I believe someone had asked for some soundtracks that are useful to evaluate punch. One that I use is the track To Rome by Ted Poor on the album You Already Know. It sounds fantastic on the Utopia with a G5, the punch, detail and decay is breathtaking. That said, the same track on my biamped TAD R1s is a whole other experience as the speakers shake your couch every time the drum hits. But we cannot expect that from a headphone, and the low level details on the Utopia are better than what I hear from the TADs. At a different part of the spectrum the sax on the track Chitlins Con Carne on the Midnight Blue album really pops and will test the drivers in the midrange. Or try Freedom by Jon Batiste or Pluck by Marcus Miller. The Utopia simply cannot replicate what speakers do, but when it comes to detail, they are hard to top.
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Focal Utopia Review (Headphone)
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Sounds like you want to feel the music. You could turn on a subwoofer while listening to music... right?
Luke Lemke
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Which headphones are you comparing the Utopia against in terms of "Punch"?
Regarding the question above, I was responding to Oleg87’s question
The Utopia are the only headphones I have. I compare them to custom biamped TAD R1s in an RPG treated room further corrected to a Harmon curve via an Audiolense convolution filter running on Roon.
Btw, Garrincha, don’t you have something better to do than to stalk all my posts?
As I wrote in another post, the Utopia are my only headphone, so I cannot comment on relative value or performance. That said, I’m a big fan of beryllium as a material for drivers. It’s very stiff and very light. It is very hard to work with and it’s extremely difficult to make anything other than a tweeter or headphone out of beryllium, but it sounds great. My TAD R1 speakers use a beryllium coax to cover the range from 250hz up. The cheaper TADs use beryllium only for the tweeter. They are good speakers, but it’s very easy to tell them apart from the ones using beryllium also for the midrange. I suspect much of the magic of the Utopia is from the beryllium driver, which is not in the Clear. You can probably find other headphones that have a more correct frequency response like the DCAs, but they are very inefficient. And EQing the Utopia is trivial these days.
About Clear and Utopia
Tested and owned Clear before moved to Utopia, Utopia is clearer and also sharper sounding, they use different pads which effects sound too.
I have Elex pads which seem to be pretty much same that Clear uses but in different color, when those are swapped Utopia reminds even more of Clears because treble drops down and bass emphasis raises, less sharp listening but perhaps not as impressive. Is it exactly same after swap? Don't think so but don't have both here to A/B either.
Clear is hard headphone to fault imo unless running to easily clipping unit and perhaps would be my recommendation if wanting to try more expensive headphones but its not perfect either. Couple things with it left me wanting more and made to switch for Utopia.
- There were times when soundstage of Clear sounded so small that it annoyed, Utopia sounds airier, suspecting difference in pads has much to do with this.
- Vocal performance was just "ok" not impressive where as Utopia has rather good if not my favorite vocal performance.
- Material which silver OG Clear uses in pads and headband wears/colors from skin fast.
- Utopia might pair better tube-amps with its lesser warm sound and higher impedance.
Also personally i prefer Hifiman HE500 and Fostex TH900 more than Clear but would not recommend them over Clear because other is discontinued,heavy and other very colored sound and requiring EQ in treble at least.
Tested and owned Clear before moved to Utopia, Utopia is clearer and also sharper sounding, they use different pads which effects sound too.
I have Elex pads which seem to be pretty much same that Clear uses but in different color, when those are swapped Utopia reminds even more of Clears because treble drops down and bass emphasis raises, less sharp listening but perhaps not as impressive. Is it exactly same after swap? Don't think so but don't have both here to A/B either.
Clear is hard headphone to fault imo unless running to easily clipping unit and perhaps would be my recommendation if wanting to try more expensive headphones but its not perfect either. Couple things with it left me wanting more and made to switch for Utopia.
- There were times when soundstage of Clear sounded so small that it annoyed, Utopia sounds airier, suspecting difference in pads has much to do with this.
- Vocal performance was just "ok" not impressive where as Utopia has rather good if not my favorite vocal performance.
- Material which silver OG Clear uses in pads and headband wears/colors from skin fast.
- Utopia might pair better tube-amps with its lesser warm sound and higher impedance.
Also personally i prefer Hifiman HE500 and Fostex TH900 more than Clear but would not recommend them over Clear because other is discontinued,heavy and other very colored sound and requiring EQ in treble at least.
Interesting, comparing the sound of a headphone to the one of a loudspeaker. I for my part have the Sennheiser HD800 and HD650, the Hifiman Sundara, the Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro and the AKG 702. Neither of them has more "punch" than another, whatever this might be.
I don't think the driver material or design matters too much, I think what matters is the frequency response and the distortion, how you get there is not that important beyond cost. Then you have the soundstage variable in headphones that is created by the physical design of the earcups and possibly angled pads/angled drivers. I don't think the actual material of the speaker/driver is important in & of itself as long as the frequency response & distortion variables are satisfied.
Adi777
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Sorry for the offtop, but I am very curious to compare these speakers to, for example, Revel Salon 2 or other well-measured speakers.
You wrote you like beryl. You could listen to Grimm Audio Ls1be.
oleg87
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I find this line of thinking more persuasive for gear that's easy to measure and where competent implementations are basically indistinguishable, but as it stands headphones and their transducers are still audibly imperfect, and you're not listening to plots but an electromechanical device whose peculiarities set it very audibly apart from other such devices. Does beryllium have some distinguishing sonic character as a driver material when deviating from "ideal" behavior? I don't know, doesn't seem impossible. The map is not the territory, and all that.
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Hmm, that sounds a little nonsensical really, we measure frequency response & distortion in headphones & speakers for a reason rather than minutely obsessing over the materials that the drivers are made from or even what kind of drivers they are - and there's a reason for that.
I’ve never heard these, but I would be particularly interested in Grimm since these are active speakers, and there is much to gain from that design choice.
The TAD R1s are big speakers and they have a 6” beryllium midrange, I believe the only one made. In my room with the speakers near the corners, the -3db point is at 17hz, and this is with about -12 db of EQ below 30hz to compensate for the boundary boost. So no subs are needed. The dynamic headroom of the TADs is very impressive, I don’t think the Grimm or Revel can keep up, but within their SPL limits, they seem like great speakers.
I’m a big fan Andrew Jones and of the speakers he designed at TAD. That said, one newer entrant that seems very interesting is Perlisten.
I think there is a middle ground. FR and distortion tells us how something sounds, while delving into the specifics of the drivers helps explain why it sounds or performs a certain way.
Beryllium is a great material because it is stronger than steel and yet lighter than aluminum. We know from physics that f=ma, so then if we have a lighter driver, it will accelerate faster if subjected to the same force. And also, we want the driver to be very stiff so we don’t have cone breakup. This is why beryllium is such a great material, but it’s very hard to make large drivers out of beryllium.
I learned a lot from working with Andrew Jones when he helped me with biamping my speakers, and also a lot from Mitch Barnett who designed the convolution filter for my speakers. Main lesson for me was that it’s not as simple as reaching a close adherence to a target curve because our ears don’t work the same as a measurement microphone. There are many physical and psychoacoustic reasons for this. Reflections are very important, so then sound dispersion becomes as important as FR in one location. There is also phase and timing, although we are not very sensitive to this.
Most importantly is how our ears integrate the information. For example…. When I was measuring my room I became very concerned as very small changes in the location of the speakers or microphone were yielding very different impulse and FR responses. So my worry was that the convolution filter would work only at one very small point and the speakers could not be moved. Even having pillows on my sofa affected the measurements. Mitch and Andrew assured me my ears worked differently and I should not worry, but I still had my doubts until I heard the results. In fact our ears are very very sensitive but they also smooth things out filtering out narrow dips in FR, even if they are deep. Our eye also play tricks on us, otherwise movies would not work.
Long answer to a short question, but bottom line is as a former EE, I have a lot of respect for science and measurement, but I also see them as a tool and not an end all. I understood only a fraction of what Andrew and Mitch explained, but the key lesson for me was FR and distortion matter, but they don’t tell the whole story.
Luke Lemke
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I'm not Garrincha.
Luke Lemke
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I'm one of these crazy headphones collector that is considering buying the Utopias. The reason I asked this question is because I think the Utopia will not be significantly superior to my Focal Clears. I didn't mean to "challenge" your opinion in any way. That being said, I think you should compare the Utopia with other cans at a cheaper price point, such as the Focal Clear, Focal Elex, etc. At the end of the day we're all looking for the best price to performance ration in this forum.
Well it might not be superior depending what you value in sound but it will be different sounding just because difference in pads even we don't count the driver.
Until recently I’ve mostly listened to speakers. So my reference is my TAD R1s, recognizing speakers are a very different animal. That said, I would want my headphones to offer the same level of enjoyment.
A few years back, when I traveled a lot for work, I bought JH Audio Angie CIEMs. The sound isolation is fantastic, especially if you spend time in an airplane. That said, for whatever reason, I’m not thrilled with the Angie. But being they are custom, there is no much one can do with them.
Looking for something better, I decided to try the Utopia, given the numerous positive reviews and because like my TADs they had beryllium drivers. But I underestimated how little sound isolation they offer being an open back design. Rookie mistake.
I just recently got a pair of Truthear. These put the Angie to shame. They sounded so good I thought I’d move a few steps up the food chain and ordered the Monarch Mk2, which I should receive this week. I’m also thinking about getting the DCA Noire. The Utopia are useless if I want to listen to music in the same room where my wife is watching TV.
So back to your question, I don’t have much to say in terms of Utopia relative to other headphones. But I can say the Utopia are every bit as fun to listen to as my TADs. You don’t get the visceral impact with the Utopia of a large floor standing speaker with a 17hz 3db point, but the detailing, absence of room modes, and intimacy of the sound is stunning. Are they worth the money difference versus the Clear? I cannot answer that, but now with a new Utopia for sale, you probably can get a great deal on the original Utopia from many that will want to upgrade.
A couple words of warning. The stock cable on the original model is a huge pain in the butt. It is too heavy and too long. Plan on getting something shorter and lighter. Fog City Audio has some well priced custom cables with Lemo knock off plugs. Also the Utopia are very revealing. I bought a Focal Arche that many recommended for the Utopia when Focal ran the 1000 voucher on these. The Utopia sound fine on Arche even without EQ when you set it to Utopia on the amp output, but I find now with the Topping G5 they sound much better (with Amir’s EQ).
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I have both the Clear and Utopia. I do think the Utopia is better but it's relatively slight. My general experience, the diminishing returns get smaller and smaller and the Clear is already a great headphone.
Utopia sounds more detailed (more "clear"), more natural timbre, airier, wider soundstage (but nowhere near the HD800S, which is almost unnaturally wide). The largest difference is before EQ, after EQ, still a difference but less. The Utopia is less slightly less weird around the 1-2.5kHz region. I usually EQ the Clear to Harman, the Utopia I often listen to straight or just with a slight bass boost and leave the rest alone, as it really needs EQ less.
On physical/QC issues, the Utopia creaks less. That headphones at this price range creak at all is a bit sus but my Clear is quite creaky. Doesn't really bother much on the head, but picking it up to put on, it's a bit of a creak-fest. The Utopia is less creaky, but it still has a bit of that Focal creak going on. It also has the clipping issue less, it has it but requires higher volumes to get there. This isn't an issue for me personally on either headphone, it's well above my highest listening level on both. But it's higher on the Utopia than the Clear. The leather pads on the Utopia are a mix, they are in a way more comfortable but also maybe less particularly in high temperatures, they have more of a tendency to get hot or sweaty. I suspect they may last longer but they are also more expensive, with the Clear pads you also have the option of the Drop Elex pads if they ever come back in stock which are reportedly identical to the Clear.
I think it is better, but it's not 4x better or even 2x better, although quantifying this is inherently a subjective value judgement. I think the reality is when you have something as good as the Clear already, you are spending 2x or 4x to get very slight improvements, that's just how it is.
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