These products are sold solely on myth or backstory, they make the music more ‘lifelike’ I hear it all the time.
If you have no technical knowledge whatsoever it is easy to be misled.
Keith
It's certainly possible that some Zu owners aren't in a position to parse the true from the marketing claims about the Zu speaker designs.
But in practice the end result is that Zu owners seem to love the lively sound of their speakers. It's what they are looking for and what the speakers apparently deliver. And they are thrilled when listening to music on their speakers. Not sure exactly how this means they are "misled." Not everyone is searching for the same type of speaker.
Zu has a reputation for a particularly "live" or "lively" sound, and as I recounted in another thread, that's what I heard from them as well. And it wasn't due to expectations. I was at an audio show and one thing I pay attention to when wandering the halls is which rooms have the more "realistic" sound emitting from the room, before I enter. The "how close is that to fooling me there are real musicians in that room down the hall?"
I was drawn in to a room that sounded particularly life-like from outside the room...for that exact reason. And from inside the room it sounded particularly vivid and direct and "live" in a way that exceeded most other rooms. I didn't even know what I was listening to and after a while I asked about the equipment. Turned out it was Zu speakers pumping out the sound. So, it helped me understand the attraction some have to those speakers. (I may certainly find if I had a long listening session with my own music that I'd ultimately find the sound too colored for my own taste. But plenty of Zu owners have been super happy with their music collection through their Zus).
I think it's a good idea, if one is truly hewing to a scientific mindset, to remember the caution inherent in science when it comes to making claims.
So for instance, while research shows it's very plausible many people would choose a Revel speaker design over a Zu in blind testing, we would have to be careful about making claims concerning any individual, particularly one who has not been tested. In other words, saying to a Zu owner "you don't really prefer the sound of the Zu to a 'better' speaker design, you just think you do because you are influenced by factors like the Zu marketing." That's only conjecture, not a fact that you know. You'd have to test that individual - his Zu speakers against whatever others - under scientifically controlled conditions, before you can claim to know he doesn't prefer the sound of the Zus.
Yeah. People enjoy all kinds of crazy crap. Especially after they dropped a bunch of money on said crap. There's lots of people who love Beats headphones. There's people who get a set of Beats, and then they turn the bass knob all the way up as well! They "love" it! I used to know a guy who would EQ his system so that the sliders were a straight line from left to right...with the left end at the lowest point and the right at the highest! Am I supposed to care about that guy's speaker impressions?
Well...of course "crap" is a value statement, which depends on what you value. I presume you value things like accuracy and fidelity to the signal?
Zu devotees seem to value that the sonic output of their speaker have a direct, lively sound that makes them feel like the musicians are closer to "here" playing. Maybe crap to you, but it's "better" to their tastes.
There's also the issue of "when are we making a mountain out of a molehill?" in forums like this.
Yes, we can measure many differences between gear. But the important question after that is "to what degree is it audible?" and then "to what degree does this affect listener response or satisfaction?"
Much of what can be measured in DACs and amps isn't audible. And when deviations do occur, even audible ones, in the big picture the sonic effect can be extremely subtle.
When it comes to loudspeakers, the deviations can be more audible. But even then, some things that measure significantly different don't always equate to audible, or really significant in audible terms. For instance, even with a Zu speaker, the poster child for "bad measurements," John Atkinson commented:
"Yet, other than noticing a somewhat clanky quality with recordings of acoustic piano, I didn't find the Zu to sound as bad as this graph implies. In fact, I enjoyed the afternoon I spent listening to the speakers in Herb's system. As with Zu Audio's Essence speaker, reviewed by Art Dudley in October 2009, Sean Casey appears to have carefully balanced the Soul Supreme's performance to sound more neutral than its measured behavior would suggest, allowing the listener to appreciate its high sensitivity and evenly balanced midrange."
Amir has also noted some surprise here and there after seeing some wonky speaker measurements that didn't sound as bad as he would have thought.
Of course the Harman Kardon-type research gives us statistical predictions about what type of sound people tend to rate higher or lower.
But when rating a speaker A lower than speaker B, I'm not sure people have said "speaker A sounds AWFUL!"
Someone here who has tuned their ears to neutrality and who has seen the measurements of Zu speakers may hear Zu speakers and percieve them as terrible next to a more neutral speaker. Whereas another person may not find the difference that extreme (even IF both people would rate the 'better' design higher in blind tests).
With something that awful I wonder how many of those people would actually give the same answer blinded.
If they do give the same answer, what music lead to that preference?
Yup, very good question.
Statistically if you got enough Zu owners in to the blind test conditions, how many would choose a speaker that measures like a Revel over the Zu? If you just think in terms of representative population, you'd expect most of them to choose the Revel speaker. But there may be some selection bias already happening - do Zu owners represent the subset of people who prefer that non-neutral sound, and who have acclimated to it, and therefore might the Zu owners tend to cluster outside the usual results somewhat? Hard to know I guess until that test is done. (And maybe something like it was done and I'm forgetting).
In either case, you still end up with the question: Do preference ratings in the blind testing conditions predict listener/owner satisfaction in the long run? As far as I can see, given all the variables once you get outside the lab, we can't make that inference. And self reports of Zu owners seems so show quite high satisfaction.