Focal Utopia Review (collective stream of consciousness)

Yea, when I say not a relaxing headphone it's not a slight at all. Most of the time I'm listening when working so my HEK still works better for that. The Utopia can demand full attention, in a good way.

 

Can you confirm that the ultrasonic resonance is at 32kHz? The smoothed stereoplay measurements that I have that go to 40kHz show a peak at 30kHz, but I don't think that's the resonance.

 

What is the audible symptom of a presumed 32 kHz ultrasonic resonance?

 

Inter modulation distortion I suspect.

 

Oops! Sorry, guys, I was busy last week, so I didn't get to responding...

Mm... now that you mention it, I think the tonality is largely the same between the two.

The main differences would be that Utopia does sound a lot faster than the 2r2, but not as "forceful" or "impactful" as the 2r2. I don't think I've heard any headphone aside from the Abyss that can reproduce bass impact even close to an LCD-2.

And soundstage-wise, I think both are about equal, though Utopia would most likely sound like it has more soundstage depth. Width-wise about the same, I think.

Imaging would be much better with Utopia, but that's only until there's bass.

For instance, I think most planars would destroy Utopia and any dynamic headphone in presenting the bass in the live version of Hotel California. I don't think I've heard any dynamic that can cleanly define the drum in Hotel California as a "drum". Most of them sound like a blur... and even the very best can only present kind of an idea of a solid object, but none can represent the weight very well.

Uhm... there is something peaky/sharp/sibilant/harsh with the Jotunheim pairing, I think. And sometimes Utopia sounds like it's decaying so fast that it glosses over details with Jotunheim. This is very weird, but I swear I hear more details in my HE-5 on Jotunheim as opposed to Utopia.

String plucks and the sound of fingers and flesh caressing those strings are somewhat lost with the Utopia + Jotunheim pairing. They are still there, but there is no reverb, or the reverb dies off too fast?

Tonally, I don't find there to be any issue (except for the slight peakiness), but it's the overall speed of the presentation that's unnatural.

 

Thanks to the loaner program, I got to spend the better part of a week listening to the Utopias. Since others have offered such good, detailed impressions, I’ll be brief-ish.

It took me a while to adapt to the Utopia tonal balance. Day 1, I said “wow, these are lean. Almost emaciated!”, and after 3 or 4 days of listening closely and trying to give them a chance, I say “these could use 3dB more bass/midbass, but I can live without that in light of the phones other virtues”.

What the U’s have that the HD-650’s underplay or lack: better portrayal of the room and the space around instruments, bass clarity, and those micro-textures and high midrange overtones that make things feel, for lack of a better word, real. The higher overtones of snare drums, the sound of skin against conga heads, that kind of thing.

For example, the attack on snare drum hits in “Calling Elvis” is amazing. The 650s have the dynamics and the thwack, but the U’s articulate all these subtle overtones and micro-textures that the 650s underplay or lack.

Over the course of the week I listened to them the Utopias stopped feeling so lean, especially when I stopped switching back and forth with the 650s.

(Even so, I vote we donate the loaner Utopias to Hands after the tour for modding experiments to see if he can pad roll them into my personal perfect headphone. :->)

After I adapted to the tonal balance, the Utopia survived upper midrange torture-test tracks like Roy Buchanan’s “Down by the River” from Sweet Dreams Anthology, but the Utopia still made stuff like Cotez the Killer from Live Rust sound pretty scratchy, thin, and un-awesome.

A song like Bohemian Rhapsody is all over the map. Varies between badass levels of phatness to near-shrillness. That’s prolly more an artifact of the production than anything. I guess I understand now what people say about the HD800s being brutally unforgiving of bad production (forgive me, RTB, for I have sinned against you. You did the best you could with 5.3 million bounce tracks.) The Utopias can be this way too.

I keep coming back to that realness/G Factor/emotional involvement thing the Utopias seem to have in spades. The last time “Svefn-g-englar” sounded this overwhelming and emotionally involving I was very high on DMT listening to the song through some 12” open baffle University coax speakers driven by a Scott 299. For me, the Utopia was capable of evoking that kind of transcendent experience at times.

That kind of experience is what I want out of a music reproduction system. That sense of falling into or being helplessly drawn into the music. The Utopias have that strange power for me. At $4k retail, every single nit should be picked bloody, but at the end of the day I’ve never gotten so much of that strange power (G Factor?) from a headphone.

I did most of my listening through what is becoming my favorite chain: SPDIF > Gungnir Multibit > Mjo2 with WE396A tubes (these tubes are really cool. They take the strengths of the Mjo2 and add better soundstage depth.)

 

We've had Beryllium drivers in speakers costing $1300/pair (Usher BE-718 locally in Asia) and $1500/pair (Paradigm S1v2).

So $3000 can't be the price difference for a little carbon fiber and beryllium drivers. In fact, you can buy a pair of vapor deposited 25mm Beryllium tweeters from OEMs off of Madisound for around $900/pair, and DIY/single unit cost that OEMs charge you on sites like Dayton or Madisound are about 70-80% higher than what they charge directly to businesses in mass production numbers (based on what I've been quoted for diamond and beryllium driver prices from speaker manufactures in relation to OEM pricing). So I would estimate a pair 40mm beryllium drivers probably costs Focal slightly under $800/pair if they are getting their drivers from say, Brush Wellman or some other major beryllium supplier.

Add the cost of carbon fiber, and you are probably looking at Utopias costing nearly $900/pair more to make than the Elear. The extra $2100 is the markup.

I guess the problem is if you are at purely percentages, the Utopia is actually the better value. If we are being completely fair, the Elear probably costs $100 or so to make, maybe even less. So let's say a 9x markup. Whereas the Utopia probably costs roughly $1000 to make, making it only a 4x markup. Of course in pure dollars, the profit is higher. Percentage wise it's a lower markup because the materials cost of beryllium (an exotic metal) is completely outside of Focal's control, whereas they can control pretty much the cost of anything else since you can find substitute suppliers/materials for constructing the frame.

 

I found the slight honk to be more annoying than the beryllium tweeter treble issues honestly. I'm sure the treble will get annoying and fatiguing over longer, louder listening sessions but the honk is in your face at all times.

 

It is a pretty honky sounding headphone, but I suspect it's entirely due to earpads. You can also hear some resonances when playing very bassy songs that I don't hear in headphones with bigger earcups. If you remove the earpads (I did just to hear how it would sound like) and the honkiness goes away, as well as the bass-induced resonance, and also the soundstage opens up.

I'm almost certain the Utopias would be a better headphone had they used bigger earcups (fixing most of the soundstage issues) and wider (opening for the ears) earpads. In fact I removed the earpads and just lined the cups with a bunch of stick-on felt pads and it sounded a lot more spacious and less honky. But ultimately, I returned them to the store I got them from due to the immense weight of the damn things.

 

Spoiler: Utopia pads for those with large ears?

Following up on this. Comfort is great for hours even with my large ears. Only wear complaint I have is the Utopes don't clamp much. If I bend over to pick something up they start to slide off. I'm one who doesn't bend the HD6x0 metal headband at all.

 

I am afraid that'd be impossible. The driver is the heart of the headphone. The cup is just acoustics. You can present different impedance to the driver, you can adjust the energy preservation/loss, minimize or enhance inner reflections, etc. You can't compensate for an inferior driver though. Never heard the Utopia, but it has a clean cone with proper suspension. Surely, very rigid for the given weight. No idea about the magnet, but I believe the cone alone puts it in a different league in terms of sound clarity to HD650's mylar (or something like it) cone. That said though, I don't like much metallic domes for certain zingy coloration they all seem to exhibit.

 

I'm glad you brought up that point on the strained bass extension, I noticed that too when I listened to the Utopia at the NYC meet and I haven't heard many other people bring it up. Once you crank the volume up too much with the Elear or Utopia, the control over the sub-bass seems to sharply diminish which leads to a very unnatural presentation IMO. The problem seems much worse with the Elear though, I tend to listen to music pretty loud and I have to be really careful with where I set the volume on bass heavy tracks.

 

I was thinking about getting the Utopia but haven't been able to listen to them properly and am seeing a few more opinions like yours. Starting to sound as if they are quite good, but just not good enough to justify such a cost even with the diminishing returns we're used to seeing.

The fact that you mentioned "light" and "small" even sounds a bit more worrying, since something that I liked less about the 800 is how they can sound a bit thin, lacking body sometimes. Not a tool for all uses, but considering the price difference, they offer a lot.