Comments on Profile Post by MellowVelo

Never had issues with mine but I don’t usually crank my music anyway (75-80dB usually I think?). And I don’t listen to a ton of bassy electronic music either. Haven’t been curious enough to see at what point they’ll start clanking.

you'd know if it was happening, if you don't listen to bassy stuff at high SPL you're probably good.

Legitimately curious - does the Clear OG driver have a resonant frequency in the 50's Hz? Only thing I can think of that causes so many claims of noise.

@penguins focal official response has called it "mechanical clipping" to protect the driver. On my Utopia it happened originally only at high volume with heavy bass content, but over time happened even at moderate volumes. I don't know overall. If its really an intentional design feature, its dumb. I've never run into that problem with other dynamic driver cans.

@ufospls2 this is so strange that the conditions changed over time. Once the clipping started happening at moderate volume, were the headphones usable anymore? How often would it happen?

You could use them, but you definitely couldn't boost the low end via EQ, or listen loudly to electronica or hiphop. Big bass hits would result in a CRACK noise.

Focals official response on head fi to a different poster, and the issue in general, was "we suggest listening at lower volumes or finding other headphones." mfw.

@ufospls2 I don’t listen loudly, nor do I apply EQ, nor do I listen to a lot of electronica or hip-hop, so maybe this isn’t too much of an issue for me. I don’t doubt that Focal implemented mechanical clipping to protect the driver, but I find it strange that you originally experienced it at high volume, and then it started happening at moderate volume.

This suggests that this safety feature is poorly implemented, assuming that the rest of your chain stayed the same. Did anything else change in your setup, like EQ or components?

An amp with very high output impedance would likely make the headphones more sensitive to such issues since you'd be boosting the low frequency resonance directly where it's most problematic.

@E_Schaaf thats helpful. I’ve wondered if these issues are sometimes caused by particular amp designs.

Nothing changed in my set up. From your use case, sounds like you would probably be totally fine with them.

so, I'm still afraid to push mine to clipping by cranking the volume to a level I'd never listen to, esp after @ufospls2 mentioned it occurring at moderate levels over time (I bought mine new last summer)... but I did try setting my Starlett to an output impedance of 120 ohms & listened to some tracks with heavier bass (Bjork - Hyperballad...

, Postal Service - Such Great Heights) at as high of a volume that I'd actually listen to (which ended up being 80-85 dB based on shoving my iPhone's mic into the earcup using whatever free app), and I didn't run into any issues...

While reading about these clipping issues long ago did indeed delay my purchase, I honestly hadn't even thought about it again until this post... which makes me wonder if there's a lot of variability to the threshold of clipping, or if some people just like to listen to their music very LOUD.

@edd thanks for running these tests. This is really helpful. I too have wondered whether some people are listening much louder than they realize.

What app did you use? I’ll try measuring the SPL on my current setup.

I used Decibel X but I think I’ve had similar readings from other apps in the past

@edd Thanks. I downloaded Decibel X. The results were really insightful. After getting settled and finding my typical long-term listening level, I measured the SPL around 60-65 dB. I also tried listening around 80 dB. Frankly, I would never listen at that volume. It was really uncomfortable for my ears.

Long story short, I don’t think that I’ll have any driver excursion issues with the Focal. Thank you to everybody who contributed to this conversation.