It seems folks are already discussing the ZEN PRO. We'll make a formal announcement about it in the coming days, and we'll address why we decided to release it so close in succession to the ZEN then.
The short answer is that ZEN is all about introspection, and ZEN PRO is a manifestation of our desire to continually look inward and reexamine ourselves. Even as we were releasing ZEN back in December, we were already looking at how the ECLIPSƎ driver could be improved upon.
Without getting into the details, the driver originally introduced in the ZEN has been reworked in a number of small but critical areas. A major question we wished to have answered was whether all this effort brought about a listening experience that was commensurate. Thus, we designed a small pilot study intended to examine:
- whether individuals felt the ZEN PRO was better than ZEN (tested with 20 different descriptors of various aspects of sound)
- whether individuals were consistent with their blind listening impressions, before and after seeing a frequency response curve
- how we can further evolve the ZEN platform for derivative products in the future
To do so, we designed three different lengthy questionnaires. The first established baseline characteristics of the listeners' assessments of the original ZEN; the second polled the listeners on their assessments of the ZEN PRO following a listening session (blinded to measurements of the ZEN PRO and blinded to details of the product). The final component asked listeners to reflect on the consistency of their findings after having seen measurements of the ZEN PRO, and after having been briefed on details of the product.
We want to take this moment to thank
@Precogvision ,
@MRSallee ,
@antdroid , and
@Resolve for taking their time to participate in our small but time-consuming pilot study.
We recruited these four reviewers because:
- they have great (stellar) reputations within the portable audio community and are well-regarded for their critical listening skills, as well as their honest critiques on audio products,
- they all have their own electroacoustic measurement apparatuses,
- they all have had prior experience listening to and reviewing the ZEN,
- they were all located within a 1000 mile radius of one another, making shipping in quick succession a possibility.
Needless to say, the study went smoothly, and we hope to expand the scope of a study of this type to future products, with more study subjects.
Initial analyses on the collected data indicate a clear positive preference for most aspects of ZEN PRO's sound, but fall outside the realm of statistical significance, likely because of the extremely low number of study subjects (n=4).
The critical blinded listening assessment was most revealing of the differences in sound characteristics between the ZEN and ZEN PRO. Respondents were asked to grade, on a scale of −5 to +5, how ZEN PRO performed relative to ZEN. Positive numbers favor ZEN PRO more strongly, and negative numbers favor ZEN more strongly.
The mean, standard deviation, and 95% confidence intervals (calculated via T-score with n-1 degrees of freedom) for the 20 categories of sound are tabulated below.
Sound Descriptor | x̅ ± σ | 95% CI (df = 3) |
Overall Tonal Balance | + 1.75 ± 1.50 | (−0.63, +4.14) |
Bass Texture | − 1.00 ± 0.82 | (−2.29, +0.29) |
Bass Layering | − 0.75 ± 0.96 | (−2.27, +0.77) |
Bass Extension | − 0.50 ± 0.58 | (−1.41, +0.42) |
Midrange Resolution | + 0.75 ± 1.50 | (−1.63, +3.13) |
Excessive Vocal Forwardness | + 1.00 ± 0.00 | (+1.00, +1.00) |
Vocal Realism | + 1.25 ± 0.96 | (−0.27, +2.77) |
‘Shout' | + 1.25 ± 0.96 | (−0.27, +2.77) |
Sibilance | + 0.25 ± 2.50 | (−3.72, +4.22) |
Harshness | + 1.00 ± 1.41 | (−1.25, +3.25) |
Treble Presence | + 0.25 ± 1.71 | (−2.46, +2.96) |
Treble Extension | + 1.00 ± 2.16 | (−2.43, +4.43) |
Treble Smoothness | + 1.50 ± 1.00 | (−0.09, +3.09) |
Timbral Realism | + 0.50 ± 0.58 | (−0.41, +1.41) |
Dynamic Range Reproduction | − 0.75 ± 0.96 | (−2.27, +0.77) |
Soundstage Size | + 0.25 ± 0.50 | (−0.54, +1.04) |
Imaging | + 0.75 ± 0.50 | (−0.04, +1.54) |
‘Air' | + 1.00 ± 1.63 | (−1.59, +3.59) |
Transient Speed | + 0.25 ± 0.50 | (−0.54, +1.04) |
Overall Resolution | + 0.75 ± 0.96 | (−0.77, +2.27) |
16 of 20 sound categories were signed as positive, indicating a mostly positive preference for ZEN PRO. Non-parametric statistical tests have not yet been performed, and thus no conclusions have been drawn.
However, on an informal level, the data is a positive sign for us, as it suggests we did substantially improve on the ZEN PRO relative to the original ZEN, even with a very limited sample size.