Unspeakables — Worst Speakers You Ever Heard, And Why?

If used in the wrong space I agree.

 

The CLS and XLS were good i think the XLS are still current.....and supposedly both lines were designed by a EX NHT designer...

 

The Rocket 450 sounded really good....i had a rare ebony finished pair that were sent to me for a review...if im not mistaken it was the final Rocket design and the 450 was a Danny Richie design im not sure if he had anything to do with the other Rockets. I also had the ACI Sapphire XLS in at the time and sure they costed more, but they were leagues better...i also had the Mini Strata for a review to...but i refused to review them because the built in subwoofers voicecoils kept hitting the cabinet....they was just flatout a terribe design...i really should have them as the #1 ranked worse speaker...they had 0 dispersion and -0 dynamics just a flatout piece of SH!tt!

 

hahaha I had a pair of those mini strata too! They sent me a pair when I was in the industry and those things were horrific. Sub amps kept going bad too.

If I remember right the 450 rockets were a redesigned speaker.

 

I have the Original Omen Definitions.

Still, having the original Omen Definition's, they really do better with tube amps and their tweeter is very much on the harsh side.

They play very well with Jazz, Acoustic and Vocals but, give them metal or anything with an edge on it (as specially with SS amps) and hearing fatigue will quickly set in.

Zu audio has made statements that their speakers sound good with both SS and tube amps. I listened to my Zu Omen Definitions for a few years with my front mains SS amp, which has a speaker A/B switch, where I would switch between the Polk LSiM707's and the Omen Definition's.

After a while, I gave up and ran the Zu's with a PrimaLuna KT88 tube amp.

Other than the Zu's, I run all of my non-horn, non-vintage speakers from SS amps.

The Zu DW are nice speakers for music like Jazz, Instrumentals and Vocals. But best with tube amplification.

I don't recommend them for rock or any kind of music that has an "edge" to it, as specially with SS amplification.

They become harsh and listening fatigue sets in quickly.

For Jazz and the like they are great speakers. One curious thing to me is that with the two 10" drivers, instead of the usual one driver, I would have thought that it would place the tweeter more in the background. Unfortunately, it does not!

Before I bought the Zu's (which I bought used), I saw a video with Shawn Casey holding the tweeter. It was a large, heavy tweeter. On Zu's, it is used only for frequencies above 10-kHz. I used to wonder why such a massive tweeter, that is really a super tweeter, would be required in a home audio environment?

(This is the old rear projection TV, which was replaced in the summer of 2017.)



As it turned out, I found that this tweeter is way to "hot" and pumps way to much HF into the mix for my preferences. The speaker A/B box is sitting on top if the LSiM707 under the window.

 

Several I have built from scratch...worse then horrible till I got my **** together.
Factory stuff.? Focal twin 6be .

 

The 450 was a total new design....built around 5 1/4 inch drivers it was a 2 way....i think you are thinking about the 550 which was a 2 way built around 6.5 inch drivers...