One would think when you purchase a EURO€4000.00 / AUD$7372.00 pair of headphones, that they would last more than 2 years!!! If there’s some drive unit flaw it can’t be hidden and is harder to correct. Focal Naim America, the North American distributor, also offers the $3999 version of the Utopia headphones in a $5000 package deal with the Arche DAC-amp, which cuts $1499 off the price of the amp. Unarguably one of the finest headphones on the planet with a price tag to match. You can kind of see where the company's coming from. There’s no crossover to adjust or multiple drivers to balance, just the cone material, diaphragm shape and surround to play with. There was a problem. Soundstage can be slightly narrow when coming from something like an HD800 though I found it adequate when compared to other headphones. The headphone itself is very well built and Focal claims that it is the only headphone that has the first pure beryllium M-shaped drivers, which allows the transducer to respond to a frequency of 5Hz to 50kHz without crossover or passive filtering. Focal Utopia Audiom TLR Speakers user reviews : 4.6 out of 5 - 1 reviews - carreview.com It can be euphoric or energetic at a change of a track and I very much appreciate that. Please refresh the page and try again. Yes you are right in terms of price, weight, and soundstage but know that the Utopia is a product for those who want to be on the bleeding edge at whatever the cost. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Now the store is saying that the drivers are faulty, and to replace the drivers will cost EURO€2000.00 / AUD$3,700.00 (half the price of a new pair). For me, when I was using the Utopia for almost a week straight, I already felt comfortable with hearing differences with it like my HD800. These headphones can satisfy the basshead in each one of us while still being able to give a good bit of everything else. Building to focal specs for this sub. Throwing vocal-centered tracks to it, I could easily imagine the vocalists being present and alive in the recordings. Moving to Kendrick Lamar’s King Kunta simply reinforce our views. These headphones pound out the hard driving beat superbly, while giving Lamar free reign with his highly charged vocals. Focal has invested a lot in Utopia M and has excelled itself. I think being resolving with superb balance gives credibility to the Utopia’s claim to the TOTL throne. As for the headband, I could see the constant bend being a bit too wide or too shallow for someone outside of the average head size but I found no problems with it personally. My Focal Utopia headphones review reminds me why I love music so much. What would you recommend for SS and Tube in the ~2k range? Its 35 years of speaker design experience shows here. The Utopia can definitely hold its ground to whatever it’s thrown at genre-wise and this is through a few months of use now, so no holiday period here. The LCD-4 can be a bit too dark for some while the HD800 is too bright for others while having extreme differences in the bass as well. Throughout the test we find that the Focals reveal elements of a recording that we’ve never heard before. MORE: How to avoid buying fake headphones. You don’t pay $4000 for a box, but the unboxing experience is second to none. The use of a single drive unit doesn’t give the engineers much room to tailor the performance. As you’d expect at this level, these Focals are built beautifully, combining leather, carbon fibre and metal to produce a product that feels like it’ll last for years. There’s a lovely sense of weight and authority to their sound, and the ability to deliver huge dynamic sweeps with composure. Then its off to the woodshed to build the custom potrted sub box for the utopia sub10wm. This versatile speaker handles up to 100 watts RMS, so we recommend you drive it with an outboard amplifier for maximum performance. You never heard it so you can’t judge it. 2 shielded Lemo® connectors with self-locking bayonet system (to headphones). Focal Utopia. Waiting for the focal fdp 6.900 amp to delivered. Two headphones I’m particularly knowledgeable about would be the LCD-4 and HD800 which I find to be very opposite extremes of what the Utopia is all about. This component speaker was designed to be part of a Focal Utopia M system, incorporating these other high-performance speakers: Both the headband and nicely cushioned memory foam earpads are covered with some wonderfully tactile lambskin. Openness goes both ways, and you’ll find all sorts of noises intruding on your experience if you don’t find a quiet place to listen. The Grand Utopia is the latest step in this continuously evolving development—in essence, the field-test laboratory for the next generation of Focal drivers. is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. There’s a lovely sense of weight and authority to their sound, and the ability to deliver huge dynamic sweeps with composure. The headphone is a bit on the heavy side although the distribution of weight for this 490g headphone seems to be very well thought out. The Utopia takes the two undesirable differences while combine them with one headphone by offering the harmony of having presence, resolution, deeply extended bass and clarity in one clean package. The headphone itself is very well built and Focal claims that it is the only headphone that has the first pure beryllium M-shaped drivers, which allows the transducer to respond to a frequency of 5Hz to 50kHz without crossover or passive filtering. Adele’s Hometown Glory highlights that midrange further. Hardware Review. It’s important to remember that even at this price they’re nowhere near the most expensive around. I’ve never heard of the torpedo t3 amplifier until a couple of days ago, i wish it was easier to buy. The way this headphone produces low-level detail is effortless and the dynamic sound of the Utopia allows for excellent presence and weight that’s suitable for every genre I’ve thrown at. Visit our corporate site. thanks for the advice. The carbon fiber yokes are also smooth and easy to adjust to fit any sized head. Yet Focal has dodged that particular bullet by describing its new Grande Utopia EM Evo – all 265kg, two metres and £160k-a-pair of it – and its smaller stablemate, the Stella Utopia EM Evo, as 'the most emblematic high-fidelity loudspeakers of all its collections'. Hello / Greetings To Everyone, So Today I am going to put my true views on focal utopia Review. Chord’s multiple award-winning Hugo and Benchmark’s excellent DAC3 HGC deal with digital conversion and amplification duties. I am a audiophile who purchased a pair of the Focul Uptopia headphones approximately 2-3 years ago. The narrow stage gives the sense of intimacy as if being in a small room and having the first-row seat in front of a performance. In 2005, the Utopia Be line was developed using Focal’s best high-fidelity loudspeakers, revolutionizing the brand’s Car Audio line. The Focal Utopia M & Ultima speakers are a powerful car audio kits and a true audio system for audiophiles, capable of providing a listening experience beyond your imagination. Dynamic is perhaps an overused word when it comes to describing the Focal headphones, but that is really how the Utopia is. Low impedance is used to help achieve this fi gure, Focal's specifi ed nominal impedance of 8ohm making little sense given that it also states a minimum value of 3.0ohm. Now, Focal introduces the evolution of that legacy, a new high-end reference: The Utopia M line, which include five completely new drivers and a new 2-way passive kit. The earpads are easy to replace, which bodes well for a product that should be in use for decades. A la carte. Best known for its wide-ranging and talented speakers, this French manufacturer has been plugging away at headphones for a number of years now, without ever making the kind of impact that would get the big players to notice. Beautiful sub. This is down to a careful shaped and nicely padded headband (that suits a wide variety of head sizes) and a sensible distribution of mass. Sound like an overpriced non-starter to me. Other than that, I don’t believe that the Utopia is incredibly revealing though the tone being shared with the HD800 gives it the impression that it is so. I would not recommend this product as this product seems to have Quality Control issues. January 2001 JMlab Mezzo Utopia Review by Alvin Gold Click here to e-mail reviewer For this, my (much delayed) first review for Enjoy the Music.com™, I have picked a product from a brand that has only quite recently enjoyed any significant success here in the UK, namely French producer Focal JMlab, who manufacture drive units under the Focal name, and complete loudspeakers under the JMlab label. The technical highlight is undoubtedly Focal’s Beryllium inverted dome tweeter (below). To read up on other FOcal products reviewed on Headfonics click here. It would have been nicer if there was a cardboard box with artwork to sport its awesome design but its simplicity and heft shows the buyer that it is a premium product. This is a nicely judged balance that means the Utopias work well across a wide range of recordings. This week on Check It Out Patrick will be reviewing the benefits of the Focal Utopia M series speakers. The company is already strongly associated with Beryllium drive units, thanks to its use in the brand’s high-end tweeters, and the material’s combination of low weight, rigidity and damping works equally well in this application. Your email address will not be published. The Focal Utopia delivers an extremely ‘tasty’ sound that is both saturated in details and loaded with dynamics. Focal has aimed for the moon when it comes to performance, directing its flagship offering straight at the very best the headphone establishment can manage. In fact, the Utopia headphones help me recall how the Chord Hugo dac knocked my socks off and took me off guard too at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2014.After a long day of gear demos, my friend, Jamil and I decided to give up. Frequency response is tuned to near perfection, while the soundstage is huge and the detail is almost unrivaled. 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