First up ZU AUDIO: The tl;dr is: I really like these. Longer story is: I didn't hear Dirty Weekends; dunno if the guy didn't have any home or if he just wanted to go for the jugular with the Omen mk II
No matter, it was a very convincing session. Now, I listen to anything from Mozart over Miles Davis to Motörhead, and easily within an afternoon. So naturally I had to try a bunch of different things. Although I did not get around to any classical, we did cover the area between jazz and death metal nicely. Needless to say the guy liked Art Pepper more than Alkaloid or Obscura. About that last name; that is some quite dense tech death, and one of the few tracks were I feel things weren't absolutely top notch. The soundstage fell apart a bit here, BUT: the room was a glorified walk-in closet annex between the sellers house and garage. So very small. What went well then? Almost everything. First off, the seller was nice and let me fool around with choosing tracks and using the volume control, and stayed in the background which is much appreciated. Source was mainly tidal, with an LP or 2 thrown in. Amps were a couple of Cayin and Audion toob amps.
Impressions: Instruments sounded real, drums were nice and punchy, cymbals were great and well, sounded like a disk of metal being pounded with a stick, not static. Guitar tone nice and present, voices likewise. Although I'd maintain that these speakers to some extent trade power for delicacy, nevertheless did I get some details I knew were present, but with greater clarity than I'm used to (eg the 16 Horsepower track Splinters off the album Secret South has some cymbalwork in the beginning that had greater detail and presence). Another track was In The Morning by First Aid Kit; this track has the 2 sisters singing unison more or less a capella. Probably due to some slight compression this track can have a bit of a hard edge. The dude switched the Cayin amp from ultralinear to triode output and whoosh; hard edge almost gone. Seller played some Krall christmas song, and there was a lot of little "mouth details". If someone tries to tell you that Zu can't do detail, that person is full of schiit. There were oodles of detail and these mothers are musical as all get out. Do I need to mention they can play ridiculously loud?
Rock and metal just works with these speakers, the one track by Obscura mentioned above is pretty dense, also I'm not sure my psychic state (tired, late in the day & the session) didn't play a role here.
Trax I tested with: First Aid Kit - In the Morning; 16 Horsepower - Splinters; Art Pepper - Tin Tin Deo; Alkaloid - Kernel Panic; Alkaloid - Cthulhu; Gorod - Varangian Paradise; Obscura - The Anticosmic Overload; Clutch - Let a Poor Man Be (I think) and Electric Worry... Probably some more, it was a couple of hours, seller also played some stuff, some blues/rock, a bit of Sting, Diana Krall, Five Finger Death Punch (guess he tried to establish a bit of metal cred here, I'd say ho-hum, then again I'm a thrasher
).
Hoo, boy...
Next is Neat Iota: tl;dr is: Oh, nice. Longer story: Like with the Zu guy, the seller had decided to skip the Alphas, and put the Xplorers up. Let's get it out of the way: These speakers are small! They had the Alphas on display in the window, those were the size of shoeboxes, the Xplorers were the size of 3-4 shoeboxes stacked. Seller had some bull argument about WAF and how changing up from Alphas to Xplorers was likely to end with marital arguments. My wife wouldn't mind, was my response. Listening room was, again, small, about the same size as with Zu. I know I'm in Scandinavia, but what is it with speaker demos in broom closets? Also, this seller was way more hands on, he felt he had to do a lot of splaining, and also turn down the music to ask me (repeatedly) 'Well, what do you think'. I didn't say 'Well, I think you should shut up and hand me that' since I'm generally a polite person, but yeah, I tried to wrest control of the, well, control; and succeeded with that albeit only for a while :-/ Source was again Tidal by way of Roon to a Naim integrated streamer/amp/thingie. So, all solid state.
Now the speakers: Let's get the positives first. These are absolutely great speakers. They are very musical, detailed and throw a nice big, roomy, expansive soundstage. The Heil AMT and midrange driver works gorgeously together. However, and again this might be the room, I felt that the bassdriver arrangement were a bit, I hesitate to say boomy; but a bit loose, undefined. In all actuality, I'm sure it was the room... More on that in a sec. I did manage to get both First Aid Kit, 16 Horsepower and Art Pepper in; same trax as above. The First Aid Kit track had the same hard edge as above (it also has that on my system, so there's that). Cymbals on Splinters by 16HP was actually
less detailed than on the Zu, IMO. That surprised me a bit, I was prepared for the AMT to blow my socks off, but nah. Drums on Art Pepper's Tin Tin Deo sounded natural and lively, as they should. Now I didn't feel as relaxed as the day before, and thus only got around to one heavy track. Death - Flattening of Emotions has been a goto for me for years, and it sounded just as it should, nice and punchy double kicks, that was also a track that showed that the bassdrivers in the Iota could be tight and dry.
I can't really dis these speakers; they sound great, are musical, detailed and have a huge stage, whilst being small, unobtrusive and having nice WAF'fy finishes. HOWEVER, IMHO, YMMV, ETC: I felt they were a bit to polite, also I'm really, really, really,
really unsure what I am getting from a pair of speakers that cost 4.5 times my current speakers, and almost double up from the Zu Omens. At DKK36000 ($5300 or €4800) that's not a good place to be, and 90 minutes of listening should have convinced me otherwise. Again, I wasn't super relaxed, rather tired, and didn't have the same rapport with this seller as the Zu guy, all these are factors that might have coloured my impressions.
Final thoughts: In the grand scheme of things Zu Omen are in the lead right now (at least when talking speakers I can actually afford). The 'at-home-with-the-seller' feel of the audition also helped me to assess whether I could use the Zu's for the rest of my life (pretty sure I could). The 'car-salesman' experience of the Neat audition did nothing but alienate me. The speakers themselves were nice, but did not do much to convince me what the last 25% of their price tag bought me (apart from VAT
). Both sellers were super willing facilitate some buy and try, with a 14 day window, so that's great. So far I'm leaning towards the Zu though.
