Focal Utopia Measurements

First of all thanks a lot for all this work!

I was thinking the same thing. At around $2000 I think a lot of audiophiles would've found a way to jump straight to this instead of the Elear. I've never spent more than $1300 on a headphone but with this build and great reviews I would've been very tempted.

I wonder if they had somebody crunch the numbers on projected sales before they confirmed pricing.

Or do they just look at the top end of the market and look to match that?

My uneducated guess is that the Utopia at $2000 to $2500 would've made them more profit than at 4k.

Every potential HD800S customer was for the taking at 2K , unless they somehow preferred the face tweeter's tonality...

 

Exactly Marv...Now I've never heard either of the Focals but from what I glean from these threads, the modded HD 650 and the 800 still remain at the top of the hill for me...with the Yggdrasil and the ZDS feeding the Senns, that is what I call end-game.

 

Successful companies generally do market research and then have their financial team do some number crunching to figure out what's the best price. Not saying with 100% certainty that they did, but Wikipedia shows that they've been around since 1979, are a mid-sized company with around 200 employees, and an annual revenue stream of 42m euros, so... you can bet that they did.

One common misconception is that businesses do whatever it takes to maximize profit. While this is generally true for smaller companies, the finance team of larger companies use a different set of tools for decision-making - namely, net present value. Profits and NPV (or APV) are inherently linked, but NPV denotes the value of a particular project (or the company as a whole) that factors in the time value of money. Just talking about 'making profit' isn't that useful because comparing $100 profit right now and $200 profit one year later is difficult - which one is better for the company and its investors? NPV takes into account the time difference by discounting future cash flows. Financial decision-making also needs take into account some things that are normally considered intangible. For example, the fact that they are pricing the Utopia at $4000 instead of $2500 might stem from the fact that a higher price tag for their line of products will contribute to their image as a prestigious company making top-of-the-line audio products, which ultimately raises demand (people's willingness to pay more for a particular product) and thus their ability to price upcoming product lines higher, which of course would lead to higher future cash flows.

tl;dr - Successful companies know their shit and are more often than not doing the right thing.

 

At this price I would tell everyone to sell their HD800s and buy these and then just enjoy music. I'm pretty bummed Focal went for the big money grab like the rest of the manufacturers, but the Utopia should make the other $4000 headphone makers quiver in their boots.

 

Or the LCD-4? Or whatever price the latest top-of-the-line Mr. Speakers?

 

Thanks! This looks much better than the previous CSDs and seems to better capture how people describe the treble. Interesting that the 1kHz level is now actually slightly lower than 500Hz. Maybe something in between V1 and V2 coupler would be closest to the human head (which may be less reflective than pork belly/chicken)?

Does this also mean that the narrow 22kHz ringing on the Elear plot is not DAC ringing and is actually the driver resonance? That seems pretty low in frequency to me, but could very well be accurate given that driver is quite big at 40mm. I bet the Utopia rings at a much higher frequency. Fumbling with some numbers and data sheets of exotic drivers, I can see it around 25 to 38kHz.

 

Regarding tonal quibbling:

1. do you think the 1k bump (as seen in the FR graphs) is there or is it a total ghost of the pad coupling?
   
2. at Source A/V you mentioned you heard a slight peak at the 6k region (or in that viscinity). CSD's show that you might have been right given the broad elevation from 4k-6k. Is it plausible to believe that given the broader elevation (lower Q) of this activity that it is much less obtrusive than a high Q discontinuity as found in the stock HD800?
3. The 8k null has been confirmed as a ghost as well, yes?

 

That's the current market price w/o the soy sauce.

 

Yup, the Elear, Utopia and even HD800 drivers seem very stiff with very high Q resonances. Would be interesting to measure the Utopia resonance frequency. The HD6X0 drivers seem more damped in that sense, which I think was necessary because from my measurements they have resonances in the audioband unlike the HD800 driver.

I feel there is a relation between driver resonance Q and "hardness" of the sound, even with tweeters where the resonance is above the audioband. To me this is mainly preference, I prefer the HD800 driver presentation to the HD600, just that the HD800 enclosure needs mods.
Of course this is not always true, but I feel it works as a general rule of thumb.

Could the 4kHz resonance in both Elear and Utopia be coming from the magnet hole behind the driver?

Spoiler: BTW: some numbers (resonance frequencies). Not sure if 100% accurate.

Accuton D50: 29kHz
Accuton D25: 58kHz?
Accuton D20: 72kHz

Accuton C50: 21kHz

Focal 25mm Be: 40kHz+
Focal 25mm Al/Mg: 28kHz?

HD800 (56mm outer diameter, 16/17mm inner diameter): 38kHz
Focal Elear: 22kHz?
?Focal Utopia: 31-32kHz?

The M or inverted W dome seems to shift the resonance freq higher. Need to find some numbers.
These numbers also seem to make sense for the larger ceramic accuton midranges. Of course there is more to it than just driver size.
If this is right the HD800 driver performance is very impressive. I doubt that the 40mm Be Utopia driver has a resonance frequency that high.

 

Posting my CanJam 2016 measurements here. If that's not okay I can also make a new thread in the unsanctioned section.

Compare these to my Elear measurements here:
http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...easurements-by-serious.2518/page-2#post-72623

Here's the coupler FR. Don't worry, the channel imbalance isn't real. I only had maybe two minutes as I was rushing to get these done before my Orpheus HE1 listening session. This does show that the Utopia is sensitive to positioning. In hindsight I should have taken more than 2 measurements but I was really running out of time. The main point for me at that time was getting the in-ear-microphone measurements. These measurements, like the Elear's, confirm that my coupler works at mimicking Marv's foam coupler. I'm sure I could have gotten these closer with more careful positioning, especially in the upper treble.


Here's the right channel CSD. As you can see, there's ringing around 4kHz and a tiny bit of ringing at 8kHz. The HD800 does have cleaner CSD results.




But now for the most interesting part, the in-ear-microphone frequency response:

The bump around 1.5kHz looks nowhere near as bad as with the creatology foam/CD coupler, but it doesn't look any better than the Elear in-ear results either. As usual with the in-ear results, take everything after 5kHz with a grain of salt. I didn't hear a huge 6-9k hole, but it's possible that this region is a little recessed. I actually like to see a narrow bump around 5kHz with the in-ear measurements. I just recently confirmed that this an ear resonance. About 3db should be just right. The 4-6k region does sound emphasized compared to my HD800.
The huge 10kHz spike here should also be ignored. Generally the results look very off after 6kHz. They don't sound rolled off at all. I'm probably going to compensate for the 5kHz bump and drop off after 10kHz in the future, but the region between 6-9kHz should be at least 5db higher here.
When you compare them against the Elear they start to make more sense.

At first they don't really explain why I felt the Utopia was more coherent sounding, but I think the 2kHz dip works well in limiting the effects the 1k bump has. The Elear emphasis does sound higher up.
Relative to 1.5kHz and 5kHz the region around 2-4kHz sounds recessed. Considerably more so than with the modded HD800. Actually I don't hear my modded HD800 as recessed in the upper mids at all, unlike the stock HD800.

 

Yep, especially the Utopia does sound much smoother than the in-ear measurements would suggest. That's why I like to use the coupler measurements for CSDs. I feel the brain differentiates between resonances that are related to the position of the driver on your ears and actual driver/headphone resonances that shouldn't be there in the first place.*
Also both of these headphones measured with a strong resonance around 6kHz on my in-ear measurements, while it does sound smoother subjectively. I think that's just how the in-ear measurements can fool you sometimes.

The 1.5kHz bump is a deliberate tuning choice. When Tyll tried to make a new target curve for his head, the target curve had a bump here. The Harman target also has a bump here (which is why I mentioned it in the other thread). The dummy head measurements will show more 1kHz compared to the ear-canal-opening measurements (see here), but I feel some target curves have a bigger bump here than necessary.
However when I measure speakers with the in-ear-mic method, this area mainly looks flat. This depends on the room just as much as the frequency response at the listening position measured with an omni mic. With speakers I also prefer a flat response from 20Hz to 1kHz when measured with the in-ear method, which is close a B&K target listening position frequency response. I feel that the B&K target is neutral. (It seems that there is some confusion as to when to apply the target for headphones - In my opinion you don't, unless you're measuring with a flat coupler and don't have a better target, in which case it depends on the headphone how accurate the target will be.)
In my opinion a bump here when measured with the in-ear method doesn't sound more neutral than flat. I find a flat midrange response when measured with the in-ear method to result in the most realistic tone, with no need to use a DF or similar target. Still, I'm prepared to eat my words when someone shows me something that sounds better. Every STAX headphone has a bump around 1kHz that I hate. If I had a SR009, I would try to mod the pads to get rid of that. Yet the Harman curve makes the SR009 look flatter than it sounds to me (link).

Edit: *This is also why the frequency response of a headphone will affect its soundstaging. It's possible that the Utopia will lose some of its magic when you try to correct its tonal balance.