Review: Zeta Zero Venus Picolla

The Sound

With ASL Twin-Head and Croft cont.

   As a matter of fact the comparison which I made is not exactly perfect because museum-like order suggests statics and deadliness, and with Zetas it is exactly the opposite. The sources are not only located with an excellent precision but at the same time, they very much communicate with one another so that sounds clearly cooperate overlapping one another and creating multi-dimentional monolith of the sound slab. Actually it is ideal because that is what it exactly should be.

As for the sounds themselves, they were not softened, overstretched or gluey. Neither were they cold ot simplified. In a natural sense they were exact. They had proper temperature, right filling and appropriate weight. No over-heaviness and no over-smoothing. Those Zetas were filled with an ideal sound vis centrifuge giving the sounds proper weight and exapansion pace. Obviously, experiments with the spinning loudspeakers conducted in the past allowed Mr Tomasz to achieve the right propagation of sound and same measure of its weight. For the sound should neither be rumbling as potatoes poured out of the sack, nor should it be light as a butterfly. It has got to have a chance to be fast and maintain properly harmonic, rich shape. It is all hard to obtain and rarely all those three parameters together can hold the highest quality. Zetas did not have problems in that aspect, however they created a problem for others, for the fact, that it will be hard for others to repeat something like that. Their speed is a feature naturally belonging to the ribbon loudspeakers, just as the beauty of sopranes. But as for the mass it is not so, or not even near. In the meantime all three Zeta ribbons managed to hold proper mass without slightest difficulty, and what is more, they provided sounds with excellent shaping. However, that excellence was expressed by naturality and not warmth, cheesiness or over-thickening of the sound.

It was a tube stage but apart from the elegancy of sound tubes could not be felt. I cannot really say whether I prefer tube’s trickiness, or its naturality, because I like them both. In this case it was certainly a demonstration of tube naturality but, as per usual, when  tubec work in stage that certain grace appeared, untracable by transistors; grace which was much more difficult to obtain by them. Transistors jump up high on a dynamic scale but tubes move much more smoothly. And music is not some type of sports high jump contest, or at least not only.

All righ now, enough for those generalizations. The sound produced by Zetas was also big, strong, saturated and deep. At the same time it was quite tight at the beginning but as the time passed it was becoming more elastic. Particular attention, however, was brought by noticeable size of sources. Not overwhelming, but rather large. Zeta is called Zero and it gives zero miniaturization. Instruments and voices presented by it are large, sturdy and strong.

On top of those Zetas I have placed famous Entreqa mice, which are source of hysterical fury attacks amongst enemies of celebrated audiophilism. Whatever the cause of the rage could be, those mice have their own purpose. So far I have tried them with two sets of loudspeakers and every time it was identical. They make the sound harder, more explicit and more expressive. It has turned out not to match well with Audio Solution loudspeakers but with Zetas the effect was very interesting. Although the sound without mice was more vibrating and various as audiophiles would call it, it was better to listen with mice and every time I tried removing them, I felt like placing them back right away. My son had a similar feeling, adding mice gives such an effect as if a drum was much better tuned. I will write about the mice some other time after I gain more knowledge about them based on numerous tests.

Apart from all that, the sound of Zetas in my stage was slightly dimmed, which matched it in an excellent way, thus creating more interesting truly concert-like atmosphere. I do not like dark sound but that was just right. Neither do I like very bright sound, and generally speaking there are  few things which I like, but what I really enjoy is good playing, and that was just marvellous.