of a factor than limbering of the driver, but cold exposure can make the driver break-in paramount. I'm in Southern California, so I probably don't have the same range of temperature swings as you, even if I left my windows and doors wide open for weeks. If nothing else changed, I have to guess this is your issue, and it will be temporary. Also, if you are using vinyl, the same thermal factors can truncate bass response of a phono cartridge, too. Assuming nothing has happened to your amplification, it seems a temporary problem associated with an environmental change that a hundred hours of any band using a large Marshall stack can overcome.

Phil

Thanks Phil,

I'm using cd so fewer issues there but you are right re: temperatures. Mine shipped Utah to UK in January and they were cold. From cold they did the Druid thing of giving you the sense of pushing air on horns, and drums were on their way to Definition levels but it took about a week before I began to think "Wow!".

Decorators went Wednesday so we've been on repeat since then and I've had the heating at ambient leveles all day this weekend. I reckon that since mid-January I've put 200 hours on during the day when I've been at work and maybe another 40 or 50 on top. It was going so well but this us a horrid shock. Like having a large transistor radio. There is bass there but even on say Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs it is taut and recessed rather than taut, deep and powerful. I'm giving it until midweek before I panic.

Incidentally, to save me reading 11 pages of this (which I have done previously thanks) how do you get the gap to just above the width of a cd? I have no spike thread at that point. Mine are set by my dealer at just over the depth of two as there is then thread. Before anyone suggests this has an impact on bass and could explain what's happened I should say I've had four weeks of increasingly heavenly bass so it seems unlikely. It may be contributing to my lack of upper mids but the detriment to bass seemed minimal. Until Tuesday it was the best bass I've ever had.

Mike