Focal Clear Review (headphone)

[sarumbear]

Depends on the track I'd think. Here's a snippet from one of my future bass songs. Sub-20hz bass hit.
View attachment 100513

I’ve never heard an EDM track, hack any track, that has infra-bass (15Hz) notes, which are 60dB above average. What is that unreproducible track called? Link?

 

[pwjazz]

Compressed pop would be the wrong kind of music to determine levels on due to low crest factor, making everything sound as loud as it can.

And how did you measure such? Why did you use A-weighting when we are talking about sub bass response?

My goal is just to establish a standard to allow comparing how loud we listen (i.e. how far we've turned up the volume dial). A handheld SPL meter inserted into the hole of a CD that seals the ear pad is a cheap, though not totally precise, way to measure it.

Use of SPL(A) is because that's what these devices measure.

In terms of what to measure, pink noise at a specific dBFS level seems like a good choice that's available to everybody and it covers the frequency spectrum that SPL(A) measures.

Edit - this assumes that the music and test signal have been normalized to the same level using something like Replay gain or Rooms normalization

 

[fabriciom]

I am still thinking about how to do that.

Hey amirm thanks for considering it.

Cheers!

 

[amirm]

Should clarify it's not "my track", it's ジェリーフィッシュ (feat. ローラーガール) by Yunomi. It's a brief section at the very end.

If it is this track:

https://soundcloud.com/tkrism%2Fjellyfish
It creates nasty sequence of driver bottoming out! This is with RME ADI-2 Pro DAC headphone out in high gain and set to -17 dB. Happens around 3:48 or so. While I was getting single pulses of driver, with this track it repeats to the tune of 2 to 4 per second. I had to immediately stop it! And this is with NO EQ. RME spectrum analyzer shows a peak at 25 Hz well above the rest of the spectrum!

Same track at even higher elevated playback has no effect on Sennheiser HD650. Or HEDD headphone I have under test right now.

For those of you who have Clear headphones, give the above a try and report back.

 

[frogmeat69]

For those of you who have Clear headphones, give the above a try and report back.

After listening to that on my desktop speakers, I immediately put on some Slayer to bring me back to my sort of sanity, lol. No way am I playing that on any headphone.

 

[amirm]

Here is one my speaker killer tracks that sends the Focal Clear into a ditch: Pascal Gaigne - Un espejo en el cielo (From "Kamandú, un espejo en el cielo")

It does this with no EQ and with youtube clip:

Deep bass starts at 2:45 (none before that time) and it easily causes crackles at volume level of -18 dB on RME ADI-2 DAC headphone out (1/4 inch - high gain).

 

[amirm]

Yet another one of my speaker killers: Burak Malçok - Toz Ruhu

This brings out the problem right at the start:

Level about 17 on RME. The track is not loud at all. The deep bass is there but not loud either. Yet it crackles the poor Forcal Clears.

BTW, these last two tracks are music I like. They are not pathological tracks picked to stress things. I saved them as listening to these albums on my Revel Salon 2 speaker and having them sound wonderful. The Focal Clear as such simply is not suitable for my everyday use.

 

[HDavidson]

Robbo99999

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/29ba7f82f0e2ef20c79aa33c39c946ef87e861f1/results/oratory1990/harman_over-ear_2018/Focal Clear / README.md

look carefully at the graphics raw, parametric eq, equalized why there is a filter at 19870 Hz

 

[MZKM]

I am still thinking about how to do that.

I like what BGGAR is doing, a radar plot of different categories. It’d of course be subjective and you would need to be aware of past performance (as otherwise you‘d get comments like “Why did you rank headphone X a 7/10 for comfort when headphone Y you reviewed a year ago got an 8/10, and I own both and X has better comfort”). You could instead be less exact and give GPA style 0-4 (maybe a 5 for IB/AP levels of greatness).

Or, of course go 90% objective like RTINGS, where clamping force and breathability are measured.

 

[Maki]

I like what BGGAR is doing, a radar plot of different categories. It’d of course be subjective and you would need to be aware of past performance (as otherwise you‘d get comments like “Why did you rank headphone X a 7/10 for comfort when headphone Y you reviewed a year ago got an 8/10, and I own both and X has better comfort”).

Or, of course go 90% objective like RTINGS, where clamping force and breathability are measured.

I like radar plots but ultimately they're of limited usefulness in a ranked list. I prefer Crinacle's ranking system, where there's a tone score and a technical score. "Technical" could be performance after EQ, distortion, group delay, clipping/max SPL, etc, and tone could be how well it matches to the Harman target. That way those of us who dislike Harman or use EQ can ignore the tone score and sort by technical score, and people who just care about how well something matches Harman can sort by tone instead. Of course weighting the subcategories within the "technical" score would be subjective, but I'm sure Amir can prioritize the more audible measurements.

 

[MZKM]

I like radar plots but ultimately they're of limited usefulness in a ranked list. I prefer Crinacle's ranking system, where there's a tone score and a technical score. "Technical" could be performance after EQ, distortion, group delay, clipping/max SPL, etc, and tone could be how well it matches to the Harman target. That way those of us who dislike Harman or use EQ can ignore the tone score and sort by technical score, and people who just care about how well something matches Harman can sort by tone instead. Of course weighting the subcategories within the "technical" score would be subjective, but I'm sure Amir can prioritize the more audible measurements.

But his EQ is too the Harman curve, which also would effect distortion and max SPL scores.

As for Radar plots, you can have each individual score as well as a total sum. That way you can sort by which you care about.

 

[Jimbob54]

I like radar plots but ultimately they're of limited usefulness in a ranked list. I prefer Crinacle's ranking system, where there's a tone score and a technical score. "Technical" could be performance after EQ, distortion, group delay, clipping/max SPL, etc, and tone could be how well it matches to the Harman target. That way those of us who dislike Harman or use EQ can ignore the tone score and sort by technical score, and people who just care about how well something matches Harman can sort by tone instead. Of course weighting the subcategories within the "technical" score would be subjective, but I'm sure Amir can prioritize the more audible measurements.

Very much agree with this.

 

[Maki]

But his EQ is too the Harman curve, which also would effect distortion and max SPL scores.

As for Radar plots, you can have each individual score as well as a total sum. That way you can sort by which you care about.

Right, that's not an issue in my mind because Harman emphasizes bass which is where a lot of headphones fail to perform, and the treble response is reasonable though I have my own issues with it. Radar plots are harder to parse because of all the different categories, and it'd be a pain to sort by multiple categories to find what you want. I'm sure some sort of averaging system could be developed where you could weight each category yourself and rank them like that but it'd be more work to develop and I'm not sure it'd be worth it if the weightings for subcategories were well thought out in the first place.

 

[MZKM]

Right, that's not an issue in my mind because Harman emphasizes bass which is where a lot of headphones fail to perform, and the treble response is reasonable though I have my own issues with it. Radar plots are harder to parse because of all the different categories, and it'd be a pain to sort by multiple categories to find what you want. I'm sure some sort of averaging system could be developed where you could weight each category yourself and rank them like that but it'd be more work to develop and I'm not sure it'd be worth it if the weightings for subcategories were well thought out in the first place.

It’s actually not that complicated to do a unique weighting. How I could do it would require needing to add the Google Sheet to your Google Drive though. You simply have the categories and you type in what % you care about for each, then it calculates accordingly.
Or, more simplistic and what I do for my Speaker Selector, what minimum score you’ll allow from each category.

A bit of a side track, but just wanted to put that out there.

 

[genrl]

Yet another one of my speaker killers: Burak Malçok - Toz Ruhu

This brings out the problem right at the start:

Level about 17 on RME. The track is not loud at all. The deep bass is there but not loud either. Yet it crackles the poor Forcal Clears.

BTW, these last two tracks are music I like. They are not pathological tracks picked to stress things. I saved them as listening to these albums on my Revel Salon 2 speaker and having them sound wonderful. The Focal Clear as such simply is not suitable for my everyday use.

I hear no issues on either of those tracks with the Clear on an Asgard 3 w/4490 at about 10 o'clock high gain (loud to me). I briefly turned it up to noon which is extremely loud and still heard no issue so YMMV I guess.

 

[Jwoooosh]

Just to add my two cents as someone who had a chance to demo the Focal Clear at a local retailer, and who plans to pick one up once I have the money; the peak @1-2kHz was actually one of the first things I noticed with the headphone and is the only aspect of the tuning which I disliked. Aside from that, I found it to be extremely pleasing to my ear—with both the low end and treble being in what is more or less the 'Goldilocks Zone' with regards to my personal preference. Along with my HD6XXs, the treble had a characteristic to it which really stood out as being exactly what I believe people are referring to when describing treble as sounding 'sweet'—which is interesting. Something else worth mentioning is that I am very sensitive to loud noises and as a result never experienced any noticeable clipping / distortion as Amir seemed to. Overall I was very happy with the sound of the Clear and could definitely see it as an end game headphone for me later down the line.

In addition to that, as someone who is both very picky with regards to comfort, and who has a very large head—these were by far the most comfortable headphone I have ever worn. I found the clamp to be perfect, the pads felt really good, my ears were entirely engulfed within the cups without putting pressure on any point on them, or my jaw, and the weight is light enough to where I could easily see myself forgetting that I am wearing them entirely. Aside from the Clear the HD6XX is one of the only other headphones which manages to come close in terms of comfort, with the Beyerdynamic DT880 not being far behind.

 

[hmscott]

It's beginning to sound like @amira simply has bad transducers in that headphone, perhaps replace them to be sure? I have heard similar complaints about the bottoming out with distortion on Focal's before being cured with new drivers. I didn't have any links from memory, but found this:

Focal Elex - Mechanical Clipping in Slomo​

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/c8i6nf
Perhaps @amirm test pair is also failing in the same way, with RMA for a new headphone or new drivers and / or better fitment of the driver, the distortion might go away.

In that example he say's he's testing beyond the normal listening levels, but if it's happening during normal listening levels for someones tracks - varying by taste - perhaps it's more a matter of avoiding some music to avoid the distortion?

 

[Tachyon88]

@hmscott Can you RMA a problem that focal says is a design feature ?

 

[100rounddrum]

Great review. 94dB SPL and 114dB SPL are very comfortable listening levels, your ears would still be in great shape after years of listening to those comfortable, relatively quiet listening levels.

Anyone with healthy hearing listens at that level, so the drivers in the Clear will distort for the majority of listeners unfortanetly.

 

[hmscott]

@hmscott Can you RMA a problem that focal says is a design feature ?

Focal are replacing drivers that people say are "distorting", so apparently on a case by case basis they are. I haven't heard of anyone reporting they were denied RMA for driver replacement by Focal.

It sure would be tempting for a maker to deny replacement due to "that's how it's designed and made", but that would surely kill sales quickly.

Seeing so many complaints about failing Focal drivers - even when they are replaced by Focal - also weighs heavy on my decision to avoid Focal. The final straw was Focal denying that headband replacement to Trasselkalle (on head-fi).

I'm murder on headbands, but so far Sony are the only recent headphone maker whose headbands have regularly failed for me - Sony did replace those that failed before the warranty ran out, and Sony will repair headband failures outside of warranty, but it's really cheaper to find a newer "better" Sony headphone and buy that.

Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, SendyAudio, all are hanging in there with strong headbands. Now that I think about it the only other maker whose headband folded on me was Koss, and that was decades ago, but I'm confident Koss would - if they have parts for those old headphones - still repair them today:

Spoiler: Koss Repairs

Can I get my older Koss stereophones/speakers fixed?
In most cases, if we have the parts still available, we can repair your old Koss product. Please call us at 1-800-USA-KOSS and talk to a customer service representative for part availability and pricing.
https://www.koss.com/support/faqs

I can't risk spending thousands of dollars on Focal headphones only to end up with a snapped headband and no recourse for repair. Focal's are too expensive to have unrepairable headband failures.

I think Focal can't deny the driver replacements, there is too high a percentage of failures and is too visible.

Perhaps the headband failures haven't gotten enough coverage for Focal to be forced to replace headband failures as they replace failed drivers.