I have a story.
Forty years ago, in the waning days of my time spent in high-end audio, I had a customer, Brooks Stevens, Jr., in Concord, Massachusetts. Brooks was 77 when I met him. He made his wealth in textiles, having owned mills in Scotland, Ireland and India. Irrespective of his wealth, Brooks was never less than a supremely considerate gentleman to everyone, regardless of station in life, and he lived on a steady musical diet of classical and Renaissance music. Brooks' house....er mansion....had an immense and fabulous 2-1/2 stories-tall library that doubled as his listening room. Well, in fact he spent most of his retirement waking hours there, and who could blame him? It was a hugely satisfying room to hang in, stuffed with comfortable furniture, floor-to-ceiling lined with books from his huge (for domestic) library. And speakers hinged to swing out from the shelves about halfway up in the height of the 2nd floor when one turned on the hifi. Motors, chains. It was wonderfully Rube Goldbergian, but it worked.
Brooks had "upgraded" his speakers from Altecs to Acoustic Research many years before I met him, and for all that time was frustrated that he lost the dynamics of symphonic music. He also had McIntosh solid state amplification. The system sounded congested in the huge room, and just could not show any jump factor dynamically. But bass support was excellent, and because the room had proportions very close to Symphony Hall in Boston, despite all the damage done to the system's sound by prior advisors indiscriminately shoving Brooks into transistors and acoustic suspension speakers, it still sounded quite good. I had a similar room in another customer's house that proved the rule -- truly anything sounded at least credible, regardless how reprehensible same components sounded anywhere else. Nevertheless, Brooks at 77 wanted better. He wanted the satisfaction he had 20 or 30 years earlier, with then-modern resolution and extension. I had an idea.
Brooks had kept his Altec 604e drivers. He had upgraded through 604s from the 1940s on, and got his last ones with the introduction of the 604e in 1965. I asked to look at them. Brooks had four! And they were in splendid condition. The thing about the Altec 604e is that it was a 101 db/w/m driver, with 16 ohms impedance. Brooks also had the horn-loaded cabinet guts that were replaced in his swing-out cabs by the AR sealed boxes. 16 ohms + 16 ohms in series = 32 ohms. What did I have at the time? Genuine Julius Futterman OTL monoblocks, and an ability to get more. So I could demo to Brooks what he would get. I suggested he return to Altec 604e, that I reinstall the horn cabinet guts in his cabs, which were built for two Altec drivers each side, and power them with Julius Futterman OTL monoblocks, which provided peak power into 32 ohms.
Given Brooks' ties to Scotland and Ireland, I think he gave me extra latitude because I drove a Triumph Spitfire at the time. When I'd show up at his house, he'd ask me to take him for a ride with the top down, and I could tell he wanted to drive it. 20 miles outside of Boston, Massachusetts is infested with fun driving roads so I didn't make him ask. I had him out for a ride heading for the New Hampshire border when I pulled over and offered Brooks the wheel. He was 10 years old again, that day.
I took on more than I was thinking, getting those cabs off the walls, restuffed with horn guts and 15" drivers, then remounted again. I drafted some reluctant help, but when all was done, I brought my Futtermans for the test. I had promised Brooks that if he didn't like the change, I'd reinstall the ARs and just get him a bigger amp. I also brought along an Audio Research SP3a-1 preamp for the listen.
In fact, Scheherazade was Brooks favorite symphonic work, and his reference piece for whether any system changes were worthwhile. Brooks had a Kenwood KD500 DD turntable someone had sold him a couple of years prior, with a Stax tonearm and Decca London cartridge. He had no dynamic problems originating with the source! It took no more than 3 seconds to see the burst of satisfaction spread across Brooks' face. Boom! That vast room was filled with gorgeous, valve sound, illuminated by nuance previously missing and with dynamic shove AWOL from the prior setup. The more modern tube electronics gave the Altecs range and articulation. But the room was the star.
I had already sourced a pair of lightly-used Julius Futterman monoblocks and arranged for Brooks an Audio Research SP6B preamp. I left the rest of the system, including his ReVox A77 r2r intact. After that, I'd go to Brooks' house for a maintenance check every quarter, unless he asked for an intermediate visit (which he did, just to hang out and play records, then take a ride in my Spit). Sadly, Brooks died in 1981. I called to schedule a visit and the person who answered the phone delivered the news. Brooks passed the day before I called him. Despite only knowing Brooks for two years, I still miss him.
The day that revised system was turned on, I began my hunt for Zu. I just didn't know it then. I had by that time been through a journey that started with KLH 32, Dynaco A50, Advents, Dahlquist DQ10, double Rogers LS3/5a, Quad ESL, even a stint with KLH 9s I was asked to keep in use. I liked my speakers with minimal crossovers, high in unity, steeped in time-coherence, and tonally authentic. And working in the business, I had a chance to hear virtually everything at the time, effortlessly. These were the latter days when there was a hifi store in every town in America with more than 15,000 people, so no matter where you were, it wasn't a long drive to hear something credible.
Now, I did in fact stop listening to Scheherazade at full tilt on home hifi, for many, many years. I grew up with live classical music hearing the Philadelphia Orchestra when Eugene Ormandy was still conducting. I frequented later the Pittsburgh Symphony and then for a ten year span, the Boston Symphony Orchestra when Ozawa was musical director. If I wanted to listen to full orchestra, I simply went to hear it live, because, nothing in hifi really reproduced that, though I got close with Brooks Stevens' system. When I wanted to listen to full orchestra at home, it was usually through Stax electrostatic headphones driven by tube amplification. Speakers failed at orchestras.
Until 2005 when I bought my first pair of Zu Definitions, v1.5. They were a revelation. A speaker with the efficiency, explosiveness, scale and tonal realism to put convincing orchestral music in my house. And without having to resort to a comparatively clumsy high power amplifier. Same with big movie soundtracks, especially after BluRay hit. People come to my house to listen, and if they are not audiophiles or hi-fi-literate, they just let the music wash over them amazed. The hi-fi types compliment the sound but express mystification over how I get it. But this; but that. My turntables are 40 years old. My tonearms range from 50 years old to 2016. My phono cartridges were originally designed in 1959 and 1962. My R2R DACs use 20+ years old chips. By speakers have no crossovers. My tube amps are unknown.
The issue is, too many audiophile systems are built from the front-end forward, on that old propagandistic Linn principle that if you don't get the source right, nothing else matters. That's kind of true when you're jamming the pipe of sound through a crossover at the endpoint. Zu, and a few others change that. Once I built from the speakers-back, rather than source-downstream, I got convincing orchestral sound and everything else, and Zu was the enabler.
Phil
