Dean,
Alright, then. This will be long because I don't have time to craft a shorter note. As long as you're separating sweet spot from continuous presence of a sense of stage regardless of where you wander around a room, then we understand each other. I can only say this: My Definitions are in a 21' x 14.5' room, on the long wall. There is hi-def video in this system too. People can sit anywhere in the room and retain a soundstage for either a movie or music, and I don't experience loss of sensed space and localization in any location of the room I can use. My Druids are in a 22' x 12' room on the short wall. The same is essentially true there but I can extrapolate from wandering around that room, that if the Druids were subbed in for Defs in the room where Definitions are now used, the preservation of sound image, frequency linearity and continuous projection laterally would be somewhat reduced. Somewhat -- not radically. At least in my room where the Defs are used on the long wall, they project more even response as listener location changes, than I really need, and more than most speakers I've heard.
You're correct; I haven't written anything about what's missing. It's not because these speakers are perfect -- they're not. However, there is so much skepticism in these forums about whether what owners say can possibly be true, that I haven't felt there is any purpose to registering complaints. Online sentiment about Zu speakers, by people who haven't heard them, ranges from declarations that neither Druids nor Defs can possibly perform to specs, to suspicion that there's some kind of cult appeal that prevents those who like the speakers from objective assessment. Look, bought a pair of Druids out of curiosity. If anything, based on my experiences with other full-range high-efficiency speakers, I was predisposed to reject them for long term duty in my system. If you read other posts elsewhere, I have repeatedly tried to explain that the Druid in particular is idiosyncratic and that Zu's design choices result in a speaker that requires some orientation by the buyer, if he or she is an experienced audiophile who has been conditioned by products to date. But to my surprise, Druids won consideration for Definitions and both earned a place in my home.
I don't expect any audio system regardless of cost to put live music in my house. I don't have rooms big enough to really care about subterranean bass fundamentals. The Definition goes to 16Hz anyway. I know that if a speaker is reasonably phase coherent with neutral tonality and doesn't scramble the time events, I'll get holographic imaging IF, IF it's present on the recording. If there were 15 mics in the room, forget it.
So, still....what's missing?
Let's see. The whole line is already 101 db/w/m efficient, and either 6 or 12 ohm. Hmm...would I like 115 db efficiency if I didn't have to give anything up? Sure, but....
Some people like hypertweeters extending out to 38K, 50K, 90K. Gosh....there's a lot happening up there in modern digital electronics that isn't part of the music.
Would perfect polar response be a good idea? Hard to say -- it raises the influence of room factors, rather than reducing them.
When 1 watt in yields 101 db out at 1 m, do I need more than 300 watts power handling? Well, more is better always, but we all know that you can safely use a 1000 watt amp on a speaker rated for 200 watts max, with less risk than 10 watts on an 82db/w/m speaker with 200 watts power handling.
Could they be flatter in their frequency response? Perhaps, but as it is room, recording and associated equipment factors are already more influential to frequency linearity than the speaker itself.
"Well, Phil.....what are you saying? That Definitions are perfect after all?"
No.
Sure, I want more. The Definition is a statement speaker for Zu. It fills a room. If you heard the 4/4w Almarro amp in L.A. driving Defs in a 32' x 24' carpeted and draped room, you'd know they fill a room nicely. But some of the Druid's intimacy, abetted by its suitability for near-field listening, is lost. The Druid sounds impressive when you move away from it but it grabs you by the throat when you get within 8 feet of the skinny maverick. The Definition sounds striking near-field but really puts the vice-grips on your attention when you can move at least 12' away. I'd like the Definition's performance without losing the Druid's intimacy.
I'd like the last tiny trace of FRD tonality to be wrung from both speakers. Every now and then, a note, some transient sound, will burst out of a Zu speaker and just for a flash moment you'll recognize an instant of a hint of a breath of FRD "shout." It's so seldom noticed that it's hardly worth mentioning but if I could have it gone altogether, I would.
Sean and Adam have innovated in drivers, cabinets and manufacturing. But their chief success has been in how they rejiggered priorities in conflicting elements of speaker design and struck a new balance. They made very judicious choices in their trade-offs, and expanded the scope of their options where possible through driver, cabinet, materials and methods innovations. That balance has reasserted the essence of "aliveness" to reproduced music, which is driven by dynamics, transient speed and consistency, bandwidth, and phase coherence more than by frequency accuracy. But unlike virtually everyone who has tried before them, they've addressed those priorities without sacrificing accuracy.
I've heard various Avant-garde horn models. They're good, but I couldn't own them. Many people say they are absent any deleterious traits of horns. Not to me. No matter how far away I get from them, I hear each driver individually. I've never heard a Wilson speaker that sounded relaxed. Both sound sensationally impressive as hi-fi. But that's proven a dead-end for anyone reaching for the emotion in music and the factors necessary to transmit that into your room.
After 30 years at this, I am tired of drivers that don't worth together on transient information. I am apathetic about music "squeezed" through crossovers with a dozen or more elements. I am sick of ringing tweeters, fed up with hi-fi hash, bored by unengaging clinical sound. Gear elephantiasis snaps my wallet shut tighter than a shoreline clam in a typhoon. I don't want funny beaks or inert mass-loading blisters to convince myself that my speakers sound good. I don't want to buy bigger amps that sound progressively worse for incessantly more money, just because my speaker has to be goosed by Mickey Rourke to play Albert King without making him sound like B.B.
Instead, the Zu Definition is the most incisively balanced column of splendid imperfections I've found in a loudspeaker. I know from my conversations with Sean and Adam that it's going to get better still. I just don't know today how. They are thoroughly committed to continuous improvement and even small increments are on their to-do list. 6Moons wants a level control for the bass amp on the Definitions. It's already in production, for example. Zu thinks about extending bandwidth a quarter-octave at a time. They'll shave an impedance curve a little flatter if they can. Smooth the supertweeter's roll-in. Research the optimal connector.
The Definition is a true high-end speaker that can be dropped into any room and sound great, the same way this was true for the prosaic Advents in the context of their market back in 1973, and Dynaco A25s before that. No dipole issues to mitigate. No Bose intentional reflection nonsense. No K-horn honking or Lowther anemia. No 96 drivers line-source blur. No woofer lag with membrane panels. No wound-by-virgins voice coils. No reactive, near-short-circuit load to flame your amp. No lumpy garage aesthetics in gloss paint for 5 or 6 figures. Finally, someone brings a speaker to market that is something more than the same old Danish drivers in a new container; something less than the Mars Rover stood on its hind wheels. When you hear the Tone, Druid and Definition in one sitting, you realize you've never heard a line of speakers so close in performance so widely separated by price. Even the Tone is revealing enough to argue for an amp as good as an Audiopax if space is tight. Even in a market changed by Chinese manufacturing, you can't question the Definition's value, so when you hear the Definition, and then the Tone, you wonder how the Tone can sound like it does and be so inexpensive.
I used to see Tom Waits in bars and small clubs back in the early 70s when he was unknown. I've been 4-6 feet away from him, during performances. Most of his recordings are not multi-miked, many captured with only a pair of well-placed transducers. Zu puts him in my home, or as close as I've ever experienced. What do I want out of a Definition to make Waits sound even more like Waits? I don't know. I sure don't want him larger than life, more Waits than the real thing.
For years I did not listen to symphonic music on a stereo. I grew up hearing symphonic music live by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. That kinda sets some expectations. Later, the BSO in Symphony Hall and Tanglewood under Seiji Ozawa. Recorded symphonies were just too disappointing to bother with on hifi, when I could wait for live. There was always a speaker rumored to be around the corner, that could make orchestral music worthwhile. I got a little satisfaction 20 years ago from ProAc EBS driven by Futterman OTLs. Almost. Every few years word of something big and unwieldy, sure to make a symphony sound right, would circulate. Remember Duntechs? Hahahahaha..... Huge, power-hungry, drivers galore. Of course made worse when the relentlessly unlovely Krell amps were roped to them. Apogee -- now there was a speaker! Actually excellent if you could keep an amp operating with them for more than a few months. And of course you had to check the weather to know if your speakers would sound good that day. Avant-garde "we-don't-sound-like-horns" horns in candy colors to distract you from the fact that at the end of the day they still sound like horns, only less so. WAMM monstrosities that look like someone stacked a toaster oven on a microwave on top of a washing machine and painted it all the same color.
Or you can get gorgeous Italian art objects that are "voiced" to the tastes of a specific designer, like an archtop luthier tap-tunes a jazzbox. British boxes that acquit themselves well but the stiff upper lip stands in the way. OK, rude dismissals, but you understand the point. Well, guess what? I'm listening to orchestral music again. It started the day I got my Druids and stepped up again when Definitions arrived.
For me, the Definition is as good as you can expect a loudspeaker for domestic use to be in 2005. In a lot of respects it should have existed much earlier but as is often the case, it took a small team from a new generation to take a fresh look at principles from the past that had fallen out of favor and then marry them to the methods of contemporary craft. Unlike most of what is more expensive and physically grandiose, it doesn't overstate anything. Unlike the many decent speakers that cost less, it isn't missing any fundamental attribute necessary for a complete sense of fidelity. I believe it's the very best speaker on the market that can be used practically and without disruption in real homes, and that includes the total physical and financial footprint of speakers plus requisite amplification.
Phil
