  We probe the effectiveness and robustness of a simple gauge/gravity dual
model of the QCD fireball that breaks conformal symmetry by constructing a
family of similar geometries that solve the scalar/gravity equations of motion.
This family has two parameters, one of which is associated to the temperature.
We calculate two quantities, the speed of sound and the jet-quenching
parameter. We find the speed of sound to be universal and robust over all the
geometries when appropriate units are used, while the jet-quenching parameter
varies significantly away from the conformal limit. We note that the overall
structure of the jet-quenching depends strongly on whether the running scalar
is the dilaton or not. We also discuss the variation of the scalar potential
over our family of solutions, and truncate our results to where the associated
error is small.
