Zu Audio Soul Mk II Review

Splunders said:
Yep! American Walnut. The 1 year trade in policy was coming up, and I was comfortable making one more big upgrade, so I decided to try out the Souls. I have an agreement with Zu that will allow me to hold onto my DWs so I can do a side by side comparison with the the Souls for a few weeks, in case the difference isnt worth the extra cost. Presuming they are, it will be great to get everything but shipping I paid on the DWs applied to the Souls. Basically borrow the DWs for a year for about $100.
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Zu is such a great company. I'm very happy to support them.
 
HiFi Guy said:
I’m level. Yours are beautiful!
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Thanks! I'm listening to them in nearly the same position as I had my DWs. I'm honestly a little disoriented right now - they just sound so different. The Souls are much bigger sounding, not so much in soundstage size but much fuller tonality and way more dynamics. I was literally physically startled by the first track I played. I'm getting a little more accustomed to them now, and plan to listen for about 3 weeks then flip back to the DWs. I can best discern the improvement of a component when I go back to what I had. The differences are much more obvious to me then. My first guess is that the DWs may come across as relaxed in comparison. We shall see....
 
Splunders said:
Thanks! I'm listening to them in nearly the same position as I had my DWs. I'm honestly a little disoriented right now - they just sound so different. The Souls are much bigger sounding, not so much in soundstage size but much fuller tonality and way more dynamics. I was literally physically startled by the first track I played. I'm getting a little more accustomed to them now, and plan to listen for about 3 weeks then flip back to the DWs. I can best discern the improvement of a component when I go back to what I had. The differences are much more obvious to me then. My first guess is that the DWs may come across as relaxed in comparison. We shall see....
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One of my favorite things about them is that although they are small, they sound huge. I really didn’t lose anything in that department over the Maggies they replaced. They sound nearly as large without actually being large.

What I gained was dynamics to begin with, along with better detail without being analytical. Organic/real sounding is the best I can describe it.

The only bad thing I can say is that they seem to have a super long break in period.
 
HiFi Guy said:
The only bad thing I can say is that they seem to have a super long break in period.
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apholden said:
How can that be? They have their interns blast every set for a week while doing tinder hookups!
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All kidding aside, I think the ZUs in general may have a long burn in time to get them where they need to be. I got mine used, so who knows how many hours were on them, plus any factory burn in, I've put just about 400 hours on them myself and can say they started sounding REALLY good about 100 hours ago and seem to still be "smoothing" themselves out. So who knows, only time will tell.......which we all have plenty of, lol
 
AnthonyI said:
All kidding aside, I think the ZUs in general may have a long burn in time to get them where they need to be. I got mine used, so who knows how many hours were on them, plus any factory burn in, I've put just about 400 hours on them myself and can say they started sounding REALLY good about 100 hours ago and seem to still be "smoothing" themselves out. So who knows, only time will tell.......which we all have plenty of, lol
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Yeah. Jokes aside, Zu does a 1-week factory burn-in, which prompted @debianlinux to make the joke about interns and tinder in another thread (sorry debian for pinching your comment). I've had my speakers for a couple months, but only just finished the amplifier, so I'm sure they still have some burning in to do. The factory burn-in is probably mostly to catch any issues before shipping them out.
 
I can echo these comments. My Souls definitely seemed to evolve as the hours ticked away from when I first got them. They were good out of the box, but really opened up after a couple months, and I might even dare to say they continue to improve little by little. The amount of detail they present at lower volumes is really tremendous - big and full sound, despite not being loud.
 
Splunders said:
Yep! American Walnut. The 1 year trade in policy was coming up, and I was comfortable making one more big upgrade, so I decided to try out the Souls. I have an agreement with Zu, which was their idea, btw, that will allow me to hold onto my DWs so I can do a side by side comparison with the the Souls for a few weeks, in case the difference isnt worth the extra cost. Presuming they are, it will be great to get everything but shipping I paid on the DWs applied to the Souls. Basically borrow the DWs for a year for about $100.
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So the above agreement has been finalized as of today. I bought the Souls, and with the assistance of Zu, had my DWs picked up by FedEx and delivered back to Zu a couple weeks ago. They gave me back 100% full price of what I paid for the DWs, minus the FedEx shipment back to them, which was about 100 bucks. The full reimbursement is predicated on the speakers being returned in excellent condition, otherwise the credit could be less.

To boil it down, I paid about $100 to use the pair of DWs for a year. I got to know the entry level Zu house sound, got to try the next level up (Souls) without any monetary commitment up to 60 days (less return shipping), and got to experience their customer service along the way.

I can't recommend the speakers or the company enough. They truly seem to care more about customer satisfaction more so than squeezing out a few extra dollars in profit. They have always been very responsive to my emailed questions, as well as proactive in providing me order status updates, and most importantly, their speakers sound fantastic.
 
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