I own the druids and heard the Usher 6381's at CES. they were powered by a Melody amp, not sure which one but I think it may have had 2a3 tubes. I had a cd which I burned and brought to the show so all the music was very familar. After listening to my disk here are my conclusions. If you get hooked by single driver there is no looking back! My rig at home which was at that time either a rogue atlas 55watt pp tube amp or a audiosector amp1 feed by a bel canto dac 2 based on my ibook sounded more to my likeing. With the Atlas the Druids have great tone and texture, you feel the notes, it just fills the room with sound unlike any speaker I've had. They may be colored, they may have a small listening window, they won't rattle the floor boards, but the intimatacy is hard to describe. The Ushers are fine speakers, they do alot right and have a nice balance. But if you get the single driver sound everything else sounds hi fi. It took me a bout 4 months of break in and tring different amps before I decided to keep them, I almost sold them several times. After hearing everthing at CES I came home and said, hey this sounds damn good. I seemed to have passed over to the dark side. One of the great things about the Druids is amp choices, I've never had a speaker respond to amps like the Druids, figure it this way, your speakers are hard wired to your amp, nothing in between. Well there is a network to the super tweeter, but between 40 and 12,00 hertz nada, zip. The difference with the Zu line is they are meat packers compared to Fostex or Lowther driven speakers, maybe not as detailed but more meat on the bone. So I don't know it hat helps but I know others have had the same experiance, at first they take some time to get used to, not everyone will cotton up to them, but if you do..........
