So, some thoughts on Zing's system after spending some time with it - my current set of evaluation tracks, plus various other stuff that Zing played.
First, what has always struck me about this system is how *deep* the soundstage is. It was true with the Swans, and just as much with the Dyns, so it's not necessarily a speaker thing, but rather an effect of the room and its acoustics and treatments. That is, there's a sense of the material in the center being further back (away from the listener) than things coming from all the way to the left or right. I don't know if this has anything at all to do with the actual recordings, but it's a cool effect. However, there are times when e.g. a vocalist or something in the center "pops" out in a more forward way. It's really fun! Not sure how Zing managed to get this effect, perhaps because his speakers are much further out into the room and away from the front wall, compared to my HT.
Second, it was immediately obvious to me that the bass response in Zing's system is way better than mine. Yeah we spent a lot of time tinkering with and tweaking the setup of the subs, which was also fun and educational for me. (Zing taught me the trick of playing a tone at the crossover frequency to adjust the phase, to maximize output.) It's not necessarily that my gear can't produce the low frequencies (although I definitely don't have the SPL output at <40Hz). But rather that notes in, say, a string bass solo track tend to go up and down a bit in volume/resonance in my room, whereas in Zing's they were more even. The RTA curves for our rooms both have that dip around 50-60 Hz, probably a room shape thing as the dimensions of our HTs are somewhat similar - though his is open in the back and side. (My room is exactly wrong for acoustics - a nice even multiple 8x12x16.) Anyway, for music Zing's system's bass is really very good. We didn't do much of any movie watching where there was true LFE material, I'm sure his output is 10x what my system can do in that regard.
Stereo imaging was excellent, left-to-right; sounds in the mix could be readily identified positionally across the width of the sound stage. I think my HT may have the slight edge here, in the sense of the overall width of the sound it produces, whereas Zing's has more depth as I mentioned above. Again, may have more to do with speaker locations and such, I'm not sure. But when the mix got really full with a lot of instruments (e.g. Rod-y-Gab's Hanuman track), there wasn't quite as much left-to-right separation and space as I get in my speakers. Not a huge difference, but this track didn't blow me away as much as it has before (in particular, on CMonster's C1s). But on stuff with intimate vocals especially (like Norah Jones, Painter's Song), it was wonderful. The depth of the soundstage with the forward vocals was really nice.
Didn't do a lot of surround listening, so I won't comment on that. I know Zing wants to upgrade his surrounds, but he's even more constrained in size/location than I am - in my case a window, in his case the open area with no wall in the back right.
As Zing mentioned, we experimented with a little EQ to tweak some of the peaks in the RTA response as shown above. There was a bit of an upswing of the response at >~16kHz in the curve, so we took it down a lot there in the EQ. But when listening to some of my demo tracks, I felt there was definitely something missing in the HF sounds like cymbal ticks, chimes, other little things that happen up there. When we turned off the EQ, it was fine. And I wasn't sensitive enough to notice the difference in the one (or two?) other places we had tweaked the EQ.
Now, Zing wanted to play with seating position forward and back. We demo'ed material in both the "optimal" sweet spot where his center chair is placed, which I assume is pretty close to the standard equilateral triangle with the speakers. But then we'd also sit in a chair right in front of that, so about 2-3' forward. Zing - as I understand what he said - liked the greater stereo separation this imparted. I tried it and yes, it gave a presentation that to my ears sounded almost more like headphones, more "in your head" than a soundstage in front of you. (Not all the way like headphones of course, but that's the only way I can describe the difference.) Honestly, I didn't care for this. I thought it also messed up the tonal balance, things seemed too bright, and I kinda lost the sense of the center of the soundstage, everything was either left or right. Note that I get sort of this same impression in the front vs. middle rows in Batman's theater, also with Dyns, where for stereo music listening I prefer the second row. May have something to do with the location of the tweeters underneath the woofers, and needing to be a certain minimum distance away for them to blend well? Don't know for sure, just speculating there. But I didn't think Zing's contours sounded as good that close in. It was kind of a neat effect in a way, but overall it was more balanced in the traditional sweet spot position.
On a purely aesthetic level, those piano black contours with the brushed steel front baffles are KILLER. Some of the nicest looking speakers I've ever seen!
First, what has always struck me about this system is how *deep* the soundstage is. It was true with the Swans, and just as much with the Dyns, so it's not necessarily a speaker thing, but rather an effect of the room and its acoustics and treatments. That is, there's a sense of the material in the center being further back (away from the listener) than things coming from all the way to the left or right. I don't know if this has anything at all to do with the actual recordings, but it's a cool effect. However, there are times when e.g. a vocalist or something in the center "pops" out in a more forward way. It's really fun! Not sure how Zing managed to get this effect, perhaps because his speakers are much further out into the room and away from the front wall, compared to my HT.
Second, it was immediately obvious to me that the bass response in Zing's system is way better than mine. Yeah we spent a lot of time tinkering with and tweaking the setup of the subs, which was also fun and educational for me. (Zing taught me the trick of playing a tone at the crossover frequency to adjust the phase, to maximize output.) It's not necessarily that my gear can't produce the low frequencies (although I definitely don't have the SPL output at <40Hz). But rather that notes in, say, a string bass solo track tend to go up and down a bit in volume/resonance in my room, whereas in Zing's they were more even. The RTA curves for our rooms both have that dip around 50-60 Hz, probably a room shape thing as the dimensions of our HTs are somewhat similar - though his is open in the back and side. (My room is exactly wrong for acoustics - a nice even multiple 8x12x16.) Anyway, for music Zing's system's bass is really very good. We didn't do much of any movie watching where there was true LFE material, I'm sure his output is 10x what my system can do in that regard.
Stereo imaging was excellent, left-to-right; sounds in the mix could be readily identified positionally across the width of the sound stage. I think my HT may have the slight edge here, in the sense of the overall width of the sound it produces, whereas Zing's has more depth as I mentioned above. Again, may have more to do with speaker locations and such, I'm not sure. But when the mix got really full with a lot of instruments (e.g. Rod-y-Gab's Hanuman track), there wasn't quite as much left-to-right separation and space as I get in my speakers. Not a huge difference, but this track didn't blow me away as much as it has before (in particular, on CMonster's C1s). But on stuff with intimate vocals especially (like Norah Jones, Painter's Song), it was wonderful. The depth of the soundstage with the forward vocals was really nice.
Didn't do a lot of surround listening, so I won't comment on that. I know Zing wants to upgrade his surrounds, but he's even more constrained in size/location than I am - in my case a window, in his case the open area with no wall in the back right.
As Zing mentioned, we experimented with a little EQ to tweak some of the peaks in the RTA response as shown above. There was a bit of an upswing of the response at >~16kHz in the curve, so we took it down a lot there in the EQ. But when listening to some of my demo tracks, I felt there was definitely something missing in the HF sounds like cymbal ticks, chimes, other little things that happen up there. When we turned off the EQ, it was fine. And I wasn't sensitive enough to notice the difference in the one (or two?) other places we had tweaked the EQ.
Now, Zing wanted to play with seating position forward and back. We demo'ed material in both the "optimal" sweet spot where his center chair is placed, which I assume is pretty close to the standard equilateral triangle with the speakers. But then we'd also sit in a chair right in front of that, so about 2-3' forward. Zing - as I understand what he said - liked the greater stereo separation this imparted. I tried it and yes, it gave a presentation that to my ears sounded almost more like headphones, more "in your head" than a soundstage in front of you. (Not all the way like headphones of course, but that's the only way I can describe the difference.) Honestly, I didn't care for this. I thought it also messed up the tonal balance, things seemed too bright, and I kinda lost the sense of the center of the soundstage, everything was either left or right. Note that I get sort of this same impression in the front vs. middle rows in Batman's theater, also with Dyns, where for stereo music listening I prefer the second row. May have something to do with the location of the tweeters underneath the woofers, and needing to be a certain minimum distance away for them to blend well? Don't know for sure, just speculating there. But I didn't think Zing's contours sounded as good that close in. It was kind of a neat effect in a way, but overall it was more balanced in the traditional sweet spot position.
On a purely aesthetic level, those piano black contours with the brushed steel front baffles are KILLER. Some of the nicest looking speakers I've ever seen!
