[Gridlock]

Wow!  It's almost 2:00am; a couple of adjustments on the ol' digital EQ, a couple of glasses of Cabernet, and WOW!  Shawn Colvin sounds fantastic  through the Zu Tone's and Entec Subs.  Lots of detail, a fairly forward sound, and a very deep and wide soundstage (additional courtesy of Dolby Pro Logic II Music), and I am in heaven!  By the way, does anyone here listen with Dolby Surround?  Every time I experiment and turn it off to go back to two channel stereo, it sounds as if the soundstage depth collapses.

- Stew

[JohnnyLightOn]

No direct experience with the break-in, but I've got my eye on these speakers for my next setup and have read all the threads.  My guess is that 120 hours is not fully broken-in.  Several owners have reported changes happening past this mark.  

I think the break-in is best achieved by playing loud, dynamic music that moves the drivers.  You can always try the technique of wiring them out of phase, facing them right up against each other, and throwing a blanket over them.  But choose a volume level before you do this to make sure you're not turning it up too loud.

Hopefully some owners can chime here.

[jcoat007]

I think the break-in is best achieved by playing loud, dynamic music that moves the drivers.  You can always try the technique of wiring them out of phase, facing them right up against each other, and throwing a blanket over them.  But choose a volume level before ...

I wired one in phase and the other out of phase and faced them at each other.  Then I went on vacation for a week.  When I came back they were fully broken in.  

[miklorsmith]

With the Druids and Definitions, I'd say 200 hours of the most volume you can stand is a minimum.  That sounds ridiculous, but the driver surrounds are very stiff and take a long time to limber.  You should be able to easily see the driver going through its paces before you run out of the room.  Metallica, Fat Boy Slim, Prodigy are some nice, friendly boys that would love to meet your Zu's.

On the tonal issue, I played with my panels last night and things improved considerably.  I'll have to get my other ones back from a friend this w/e and play around with them.

[Gridlock]

I just read a review in the current issue Absolute Sound of the '2nd Rethm Louspeaker, which very closely resembles my experience with the Zu Tone's, with the exception of rolled-off high frequencies.  The 2nd Rethm is a single full range driver speaker based on a Lowther driver, which retails for $7,500.  Similar to what I find with the Tone's, it has very little bass and other tonal anomalies, but also like the Tone's, images incredibly well.  The author also discusses correcting the tonal anomalies with digital EQ and using subwoofers, which is exactly what I am doing.

I think it is a great article for anyone contemplating Zu or other full-range driver speakers.

- Stew

[Gridlock]

I wired one in phase and the other out of phase and faced them at each other.  Then I went on vacation for a week.  When I came back they were fully broken in.  

I wish I could do this; the problem is that I work from home, and don't have any vacation plans... although I might be able to hook it up to another system and close the door.

[Red Dragon Audio]

I wired one in phase and the other out of phase and faced them at each other.  Then I went on vacation for a week.  When I came back they were fully broken in.  

I wish I could do this; the problem is that I work from home, and don't have any vacation plans... although I might be able to hook it up to another system and close the door.

I concur with all the previous posts about running them in quite a bit more.  I also still think you need a hard piece of granite beneath them so you can accurately measure the Gap Height since this will affect how much bass you get as well. This is part n parcel to their design and loading characteristics.  

OK SO RUN-IN:

Find a test tone of about 50-60Hz.  

Run that tone to the point that you see the cone moving 3/4"peak-to-peak.  

Wire speakers out of phase.  

Place them face-to-face.  

Place a piece of styrofoam between the two of them at the top so they don't fall against one another when you lay a few heavy blankets over them.

Do like you said and place them in a closet or other room.


The goal here is to stroke the woofer until the surround and internal suspension (spider) has loosened up.  By making the surround and spider more compliant the woofer will play lower notes much more easily giving you a bit more bass.

A single tone run loudly will do it rather quickly(to the point I mentioned before of 3/4" peak-to-peak).  I'd say you could do this for 12-24hours and get the same benefit of playing them for 200hours with loud music.

You see the difference is loud music will only stroke the woofers when a bass drum hits or the bass guitar is being played terribly loud or there is some synthasizer that is holding a note for extended periods.  But music is transient by nature.  You'll only be pushing the woofer a for a few seconds at a time then it will go back to coasting along then get pushed and so on.  

However the single test tone will push the woofer all the time thus shortening this hardcore breakin time.

You might want to call Sean or Adam at Zu and ask them what they do to break in their speakers at the factory.  I think they break in all Definitions and perhaps the Druids now too.

[Watson]

Ahh, yes, and so the typical goose chase begins.  Now it's not new cables, or new amps, or room treatments that these speakers need, it's hundreds more hours of burn-in and granite blocks.  Sure.

Burn-in makes a difference, but I've never had a speaker whose basic tonal characteristics changed significantly after burn-in.  If a person isn't already satisfied with the sound, hundreds of hours more burn-in won't change this reality.

Once you give up on burn-in and get the granite blocks, people will be suggesting all manner of other fixes.  Perhaps a new source?  Better power conditioning?  A better power cord?  Enjoy.  It's the speakers.

[miklorsmith]

Please stop stirring the pot, sir.  You've derailed this thread once, it's gotten back on track, and you should be ignored from now on.  JoshK understands the difference between scientific curiosity/speculation and meanspirited attacks.  You should take note.

That said, I'm taking you up on your challenge, that being that nothing will correct the egregious mistake that is the Zu Definitions.  Having moved my panels last night, I'm probably halfway there.  I'll start a new thread on this once I have accomplished the impossible.  

Epicurious doesn't have any recipes for crow, but I'd bet with a little garlic, S&P, and white wine it would taste like chicken.  You'll be able to tell me soon enough.

[jcoat007]

Run that tone to the point that you see the cone moving 3/4"peak-to-peak....

There is no way those woofers are going to move 3/4".  They are very stiff.  I have played music it insane levels and marveled at how little they actually move.  

Maybe the guys at Zu can comment, but I just don't see them moving that much.  If they can move that much, mine are nowhere near broken in.

[Red Dragon Audio]

Ahh, yes, and so the typical goose chase begins. Now it's not new cables, or new amps, or room treatments that these speakers need, it's hundreds more hours of burn-in and granite blocks. Sure.

Burn-in makes a difference, but I've never had a speaker whose basic tonal characteristics changed significantly after burn-in. If a person isn't already satisfied with the sound, hundreds of hours more burn-in won't change this reality.

Once you give up on burn-in and get the granite blocks, people will be suggesting all manner of other fixes. Perhaps a new source? Better power conditioning? A better power cord? Enjoy. It's the speakers.

Well the bold statement I highlighted in your comment simply shows your lack of experience with speaker "break-in".  Don't be upset that you've never heard a speaker transform completely due to "break-in".  Not all speakers require it to such a degree.  Some already have compliant suspensions while others don't.  In the case of the Zu Tone's I believe that is part of the reason they may sound "thin" at first and the other reason is the sealed enclosure tuning.

The mechanical motor structure/suspension has a great deal of influence over the sound of a speaker.   The suspesion provides a certain amount of physical resistance to the input signal.  If the suspesion is relatively stiff it will resist movement (this is normal with many new drivers).  

The idea is to loosen up the suspesion so it still does its primary job of returning the cone to it's resting position, keep the cone's motion linear etc but also doesn't get in the way of letting the input signal drive the cone evenly across the audio band.

Here is why this is important.  The midrange audio frequencies only require the cone to move just a bit in either direction to achieve a certain level of output.  However to reproduce low frequencies, that same cone will likely need to move 10-20x as much to pressurize the air in the room to the same level as it does with the midrange frequencies.

If the suspension resists moving a great deal because it is very stiff, the speaker may sound too prominant in the midrange or another way to say it - it sounds thin(bass shy). This is because it's not reproducing the low end frequencies at the same levels as the midrange.  

By loosening up the suspension so the cone can react more easily to the bass input signal, you can indeed increase low end response - sometimes to a great degree so that the speaker seems to have undergone a complete transformation.

I've personally witnessed this in a wide variety of speakers and I know it to be true. Just because you have not witnessed or heard this happen in a speaker doesn't mean it can't exist.  Plus you seem to want to heap this idea in with all the "tweaks" on the market.  It's not a tweak.  It is a simple matter of mechanics.  Nothing more.

Basically you want to "stretch" the suspsension so it becomes "limber/loose" and more compliant to the signal input.  


SEALED DESIGN
Beyond the loosening of the suspension the TONE is a sealed design so by its nature will generally resist movement more in the lower frequencies.

There are some drawbacks to using a sealed box, however. Using a box that's too small can have adverse effects both on your system's output level and on its deep-bass performance. Efficiency is another matter of concern; typically, sealed-box systems are less efficient than vented systems and require more power and equalization to achieve comparable output levels.  Hence the reason why the Tone may sound thin in the bottom end.

If the Tone were a reflex/port loaded design, you would get a bump in frequency response right around their port tuning which will fill out the bottom end thus giving the listener a bit more fullness to the sound.  My guess is that the tuning of this enclosure is up around 50-60Hz and rolls off gradually from there.  

My suggestion of granite blocks was for the Druids (not the Tones which is what this thread is about)- I mixed this thread up with another thread which is discussing the Druids.  For the Druids the granite blocks are not a "tweak" as you might have assumed.  The Druids require very precise air gap height at the bottom of the speaker due to the Griewe loading technique employed.  If a person was using the Druids in a carpeted room, the granite block simply lifts the air gap out of the carpet and allows more accurate control of the air gap height.

[Watson]

Well the bold statement I highlighted in your comment simply shows your lack of experience with speaker "break-in".  Don't be upset that you've never heard a speaker transform completely due to "break-in".  Not all speakers require it to such a degree.

I've owned eight different pairs of speakers over the last eleven years.  None of them have changed dramatically after break-in, sorry.  Just sharing my experience.

The idea is to loosen up the suspesion so it still does its primary job of returning the cone to it's resting position, keep the cone's motion linear etc but also doesn't get in the way of letting the input signal drive the cone evenly across the audio band.

Yes, I'm well aware of that.  A speaker's fs and Vas do change measurably before and after break-in, but the magnitude of this change is small -- less than the individual manufacturing variation between speakers.  See, for instance, the published work of Nousaine.

Even if fs and Vas were to change radically, no amount of break-in will eliminate the lobing problems of the Definitions, or improve the power response of the Druids.

[Red Dragon Audio]

Run that tone to the point that you see the cone moving 3/4"peak-to-peak....

There is no way those woofers are going to move 3/4".  They are very stiff.  I have played music it insane levels and marveled at how little they actually move.  

Maybe the guys at Zu can comment, but I just don't see them moving that much.  If they can move that much, mine are nowhere near broken in.

You are correct -  3/4" is likely way too much.  After looking at the Tone again - a quarter of an inch would likely be plenty.  Again the best thing to do is to call Sean or Adam at ZuCable and ask them directly how to properly break-in the Tone.

[ooheadsoo]

Hm, I was going to respond, but oh well.  The controversy...

[Gridlock]

Hm, I was going to respond, but oh well.  The controversy...

Please do (as long of course that you state your own opinion without insulting others)...

[Red Dragon Audio]

I've owned eight different pairs of speakers over the last eleven years. None of them have changed dramatically after break-in, sorry. Just sharing my experience.

Hi Watson,

No need to be sorry for your experience.  It's what you have lived and it's just different from what I have experienced. (Interestingly you and I have had about the same number of speakers over roughly the same amount of time. )

A good example from my personal experiece is the transformation after break-in on the Magnepan 1.6.  You are correct that it retained it's overall tonality (the planar dipole sound) - however the bass response improved quite noticebly after 4-5months of listening.  

Part of this was due to acclimitization of the membrane material (different humidity levels etc) and part of it was due to the stretching of the membrane when listening to music.  Nothing changed in that setup for nearly 8months so it wasn't any new component etc that affected the sound.


Regarding the Tones and "break-in" there is going to be a change.  To what degree I can't say but I understand it's an important factor and worth mentioning.  I would not overlook "Break-in" - you would.  Just a different point of view.

The Tone's sealed design will have more affect on the low end response as will the efficiency of the main driver over the audio band.

My estimate is that the Tone's main driver efficiency isn't a consistent 101dB over the entire audio band and likely falls off as frequency approches the 4-5octaves at the bottom.  This will affect its low end tonal balance a great deal.  (a subwoofer will be needed for the first 2.5-3 octaves of bass IMHO). A good EQ circuit could make up for some of this but will introduce other issues.

[miklorsmith]

From the Meadowlark website, "lobing means that there are variations in tonality within the speaker’s soundfield."

I guess this means it would be pretty easy to test with the Stereophile test CD's and an SPL meter.  Using 1 speaker:  Test field 1 - Speaker fires straight at the listener; Test field 2 - 5 degrees off axis; Test field 3 - 10 degrees off axis; etc.

I'll try to find some time this weekend to conduct such a test.  I'll be hanging panels, too.

FWIW, the issue I'm having with my room doesn't change much at different seated positions.  Also, walking around the room I haven't noticed any anomalies in the response.  But, I haven't measured it.

Hey, at least I'm learning something.  

[ton1313]

In numerous conversations with Sean & Adam @ Zu, the speakers themselves are designed to reproduce sounds with as little motion as possible. The more motion you get, the more distortion can be introduced to the playback. I have the original Zu sub, a 15" ported design, and it reproduces DEEP quality bass, and it hardly moves.

[Gridlock]

In numerous conversations with Sean & Adam @ Zu, the speakers themselves are designed to reproduce sounds with as little motion as possible. The more motion you get, the more distortion can be introduced to the playback. I have the original Zu sub, a 15" ported design, and it reproduces DEEP quality bass, and it hardly moves.

I would think that this is the main reason for its very good transient response.  A great example of this is 'Buckets Of Rain' from Bob Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks'.  The sound of the strongly plucked guitar strings have very quick attack, and are very clear.

I also noticed after playing around with speaker position, that they produce the best imaging pointed directly at the listener.  Other speakers I've had were better pointed more straight ahead, but these snap into focus better toed in at the listener.

- Stew

[JoshK]

fyi, usually hi-eff drivers are said to have good transient response because they move very little, having very little linear xmax*.  Some believe there is a correlation between good sounding drivers and low xmax.  Of course there are others that feel the opposite.  Who knows?  I haven't done the experiment.


*there is no such thing, it is a contradiction in terms, I know but it is the easiest way to explain what I mean.