Focal Utopia Headphones....World's BEST Headphones//Speakers???

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Would love to listen to the Focal headphones at one point with using Focal speakers in one of my rooms. Having past Stax 009 with several outboard amps, I am now using the Abyss and Audeze LCD4 with the Cavalli Liquid Gold and the Woo Audio WA-5
 

Audio_Karma

Well-Known Member
Sep 24, 2012
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Would love to listen to the Focal headphones at one point with using Focal speakers in one of my rooms. Having past Stax 009 with several outboard amps, I am now using the Abyss and Audeze LCD4 with the Cavalli Liquid Gold and the Woo Audio WA-5

I seen where Focal was using a Cavalli Liquid Gold amp with their Utopia headphone at one of the canjam meets.

This guy has the same headphone system as you do and he was just raving about the Focal Utopia headphone in the other You Tube video I put here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tu1mqqi-rw
 
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Audio_Karma

Well-Known Member
Sep 24, 2012
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Those Beryllium Drivers take a long time to break-in good and sound their best...around 600 to 800 hours and sometimes even longer than that! so I think I will find one of these Utopia headphones on the used market pretty soon after they come on the market!;)
 

Audio_Karma

Well-Known Member
Sep 24, 2012
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Look's like I need to start saving my pennies...I don't think any of these Utopia headphones are going to be coming on the used market...ever!...unless Focal comes out with something better in the future!!

Look at this REVIEW!....From what I heard from this reviewer tells me that these Utopia headphones may not have been.. broken in really good yet...

I'm shocked they did not hook up a balance cable to these headphones so we could find out how much better they sounded in balance mode!

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/worlds-best-headphone-focal-utopia#KU6rZ4kHT9p1XpIV.97
 
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Fidach Lad

Well-Known Member
Jun 24, 2015
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Fidach
I am an avid headphone listener. I use a Donald North Audio 2A3 SET amplifier (with almost all caps, film and electrolytic, and some key resistors replaced with AN(UK) parts). I also own a custom SS amp built by Blue Circle Audio, plus many more before that as I worked my way up the food chain.

In the last few years, I've been reading a lot about how sensitive headphones, especially the most expensive ones, are to amplifiers. If so, this means Buyer Beware, unless you can audition the headphones in your own system before you part permanently with something greater then $1,000. I have had that misfortune. The two headphones i ended up and have owned (and replaced with the same brand when they had outlived themselves) forever cost $200 and $400, respectively. Both sounded good to my ears on all the amps i ever owned, including the current ones.

Now, I don't have the best ears in the world, and my criteria for evaluating headphones is if they sound right to me from about 40Hz to however high i can hear at 72! The Audeze LDC2 and one its "followers" and the HD800 sounded wrong to me. The Audeze were too dark (although i do like some coloration in the lower mids), but coherent, while the HD800 sounded like 3 different headphones in the bass, mids and treble, with the treble being overly bright and the mids un-life-like. But it seems to be a headphone of choice to many Stratus owners.

I don't know what the moral is to my experience, other than buyer beware and trust the experience of your ears (and brain) over price and hype. The enjoyment curve (for me) is not linear, nor always positively increasing with price.

The headphones: K-701, K-702, K-7xx series and HD650, one from about 2006(?) and one from last year. I use silver cables on the HDs and copper for the AKG.
 

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