The Mighty Utopia: Focal Utopia Revisited

Thanks for the input OJ. I guess that when you're using revealing headphones there are so many things upstream that can be causing issues and the headphones themselves are not to blame. Wish I knew more about recording techniques and problems.

Case in point. I listened to Norah Jones' debut album a few times and wondered whether my headphones were broken. It took a while to twig that the distortion I could hear was probably in the recording, not in my gear.

You're obviously correct in your advice about auditioning before buying. Might be a while before I have the opportunity. Then again, I've waited a lifetime to find a pair of headphones I'm 100% satisfied with (they all seem to have their shortcomings in one aspect or another). A few months or a year or two won't make that much difference. I'm slowly learning that patience, expectation management and the willingness to compromise are important to reach contentment in good quality sound.

 

Did some Utopia pad rolling over a couple evenings recently. System is Yggdrasil A2 and Eddie Current Zana Deux. Some stream of consciousness impressions are below. I think both the ZMF Focal Subs and the Clear Pads have their merits but I am likely going to stick with stock despite the insane cost of $250

ZMF Focal+ Subs Pads notes on Focal Utopia (OG) $80
https://shop.zmfheadphones.com/products/zmf-focal-subs

-TDLR: Very comfortable, bassier, warmer and a less forward presentation. Very enjoyable but a bit of a departure from stock

-Thicker pads, stiffer foam, but same general shape as stock Utopia pads. Feels warmer in temperature on head but very comfortable. Headphone really feels like its hugging your head and also feels lighter because of this.

-Soundstage is a bit wider and taller but overall still intimate

-Imaging is a little less precise, they feel and sound less “open” despite staging being wider. Like you're listening to music in a bigger room but the room is more dampened and you’re farther away from the band

-Some sharp detail is diminished and smoothed over, but it’s still a resolving listen.

-Treble is smooth, less peaky, and maybe a little darker

-Bass is increased, great detail, a touch bloomy, and is thicker in the lower midrange but I wouldn’t say it bleeds into the lower mids. Bass really lingers and rumbles instead of hitting quick and getting out of the way

-Overall less forward in the upper mids, still a forward headphone but upper mids are not as in your face. This leads to less of that toe-tapping dynamism but it’s still there

-Female vocals pushed a little farther back

-Needs more power to achieve same perceived volume

-Kinda sounds like a ZMF house-sound tweaked Utopia which, I guess it is!

-If Utopia was affordable I’d get a second pair and keep these pads on it. Makes me want to get a Clear or Elear again and throw these on as an alternative


Clear pads on Utopia (OG) ~$100

- @cskippy has some great measurements here, sounds very much like how they measure https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/focal-utopia-pad-rolling.6327/

-Just a little bassier without the character of the bass really changing. If you find Utopia too bass light I am not sure these would change your mind but it is noticeable

-The forwardness in the upper mids is lessened, probably a more neutral or “correct” tuning, but loses a touch of the magic for me. Still mostly sounds like a Utopia

-Fit and everything like that is the same, material is a little cooler on the face

 

Finally got to sit down and really listen to a pair of these several years after their release. Had the opportunity to do so at multiple points in the past, but always abstained cuz I didn't want to want one of the damn things. It's personally unobtanium even at current discounted prices, but damn if I won't be hoping to get something similar at more reasonable cost in maybe a couple decades.

System was Modius > ZDT Jr., so hardly one to fully do the headphones justice. That said, this was a basically silent condo and I was free to hang around for as long as I wanted, ended up parking my butt in the dude's Herman Miller for a few hours. These are effectively ideal listening conditions, though I was unfamiliar with the Modius; the ZDT Jr. here is the exact same one I borrowed for a few months a while back.

Relative to the Focal Clear Professional which is, as far as I'm aware, a vanilla Focal Clear in a different colourway, the Utopia is somehow warmer and more enveloping in its sound. There were often instances where I'd hear instruments or vocalists as being inside my eyeball while trying to listen into the headstage, but when playing something where sonic elements are pushed further back into the mix, it's eerie how well the Utopia is able to convey that out-of-headedness. Compared directly to an HD800 (Anax+SDR mods), the Sennheiser made it harder to pinpoint things. This wasn't just because the Senns had an exaggeratedly large headstage but because image delineation wasn't nearly as clean.

Against expectations, I didn't actually hear very much in the way of metallic hashiness on the Utopia; the Clear had a less refined, more aggressive treble presentation and wasn't particularly subtle about it, though I'm informed that that could have been something upstream playing rough with the younger sibling. Either way, I inexplicably found the Utopia to be the more comfortable listen by a significant amount, though there were still times when I found myself needing to lower volume levels a bit to compensate for tizzy Jpop making my ears cry.

Back on the topic of headstage, the Clear felt oddly forced relative to the Utopia, as if it were a token effort of sorts-- it had a more expansive stage by far, about at the 20% mark between the Utopia (0%) and the HD800 (100%), and this is easily discernible. That said, with the more expansive headstage came an unnatural narrowness to sonic images; it sounded like listening to vocalists sing through narrow slats in concrete, paper mache not in depth (as you'd get with orthos) but in width. It also felt like the headstage on the Clear wasn't as fully integrated somehow, like the maximum depth of things was significantly further back than the Utopia, though things stopped short of actually reaching my face. It was a rather disjointed presentation for whatever that's worth, and it was in terms of depth and not lateral separation. Can't say I've ever heard that before. Even being as persnickety about headstaging as I am, though, I had to listen for it.

The level of ineffable immersion you get with the Utopias justifies their position as a top-tier headphone, even though I do agree that they're breaking wind out their mouths with that pricing. Subtle things like being able to define the hardly-there sustains in between the rapid-fire thuds at the intro of Mitski - Happy or how there's a sense of there-ness the knocks in the right channel of Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer feel. This headphone is the single best example of "I know it when I see it" that I've heard-- while you can extrapolate how a thing might sound from measurements and comparative reviews or read eejits like me wax poetic about sonic "textures" and how much air there is to the subtle reverberations of a finger brushing against steel guitar strings, more than many other headphones I've tried (and I've gotten ears on a fair few premium transducers, though always out of upstream rigs that many on here would deem questionable at best), these are things to get ears on at your earliest convenience.

That said, it's far from a "perfect" experience in my book. There's an odd sort of hollowness to things that can be somewhat distracting, and as alluded to earlier there remain occasions when the upper end of things can be harsh with bright or otherwise "unrefined" recordings. Measurements be damned there was a distinct V-shaped tonality thing going on relative to the Clear Professional, and while I'm more forgiving of that than most I'm well aware that it's a non-starter for many proper audio nerds.

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Am I saying it's worth getting a Utopia when your upstream consists of a Modius and ZDT Jr.? Nope, but that's mostly to refrain from getting shat on by people who likely know better, hah. That said, this experience goes a ways towards affirming the whole "transducer first" argument for those who stand by it even though I sincerely believe that better can be done with the total system cost here (personally I'd love to hear my HD600 out of a big boy OPT and a nice R-2R DAC). I wouldn't enjoy the Senns nearly as much out of cruddier amplification, but some headphones do a fair lot with less.

I had a pair of Klipsch HP-3s for a bit over four years that sounded quite good enough out of smartphone jacks, and a lot of its time with me was spent plugged into precisely just that: whatever jack I happened to have handy at the time. Moving to proper desktop rigs e.g. OG Bifrost MB>Project Sunrise or Modi 3+>MCTH always made for an appreciable difference, but it never sounded "unusable" (disclaimer: hyperbole) out of less beefy upstreams like the HD600 might. The Utopia is a bit of a fringe case in that I genuinely think it's far better inclined towards being in the latter class of transducer, but they're just so damned revealing that when you get to putting together a rig that at minimum has decent internal harmony, it's going to show you what that rig is capable of.

Dammit all to hell I wanna hear this out of a better system. Or maybe I don't. I'm pretty satisfied with what I have at the moment and that might make me want to do something stupid. Argh.

Pics or it didn't happen:

 

Has anyone tried the new 2022 Utopia cable on the OG headphone? A friend swapped the new cable onto the OG and his initial impression was that it sounded "fuller and warmer". So maybe part of the tuning of the 2022 is coming from the cable ...?

 

Which OG Utopia cable though?

Pretty sure the true OG 4m cable was white-labeled Mogami W3106 made from OFC. That’s what @fraggler surmised when re-terminating mine.

After a while, Focal changed the cable package that came with the headphones, so cable may have changed then.

 

Might have been a custom one of OCC as I think I saw advertised, but the geometry was nearly identical as the Mogami. Furutech has a very similar one available for not too much with OCC: https://www.audiyo.com/fhd35-headphone-wires.html

 

The one that came with the 2016 Utopia.

 

If your spending the money for the Utopia I would suggest investing in a really good cable. Dont put retreads on a ferrari. I have been very happy with the Norne all copper cables.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/focal-utopia-2022/

A fantastic review of the Utopia 2022. I discovered this guy's reviews through r/headphones.

I have zero affiliation but his reviews are very detailed with a good mix of objective and subjective content.

 

My 2022 Utopia headphones came in this weekend. I will try and find some time to do comparisons but initially I am a little surprised the differences are more noticeable than I was expecting. Very good chance the older ones get sold soon.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with everything written here (I am the guy that scored with the 2A3 Junior).
And you can add the Bifrost OG with Violectric V226/222 to the recommended list for being a cheaper and simpler "early endgame" option that gets you 90% there, or not but it's helluva fun to listen to in my humble opinion.

 

I just got a pair of the 2020 Utopia's in yesterday. I had the 2022 Utopia on demo a couple months ago and quite enjoyed it but the prices are too high for that model right now. So instead I went with the 2020 that I heard briefly at a Wicked Schiit meet in MA that was one of my highlights from the meet. From my memory of using the 2022 model this 2020 version feel more comfortable which is interesting since they are both listed as having the same overall weight.

Anyways some quick thoughts on how these sound. My setup for these impressions is Bricasti MC1 w/ network input -> Serene KTE -> First Watt SIT-3. I don't really have any tube amplifiers around to test these on, when I had the 2022 version in I quite liked them on the headphone output of the LTA microzotl preamp level 2 which sounded comparable to the First Watt F8.

The stand out qualities of these headphones for me are the treble which is airy but energetic, the depth which feels much deeper then other headphones I have at the moment apart from maybe the MySphere, the ability to layer things at different depths, it's slam and impact, and vocals. I listen to a wide range of music but some recordings that have really impressed me on these are:

Forever Means - Angel Olsen
Third Wish - Joyce Cooling
Live from the Union Chapel - Damien Rice
Bonjour mon amour - Camille Bertault
Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

More recently I've been listening to more "real music" as opposed to techno or other music that's more synthesized. An example of this other sort of music could be anything from Reid Willis. I really like his music but on the Utopia it almost feels like the bottom end of the recording is absent. However the bass response of the Utopia does change based on the amp I have it connected to. Like last night I plugged them into the Tyrs and found the stage size and slam to improve but the bass extension felt less and the quantity of bass decreased as well.

An interesting comparison to make is to the Aurorus Borealis which is one of my favorite headphones right now. Going back and forth between that and the Utopia they feel quite similar. Utopia definitely has more microdetail then the Borealis or at least presents it in a more forward way. I find the staging on the Utopia to be more wrap around instead of just feeling fairly left and right or maybe a better way to describe that would be 3-blob. They both slam about the same and vocals are really nice and intimate but detailed on both. The borealis has a bit more bass quantity and is warmer overall whereas the Utopia feels a bit leaner in the low end.

I'm planning on bringing these Utopia's to Canjam Chicago to try on a bunch of different amps to see if I want to add a tube amplifier or anything else that suits the Utopia better then what I have now.

 

What's the current recommendation for a "tide me over" SS amp while i wait for the 240V DSHA-3FN? I'm looking at the Asgard 3 and Piety at the moment.

 

You should also consider the Vali

 

No sense spending extra on A3 when Vali 2++ and Piety are more than enough stopgaps for musical engagement in the interim (and good enough to keep longterm). Vali might work better since you can roll rubes to match preferred sound for Utopia. I'm current rocking V2++ and it's ridiculously good for the price.

 

I would second this. a piety or a used vali 1 (I hear these are really, really good) might just hit the spot while you wait. or if you can, wait for the vali 3 ; )

 

Roll the dice - evens get 2++ odds get 1

 

I had both the piety and the vali 1 - the vali 1 excelled/was preferred with my HD600, but was way too noisy with my efficient Ollo closed backs (which is why I picked up a piety). Not sure where the utopia resides in the efficiency world, but IMO piety >>> vali 1 when using efficient cans.

 

Thanks for the recommendations guys. The THX789 looks good but i might end up keeping the amp alongside the DSHA as a different flavour so the Piety and Vali are probably the more sensible choices (unless i can find a 220V SW51+).

Full disclosure, it'll be run through an RME UCXII DAC most of the time, in case that changes things. I have an ECP Walnut X3 here but the reality is i use my PC for a lot of post sound and film production so need a proper interface connected. I've never been able to run 2 DACs out of a windows PC without it being more trouble than its worth.

Utopia is 2022 version.