This is a review and detailed measurements of the Focal Clear. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,490 on Amazon including free shipping.
The Focal looks stylistic and modern:
I am not sure if I like the fit though. It has a very stiff headband. You go from no pressure to a lot of pressure on your head. That said, after wearing it for a few hours I started to forget about it so not terrible.
Whoever designed the cord though was only after looks and not functionality as it is super stiff:
At least with those standard connectors, it is easy to make your own or buy aftermarket.
The measurements you are about to see are made using a standardized Gras 45C. I searched for any and all measurements I could find online. Alas while a number of them are close to mine, none are using the exact fixture down to coupler and pinna. As you will see, I have confirmed the approximate accuracy of the measurements using Equalization and listening tests. Ultimately headphone measurements are less exact than speakers above a few kilohertz so keep that in mind as you read these tests.
I have calibrated my headphone fixture with 94 dBSPL test tones and decided that I use the same for headphone measurements. However, instead of using 1 kHz tone I have opted for 425 Hz. This seems to better match research data.
I have also made a lot of progress in building a better test suite for the measurements. More updates and changes will be coming but I am starting to feel good about this set.
Focal Clear Measurements
There is nothing more important than frequency response of the headphone as each is seemingly different and that difference leaves a very distinct character:
Let's cover the good news first: response between 1 and 3 kHz follows our preference curve unlike a number we have tested so far. Bass response is also higher as well.
Misses are the overshoot between 600 and 1.6 Hz. The lower range of this from my speaker testing usually hides some detail in the music. There is a flat area as indicated by the arrow. Clearly, pun intended, the driver is doing something strange there. Group delay shows similar problem:
Here is our deviation from preferred frequency response:
For relative distortion, I decided to add a third tier at 114 dBSPL:
This way you can see the trend better. That trend is what we have seen before which is the bass area generating the bulk of the distortion. And that distortion grows exponentially with level as opposed to linear. We will revisit distortion in the context of equalization later.
Using a log scale and looking at the levels we see our threshold of 40 dBSPL is exceeded mostly in bass frequencies:
EDIT: forgot to include the impedance graph:
Focal Clear Listening Tests and Equalization
In some sense the sins of Focal Clear in frequency response is less severe than other headphones we have tested so far. Naturally, the no-EQ response across my test tracks was decent. There was some detail lacking and some brightness that was bothersome. It created fair amount of "lispiness" with female vocals for example.
I tested small magnitude corrections but soon gave up on them as they didn't seem to be worth the effort. Instead I went after low hanging fruit:
Basically we have some bass boost, some reduction of energy around 1.1 kHz center frequency and lowering of the peak at 11.3 kHz. The latter was important to get rid of the brightness.
The improvement was quite noticeable and pleasant. More bass helps balance the rest of the response. Detail resolution improved with the 1.1 kHz filter and as noted, the final 11.3 kHz filter took care of remaining brightness. There was a cost in distortion but not audibly:
As expected, bass distortion shoots up but due to our low sensitivity to such distortion, there was no trade off that I could detect. The sound simply became warmer and nicer with better reproduction of deep notes. We naturally gained some distortion reduction with the dip filter around 1.1 kHz (due to broad shoulders it impacts a larger region).
First and second tracks sounded good and then BAM! The headphone jumped its gap resulting in nasty static/crackling sound. The kind of sound that stops your heart beating for a few seconds! Basically the driver is running out of travel and going outside of the magnetic field and then jumping back suddenly. I hear this routinely in cheap bookshelf speakers when driven by high amplification and deep bass. I could get this to happen even in instrumental/female vocal tracks!
Granted, we boosted the EQ but I have boosted EQ much more in other headphones and they can handle with ease. Not so with Focal Clear. Still, I turned off the EQ and turned up the volume and there it was again: nasty clicks. Granted the level was pretty loud now but not outside of what would be listenable.
Searching online, I see references to Clear "clipping." I suspect this is what they are talking about. If so, it is real flaw in this headphone.
Conclusions
The Focal Clear "out of box" (no EQ) response is closer to what we like to see so tonality is not too bad as is. Equalization can take its performance significantly higher but due to poorly designed drivers with too little headroom, this is not a practical path unless you keep volumes low. Without EQ is less of a problem but you would face some brightness and some lack of clarity. At these prices we better not have such compromises.
I can't recommend the Focal Clear with or without Equalization. I expect more from a company like Focal with incredible vertical integration to build drivers and such.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The Focal looks stylistic and modern:
I am not sure if I like the fit though. It has a very stiff headband. You go from no pressure to a lot of pressure on your head. That said, after wearing it for a few hours I started to forget about it so not terrible.
Whoever designed the cord though was only after looks and not functionality as it is super stiff:
At least with those standard connectors, it is easy to make your own or buy aftermarket.
The measurements you are about to see are made using a standardized Gras 45C. I searched for any and all measurements I could find online. Alas while a number of them are close to mine, none are using the exact fixture down to coupler and pinna. As you will see, I have confirmed the approximate accuracy of the measurements using Equalization and listening tests. Ultimately headphone measurements are less exact than speakers above a few kilohertz so keep that in mind as you read these tests.
I have calibrated my headphone fixture with 94 dBSPL test tones and decided that I use the same for headphone measurements. However, instead of using 1 kHz tone I have opted for 425 Hz. This seems to better match research data.
I have also made a lot of progress in building a better test suite for the measurements. More updates and changes will be coming but I am starting to feel good about this set.
Focal Clear Measurements
There is nothing more important than frequency response of the headphone as each is seemingly different and that difference leaves a very distinct character:
Let's cover the good news first: response between 1 and 3 kHz follows our preference curve unlike a number we have tested so far. Bass response is also higher as well.
Misses are the overshoot between 600 and 1.6 Hz. The lower range of this from my speaker testing usually hides some detail in the music. There is a flat area as indicated by the arrow. Clearly, pun intended, the driver is doing something strange there. Group delay shows similar problem:
Here is our deviation from preferred frequency response:
For relative distortion, I decided to add a third tier at 114 dBSPL:
This way you can see the trend better. That trend is what we have seen before which is the bass area generating the bulk of the distortion. And that distortion grows exponentially with level as opposed to linear. We will revisit distortion in the context of equalization later.
Using a log scale and looking at the levels we see our threshold of 40 dBSPL is exceeded mostly in bass frequencies:
EDIT: forgot to include the impedance graph:
Focal Clear Listening Tests and Equalization
In some sense the sins of Focal Clear in frequency response is less severe than other headphones we have tested so far. Naturally, the no-EQ response across my test tracks was decent. There was some detail lacking and some brightness that was bothersome. It created fair amount of "lispiness" with female vocals for example.
I tested small magnitude corrections but soon gave up on them as they didn't seem to be worth the effort. Instead I went after low hanging fruit:
Basically we have some bass boost, some reduction of energy around 1.1 kHz center frequency and lowering of the peak at 11.3 kHz. The latter was important to get rid of the brightness.
The improvement was quite noticeable and pleasant. More bass helps balance the rest of the response. Detail resolution improved with the 1.1 kHz filter and as noted, the final 11.3 kHz filter took care of remaining brightness. There was a cost in distortion but not audibly:
As expected, bass distortion shoots up but due to our low sensitivity to such distortion, there was no trade off that I could detect. The sound simply became warmer and nicer with better reproduction of deep notes. We naturally gained some distortion reduction with the dip filter around 1.1 kHz (due to broad shoulders it impacts a larger region).
First and second tracks sounded good and then BAM! The headphone jumped its gap resulting in nasty static/crackling sound. The kind of sound that stops your heart beating for a few seconds! Basically the driver is running out of travel and going outside of the magnetic field and then jumping back suddenly. I hear this routinely in cheap bookshelf speakers when driven by high amplification and deep bass. I could get this to happen even in instrumental/female vocal tracks!
Granted, we boosted the EQ but I have boosted EQ much more in other headphones and they can handle with ease. Not so with Focal Clear. Still, I turned off the EQ and turned up the volume and there it was again: nasty clicks. Granted the level was pretty loud now but not outside of what would be listenable.
Searching online, I see references to Clear "clipping." I suspect this is what they are talking about. If so, it is real flaw in this headphone.
Conclusions
The Focal Clear "out of box" (no EQ) response is closer to what we like to see so tonality is not too bad as is. Equalization can take its performance significantly higher but due to poorly designed drivers with too little headroom, this is not a practical path unless you keep volumes low. Without EQ is less of a problem but you would face some brightness and some lack of clarity. At these prices we better not have such compromises.
I can't recommend the Focal Clear with or without Equalization. I expect more from a company like Focal with incredible vertical integration to build drivers and such.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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