Focal Utopia Measurements

Discussion in 'Headphone Measurements' started by purr1n, Aug 25, 2016.

  1. brencho

    brencho Friend

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    Very interesting, thanks @ultrabike ! Pretty much coincides perfectly with the most recent IF article showing a great deal of overlap in utopias, with tylls review unit being an outlier. Here too my unit measures similarly to Marv's/the loaner pair. I'm also curious what the review unit sounds like. It's not obvious whether it would sound better or worse than the regs/production utopia and might come down to individual preference. For example, Tyll also liked the elear, which i felt was hopelessly dark and sucked out sounding and would certainly not choose it over a hd6x0. We'll see what happens, what they discover about tylls unit, etc.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2017
  2. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    BTW: Here are the measurements for @Muse Wanderer's Utopia. This one is special because it sounds more neutral than any other Utopia I've heard, but the measurements are generally very similar to the other one I measured. Compare to my first Utopia measurements here:
    http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...al-utopia-measurements.2670/page-2#post-81598

    First up, here's the measurement with the in-ear method. In my opinion the in-ear method gives the most accurate results below 5kHz, but above 5kHz ear-resonances dominate the picture. Ignore the 50Hz spike. Once again the measurements are referenced to 2.83Vrms and were measured roughly 40db below that level.
    Focal Utopia (in-ear measurement).jpg
    Note that my old measurements didn't fully compensate for the in-ear measurement FR effects. With those the upper treble >10kHz is more rolled off than heard and the 5kHz region is higher than heard. The two Utopias are otherwise very similar. The Utopia seems to be about 118.5db/2.83Vrms at 500Hz sensitive. For comparison my modded HD800 is about 115.5db/2.83Vrms at 500Hz sensitive. The Utopia is 3db more sensitive (at 500Hz, 5.5db more at the 1.35kHz bump). Given the 80 Ohm impedance for the Utopia and a slightly higher than 300 Ohm impedance for the HD800, the HD800 is around 3db more efficient (which would seem to make sense as the HD800 has a bit less bass).

    Here's the FR at the same level on my coupler (roughly comparable to Marv's V1 type):
    Focal Utopia (Coupler).jpg
    Now the bass extension looks much worse than in the first measurement, but I'm really not sure if the first measurement was so accurate in this regard. The bass extension measurements on the coupler aren't too accurate anyway.

    The two headphones are pretty close on the head (attached). Measurements were matched at 500Hz. On the head the bass extension also looks a bit worse than with the first Utopia, but I also wouldn't worry too much about this. It's more likely that the first measurement showed too good a bass extension. This Utopia actually measures slightly higher between 500Hz and 3kHz (which might explain why it sounded less bassy), but I think the most important thing is that the 5kHz spike is much lower in level. It does sound that way too, at least from memory.

    I also attached a comparison of my modded HD800 and Muse Wanderer's Utopia. My HD800 is still a bit lean and bright, while the Utopia is a bit too bassy for me. I changed my compensation curves a bit for the old HD800 measurement to better reflect what I hear. The midrange on the modded HD800 is absolutely fantastic.
     

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    Last edited: May 27, 2017

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