DEFINITION MK.IV
REASONING
Z U A U D I O
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ADDITIONAL DECLARATIONS ON ‘THE ZU SOUND’ & GETTING IT WITH DEFINITION MK.IV
Definition Mk.IV gets closer to the music by defying many of the conventions of contemporary
loudspeaker design. Problems of tone, intimacy, room... and how to recreate a real sense of space
and grandeur that is music, these are the things that we’ve tried to address with our new ‘speaker.
Definition Mk.IV is about realizing elegant solutions and removing over-engineered and tone-
robbing modern convention, to deliver genuine expression, agility of attack and dynamic contrast,
with the lush sensuality of sustain, and the space, warmth and emotion expressed within decay.
Some of the design features that make it possible include the new full-range nanotech drivers and
their position on the loudspeaker. Consider that the attack of the whole musical scale emanates
from the front driver array—it’s only the subcontrabass, the really deep stuff, that’s recreated
from the user-tunable down-firing subwoofer system. Adjusting only the deep bass for great
in-room timbre is the best place to solve room problems without damaging the attack. And it’s
the attack more than any other aspect of a waveform that gives the listener the clues to process
source, direction, amplitude, character, intelligence... the light and life of music and sound.
Example: a piano key is struck! The bite of the impinging hammer, initial complex string motion,
and initial coupling of piano body and sound-board. The first milliseconds are very dynamic
and dense with feature. To get the attack correct is solely a function of the playback system and
has very little to do with the room—aside from placement. If you have changed your system to
combat room modes, attack and dynamics have very likely been impaired. Why? Because most
people can only pinpoint tonal problems with steady-state or semi steady-state music or signal.
This is a problem because room influence on steady-state is huge, the single largest influence
if included as a component of your playback system. So people usually tweak things to get the
steady-state and decay tonally correct but inadvertently kill the life in the attack. This is a reason
why cables as tone controls, digital room correction, parametric equalizers and the like can never
fix fundamental problems when used on the system as a whole—unless of course the time axis
is also programmed and correlated to harmonic structure and then set to react to any dynamic
anomalies within the signal, overlaid with the signature of the room the original recording was
made in and compared... (how much are real super computers going for these days?)
As a result of all the above, we think the pursuit of measured perfection, as displayed on a
‘scope or graph, is a distraction, with design choices being made to serve the spec’s rather than
the ear; it distracts from delivering the totality of a musical performance intended not just to be
heard, but to be felt. The tone, intimacy and dynamics of live music are everything to us so the
measurements we conduct in the design process are just a help to guide us along the way. So,
once we’ve got our ‘speakers sounding fantastic to our ears, we become rather less interested
in how they sound on paper. What we do care about, passionately, is how our ‘speakers perform
in the real world, surrounded by the ephemera of normal life and the reality of regular gear. At
the end of the day, when we crack open a beer, slip on a record and put our feet up, the only
measurements that matter are those read by our heart and soul via those appendages on the
sides of our heads. So if you just want to be transported to the place and the time, to experience
the creative energy, the rush of the attack, the sensual beauty of the sustain and all of those other
immeasurable yet defining ‘things’ that make music alive, there’s every chance you’ll fall in love
with the Definition Mk.IV every time you ask them to playback ‘that’ song, album, or sound.