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Focal Clear Review (headphone)

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amirm

amirm

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pavuol

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hmscott

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After seeing a few reports of failed transducers and even more frightening the failure of an Elegia headband - it's plastic in the middle with no metal reinforcement - and Focal not offering warranty support for the headband failure, I've lost interest in the Focal's until they come out with new headband designs.

Please see the 2nd review [since bumped down to the 4th review] in the collection by Trasselkalle and his follow up comments to that review:
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/focal-elegia.23447/reviews

I think it was the Focal responses and that they refused to even repair the headband for cost that finally put me off Focal headphones for now.

@amirm - does the Focal Clear have a continuous or connected metal headband framework inside the outer plastic? Does it look like it can fail like the Elegia in the photo's in the review I linked?

And, thank you sincerely for investing in the Headphone rig for measurements - it is very helpful, and amusing to think just how bad our headphones really are, yet how many hours of joy we get from them. If manufacturers can be motivated to tighten up their designs, production, and QC I'm all for it. Thanks again. :)
 
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Jwoooosh

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@amirm Would you consider overlaying frequency response measurements of something like a HD600 or HD650, in addition to that of your preference curve? Knowing that they're both more or less the universal reference / point of comparison for headphones that would likely give the measurement a significant amount more meaning to a lot of people. It would be the case for me personally, at least. Nonetheless I am very glad to see that you're starting to get into headphone testing!
 

hmscott

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Would you consider overlaying frequency response measurements of something like a HD600 or HD650, in addition to that of your preference curve? Knowing that they're both more or less the universal reference / point of comparison for headphones that would likely give the measurement a significant amount more meaning to a lot of people. It would be the case for me personally, at least. Great review nonetheless & I am glad to see that you're starting to get into testing headphones as well!
That would be useful, to be able to flip on top overlays of other headphones - the Preference Curve - and other reference comparisons - perhaps as the headphone database builds a section like the review database can offer graphs of tested headphones and overlays of other tested headphones for comparison.
 
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amirm

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@amirm Would you consider overlaying frequency response measurements of something like a HD600 or HD650, in addition to that of your preference curve?
I did that in Sennheiser HD800S review:

index.php


It was a quick fit so bass may be better than I showed above. Will do a more detailed review in the future. For now, you can see that it hugs the preference curve fairly well above 100 Hz.
 

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Joachim Herbert

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Mine is fine. I had an Elex before that had to be replaced due to distortion in one channel, though. No distortion problems with the replacement.

And I recently bought a Clear pro plus the Elegia because both sound pretty good without EQ. I am still not over that 94db spl stuff, though.

Having said that I will watch the debate on headphone measurements from the sidelines. Something seems to be wrong here. Not sure what, but time will tell. I surely will enjoy the Clear in the meantime.
 

LoyK

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Thanks for the review Amir!
Is the parametric EQ in Roon applying pregain to prevent clipping?
I owned the Focal Elegia for a weeks but the clamping pressure was just too much for me/my head. It gave me headaches after like 30 minutes. (I tried to loosen it a bit but could not get it comfortable.)
Maybe it would be interesting to measure the clamp force on some standardized head?
 

solderdude

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I have Focal Clear and I don't hear any distortion. It's strange.

The reason is very simple.

One point Amir makes is valid. The darn drivers clip and they clip hard above a certain point. You need to boost subbass a lot for this to happen.
The resonance point of these drivers is really low, much lower than most others.

Suppose we listen to music and not a sine at 20 Hz. Then bass notes and kick drums are about the lowest frequencies around. Let's forget church organs or the damping mechanism thud of a grand piano for instance.
Here's the spectrum of a kick drum:
voxengo-span-how-to-tighten-up-the-kick-drum-edm-electro-house-bassdrum.png


Below the spectrum of the lowest note in a country song:
2017-05-18_LI_thumb.jpg


One thing is clear.. below the lowest note (around 35Hz) the energy drops really fast. Those levels are easily -30dB down. And that's where the driver gets in trouble. We can measure it and say how bad it is (look at Amirs klippels and see most speakers do a similar thing) but he reality is there is little to no energy there in music.

Now have a look at the distortion plot of the Clear at 94dB SPL
1608453984196.png


The distortion starts to rise below 40Hz. In music, however there isn't 94dB SPL there at all so that's why you don't hear it.. because in reality (music) the frequencies aren't there. We can measure it and even at unrealistic levels and show the results but that doesn't mean it is audible.

Enjoy your Clear.. it is an excellent headphone. Clear drivers don't break easily (the older 80 Ohm drivers, ELear, Elex etc. do) but use sensible levels and you're fine with detailed and distortion free music reproduction. Just don't try to use a tone generator to hear 20Hz at 110dB SPL. (80 Phon)

Note the 10kHz distortion spike is a measurement artifact of the used HATS due to the massive dip it has at that frequency and the % conversion.
There is no dip at 10kHz The peak around 15kHz is real though.
dist-clear-l.png
 
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PeteL

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Don’t own the clear, I liked them at trade shows tough. I do own the Elex, which do share some of the DNA, and reading this review, I’m a bit perplex. The Elex is a very good headphone. Not perfect, but a very very clear improvement over a 650 which seams to be some reference. Much more dynamic, the 650 immediately sound dull and veiled. Sorry to ear those clicking/distortion issues tough, It could be worth investigating if it really is strickly a QC issue or If it’s just that I don’t ever push it as loud. In all case I never heard that in mine, but it does seams that it affect almost too many people to be strictly called a defect, if it is they’ve let way to many units trough the screening, it’s an issue, not a defect.
 

Vytauts

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By attached dataset Focal Clear average absolute deviation is 0.98 dB
If we have future reviews with similar deviations data we can rank and headphones in pretty easy way.
Unfortunately previous headphones had different datasets.
 

YSC

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The reason is very simple.

One point Amir makes is valid. The darn drivers clip and they clip hard above a certain point. You need to boost subbass a lot for this to happen.
The resonance point of these drivers is really low, much lower than most others.

Suppose we listen to music and not a sine at 20 Hz. Then bass notes and kick drums are about the lowest frequencies around. (let's forget church organs or the damping mechanism thud of a grand piano for instance.
Here's the spectrum of a kick drum
voxengo-span-how-to-tighten-up-the-kick-drum-edm-electro-house-bassdrum.png


Below the spectrum of the lowest note in a country song:
2017-05-18_LI_thumb.jpg


One thing is clear.. below the lowest note (around 35Hz) the energy drops really fast. Those levels are easily -30dB down. And that's where the driver gets in trouble. We can measure it and say how bad it is (look at Amirs klippels and see most speakers do a similar thing) but he reality is there is little to no energy there in music.

Now have a look at the distortion plot of the Clear at 94dB SPL
View attachment 100432

The distortion starts to rise below 40Hz. In music, however there isn't 94dB SPL there at all so that's why you don't hear it.. because in reality (music) the frequencies aren't there. We can measure it and even at unrealistic levels and show the results but that doesn't mean it is audible.

Enjoy your Clear.. it is an excellent headphone. Clear drivers don't break easily (the older 80 Ohm drivers, ELear, Elex etc. do) but use sensible levels and you're fine with detailed and distortion free music reproduction. Just don't try to use a tone generator to hear 20Hz at 110dB SPL. (80 Phon)

Note the 10kHz distortion spike is a measurement artifact of the used HATS due to the massive dip it has at that frequency and the % conversion.
There is no dip at 10kHz The peak around 15kHz is real though.
dist-clear-l.png
The FR in here looked a lot flatter. What correction curve did you use?
 

Doodski

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wOwzer... Separating the wheat from the chaff. :D
 

YSC

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Don’t own the clear, I liked them at trade shows tough. I do own the Elex, which do share some of the DNA, and reading this review, I’m a bit perplex. The Elex is a very good headphone. Not perfect, but a very very clear improvement over a 650 which seams to be some reference. Much more dynamic, the 650 immediately sound dull and veiled. Sorry to ear those clicking/distortion issues tough, It could be worth investigating if it really is strickly a QC issue or If it’s just that I don’t ever push it as loud. In all case I never heard that in mine, but it does seams that it affect almost too many people to be strictly called a defect, if it is they’ve let way to many units trough the screening, it’s an issue, not a defect.
For qc I remember adding from their spirit ones having similar issue, seems the very thin diaphragm once over driven will deform and then crack like hell
 

staticV3

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I bought a bunch of under $99 headphones a few months back. I will start testing them once I get through the loaner ones that have been waiting. don't have that Phillips though. Does it have a good reputation?
The 9500 looks like it has a pretty weird tuning. I'd be more interested in how the new 9600 performs
 

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Robbo99999

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1608458504537.png

Hi @amirm , what exactly is the measurement group delay in terms of "the physical structure"(what's happening) of the measurement, and also what it represents? My intuition tells me it's showing interference & cancellations, non minimum phase areas that can't be EQ'd, but I wanted to know about the actual measurement, because I don't really know anything about it. Also, are you looking for a certain threshold in the measurement to indicate unEQ'able parts, how do you interpret it? EDIT: after reading the comments I can see you've answered this to some extent, but I'm still after knowing more about it, and what exactly it is.

I think there's a typo/mistake in your review when you say you lower the peak at 11.3kHz, but in your EQ you show you're actually boosting that area rather than cutting?
1608458774099.png


My most significant impression of this headphone based on this review - I'm surprised to hear about static & crackling sound after the bass EQ, which also occurs in stock format at louder volumes....that's quite an obvious deficiency, quite a drawback for an expensive ($1490) headphone, going against it's "Focal Clear" namesake, gotta say I was suspicious of the high price and obvious use of the word "Clear" as part of the main name of the headphone, it does scream "[uninformed] audiophile buy me"! EDIT: after reading the comments to this review, then this static/clipping could be a QC Issue, still it's not the confidence you want, nor the hassle.
 
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dmac6419

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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:

View attachment 100402

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:

View attachment 100403

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:

View attachment 100404

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:

View attachment 100405

Here is our deviation from preferred frequency response:

View attachment 100413

For relative distortion, I decided to add a third tier at 114 dBSPL:
View attachment 100406

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:
View attachment 100407

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:

View attachment 100408

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:

View attachment 100409

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.

------------
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