Focal - JM Lab Owner's Thread - Page 182

I've only heard Focals once (I really need to hear them in another setting to give them their due) and the placement and room was very poor (exposed centerblock walls and a concrete floor) with mediocre equipment (Denon source and a Cambridge Audio integrated amp) but muddy with a poor soundstage was the opposite of what I heard. My main complaint was that they were overly bright for my tastes, but resolution and soundstage, along with bass, were the most remarkable aspects of them. I heard the 807W and 706V monitors. Also, Yamaha, to my ears, is on the bright side, so it's odd that your complaint is that the speakers are muddy. Perhaps they're defective or damaged in some way. Placement plays a huge role, too.
Edited by justindo - 11/30/12 at 9:43pm

I have heard the Focals and found them to be a bright, lively speaker able to resolve good detail, especially on the high end. Yet you seeem to be disappointed with the Focals upper frequency performancy and clarity.

The Yamaha A1000 you have is a very capable AVR and the Focals are pretty efficient being an 8 Ohm speaker. Also, your only running in 2 channel mode so your maximizing the power your AVR is capable of producing. And it should be plenty for the Focals. So the only other thing is possibly room placement or the outside chance that they are defective. I would tackle room placement first.

When I first brought my Vienna Bachs home and placed them where my previous speakers were, I thought someone threw a blanket over them. They sounded muddy and had no clarity or sparkle on the high end. Well I started carefully changing their placement, slowing bringing them closer together in 1/2 foot increments. Finally when they were 7 feet apart and toed slightly in, the sparkle and detail of their tweeters came into wonderful focus. The magic numbers, for my room, were 7 feet apart relative to my listening position 11' from them. Initially I had them too far apart at 10' - again in the same position that my previous speakers performed best in. But not these! I can honestly say I love my Viennas but they were the most finicky speaker I ever owned when it came to room placement. It truly is that important.

I believe you mentioned in your post that your not sure if its the speakers or their placement. If you haven't experimented moving them yet, I suggest you do so. If you still don't get improvement, then it may be defective drivers or these are simply not the speakers for you. Don't give up on them though until you have tried to find that optimum position. They are really nice speakers and at what A4L is selling them for, a truly outstanding buy. Hope some of this helps and good luck to you.

I went from a RX-V2700 to the 1000 and noticed a decent drop off in detail from my old Def Tech 7002's. It is a lower wattage amp, biggest thing I noticed was low volume level detail was missing. I've never really been that happy with the 1000 but my plan was to always get an amp.

As far as the room. We just moved into the house a month ago and I never bothered to setup my other speakers so this is the first set I've heard. Room is large, 17x20, opens up in the back half to the upstairs about 6 ft up the wall.

I did not play around with placement much, I have to remove the spikes and give that a shot today. I think the big problem with the room will be it is a rectangle except the area where the TV is there is a bathroom to the left which is approx 7' wide so the room in the back is only 10ft wide which is where the TV sits, however I had the speakers set out from that.

When I listened to the IQ's I placed them directly on top of the Focal's with a piece of foam separating them. The difference in the voice is so much if I recorded it with my phone you could probably hear it.

I used the heavy vocal spots from The Look of Love from Chris Botti's Live in Boston BD with Sy Smith singing. She has a very powerful voice and on most other speakers I've listened to that on her voice is the main focus but on the Focal's it was blended in the background.

That is one of the first things I played since I'm very familiar with the content, seen Chris and his group live several times, always use that to demo other speakers, have listened to it on everything from iPod ear buds to much more expensive speakers than I'll ever own.

As soon as I hit play on the DVD and I heard the people clapping in the theater at the start of the concert I noticed that lack of detail.

Hopefully it is room placement or something like that. Here are some pics of the room from the day we moved in, I just set the TV down, now its sitting back a bit more on the wall and of course there are blinds and other things in the room now:

I see where the speakers would go - each side of the TV. From where your listening position would be from the speakers, I would think the tweeters should beam high frequencies right to you. But you say they are not and I have no reason not to believe you. So I am somewhat at a loss.

You do have a big room and they appear to be quite a way from your listening position is. What happens when you bring the speakers closer to you, such as placing them where the cat scratching post is with a slight toe in.? See if this will help. I still do not think a different amp will suddenly bring them to life - louder with more weight yes - but the high frequency details should already be there with what you have. So if repositioning does not help, maybe it is the speakers and they are defective or simply not the sound for you. Hope you get other opinions as well. Best of luck.

How many hours you have on them? Give them a proper break-in.

I would go with either option 2, or has been mentioned, 3 viva's across the front. I have heard the Diablo speakers and I am confident they would be great for a HT setup like you are sugesting. I was very surpised how much bass the Diablos had and how loud they could go without breaking up. I know in a room like yours, they would be fine for HT and 2ch. But there is no denying that 3 Viva Utopia speaker should sound incredible. I have not heard them but I can imagine that they would be great for music and movies. BTW, I have the 1027's and a CC1000be for my front stage. I would do number 2 or as was mentioned, the three Viva's up front.

So I did not play with position but I did hook up the center channel.

I also setup the YPAO and did the measurements.

I do not have rear's yet, have not figured out how I'm running the wire to the back. The center channel sounds poor when watching DirecTV. Watching Prometheus on BD sounds pretty decent on the center channel. When there is a full sound stage, meaning everything is playing together it sounds really good, much less boomy than the Def Tech's did.

It's maddening because the light ambient sounds are great but single voices just do not sound right.

I'll move them again tonight, toe them in a bit and move the right speaker over to the scratching post.

What are the matching rear's for this set BTW? I have the 814's and the 600 center.

Eric_Connelly,

When I got the Chorus 716S speakers around 2004, one of them had bad 6.5" speakers.
I took it back to the shop and got one that worked and I was happy with the sound.

Regarding your surround question:

Surround Speakers to match your fronts:
http://www.focal.com/en/home-audio-loudspeakers/home-theatre-speakers/surround-speakers/chorus-sr-800-v.php
or
http://www.focal.com/en/home-audio-loudspeakers/home-theatre-speakers/surround-speakers/chorus-sr-700-v.php

Or, Bookshielf Speakers to use as surround that match your fronts:
http://www.focal.com/en/home-audio-loudspeakers/hifi-speakers/bookshelf-speakers/chorus-806-v.php
or
http://www.focal.com/en/home-audio-loudspeakers/hifi-speakers/bookshelf-speakers/chorus-706-v.php
or
http://www.focal.com/en/home-audio-loudspeakers/hifi-speakers/bookshelf-speakers/chorus-705v.php

IMO, it's ok to go down a series for the surrounds for movies if you need to save a little money...

Goodluck with your speakers, I hope they workout for you or you can get a refund or exchange.

I moved them around a bit, played with YPAO after moving them and have a new opinion. I still think they are light on the tweeter, and they are working, but sound fantastic in the mid range. I was really impressed with the mid range.

They are hard to explain. The KEF's tweeters IMO are fantastic, so if you like detail, they are very detailed. I have to play alot more content on them and move the center speaker to the top of the TV but happier with them today than I was yesterday.

I do need an amp or more wattage though. The 1000 is not enough to drive them at low volumes. You can tell they have more in them but are lacking oomph. You have to get to a decent volume before they open up.

For the layout, size of the room, and placement of the speakers a dipole I think is going to be the way to go for the surrounds.

In case anyone is interested, I have a set of Electra 1008 Be2 to sell for a very good price. PM me if you are interested.

Hi all,

I just managed to aquire a used pair of Focal Chorus 836v's for a really good price. I know that I don't really deserve speakers that good (being far, faaar away from anything resembling an audio enthusiast). Now my problem/question is how to find a good enough AVR to feed them... Would a Denon AVR-1912 be totally pointless for those speakers? Should I try to get atleast a 2312CI or an Onkyo TX-NR717? Any other suggestions?

PS. I'll be mostly using them for HT.

The good news is the Focals are rated 8 ohms and are fairly efficient, so any of those receivers should do OK. I'd also see if you can get an even better price on an Onkyo 709.

It depends on how loud you intend to go. I use a 4308 into 816W's and I found a great improvement when I picked up a 5 channel power amp used (Rotel 998 I think). Being used and an "old" model it was cheap but is still going strong years later.

In hindsight I would advise going for an AV amp that has the feature set you want and then getting either a 2 or 5/7 channel power amp and treat the AV as a semi-pre amp.

Tonight I got a chance to sit down with some more music.

They are great speakers, they are just not great speakers for me.

For HT or music without vocals they are great. The mid range is fantastic. I never knew what people meant when they said speakers were fatiguing to listen to, now I do.

Its like I wish they had a knob where I could turn up the tweeters.

Going to go back and get the KEF 900's. Wish they had worked out, awesome deal over all.

Whoa, you just sold your B&W 800 Diamond front end for Paradigm and now you're looking at Focal, and the Utopia series no less. I take it the Paradigms didn't cut it? Wouldn't surprise me coming from the 800 Diamonds. The Utopia series would certainly be considered every bit as good as the B&W's and an obvious step up from the Paradigms, heck, like the B&W 800's just one of the Utopia speakers is worth more than all of your Paradigms I think.

So seeing as you found the 800's too large for your room I will instantly eliminate the Scala's and perhaps even the 1028's. As Tank_PD has mentioned, 3 Viva's across the front would be a very good combination considering their LCR configuation options and would probably make more sense then a pair of Diablos and a Viva for the center. I guess 3 Diablos would be another choice if you think the Viva might be a bit too big, it's not exactly a small speaker.

Yeah, I'm thinking 5 identical bookshelf speakers all around. Just gotta decide which brands to get.

KEF Reference 201/2 x 5, B&W 805D2 x 5, Dynaudio C1 x 5, Focal 1008Be x 5 or Diablo x 5, etc.

5 Diablo's would be sweet. I think in your size room, with a sub, you will have no problem having a HT setup like that. As I said, they are pretty dynamic.

Speakers that are described as fatiguing have TOO MUCH treble as if the tweeters need to be "turned down". I have only heard Focal Chorus speakers (706V and 807W) once and felt they had too much treble, as they quickly fatigued me. The Dynaudio DM 2/6s in the same room, however, were not in the least bit fatiguing.

Too bad the Focals did not work out for you Eric. In this day of internet buying, this further strenghtens the lament of the B&M audio dealer, where you can actually audition speakers before you buy. Good thing there are generous return policies although to me, it is a big hassle to ship them back - time is money too.

Moving forward when describing speakers, Justindo is right. Speakers that are fatiguing are usually bright and shrill in their treble. Everything you described about the Focals, that do have a rep of being bright, are the opposite - you said they were muddy and lacking treble. Traits that Focals and not known for. However you do like the KEF's in your room so that is definitely the route you should pursue. In the end, we all hear and perceive differently and getting the speakers that sound best to us is what really matters most. Very best of luck with your KEF's and happy listening..

So...a week later and I still have them

Been played for around 100 hours. For HT they are great. I posted in another thread because I had planned on buying a Emotiva amp. Several in there thought the room was also an issue because the bass is so heavy.

I decided to keep them for the short term, do some room treatments and see how they work. Adding an amp and room treatments were always part of the plan, so I'll see how much I can get out of the speakers, and if still unhappy with them move to something else. I got some stuff to do measurements and going to see what I can do with them. If nothing else a good learning experience.

My question today is I do not have rear's and the matching rear's are $700. Not crazy about diving deeper into this but I need rears. I found some 803 book shelves for $500 used. Any reason not to use a 'better' speaker in the rear, and a book shelf versus a dipole?

Great to hear you still giving them a shot Eric. I have 1027Be's with a cc1000be center and I am using Chorus 705v's as my surrounds. Much different in the product lineup but it does work well. Bookshelf vs dipole would come into play with how your room is setup. If it is a big room, and you can place them the right way, then I see no reason no to go the dipole route, In my case, small room, limited placement, the direct firing book shelf speakers worked the best for me.
P.S Amp and treatments should make a nice difference for you. After that, if they still don't work out for you at least you can say that you gave it your best try.

So after spending more time with them and getting a set of 706V's as rear's(used), and getting things position better....still was not completely happy.

They were better after break in, but still not right.

It is my AVR. I played around with everything in the world and could not get a seemless soundstage.

I finally got around to hooking up my ICBM properly, an analog multichannel cross over that we use for stereo and multichannel music.

I had been checking out mostly bluray's since a lot of our music blurays were stereo also. I had just stuck with HDMI for that.

I switched over to the multichannel input and instantly the left/right became one.

It had been so long since I had all this stuff setup, we had 3 months in between houses, that I forgot about the difference in the AVR processing vs just using the straight analog.

The sound difference is amazing, especially in multichannel mode, the 3 front speakers disappear. Now I really do want the amp

Just another update for anyone considering these from A4L.

I dug up my most difficult DVD-Audio. I bought NIN's With Teeth years ago and listened it to probably twice. It sounded horrible on my old setup. Every song just sounded muddled and too much going for the speaker to handle. It made my system that sounded pretty decent doing other things sound really horrible. There were 50 things going on at once that the speakers had to reproduce and never did it well.

I decided to pull that out again tonight after playing around with speaker placement, putting the spikes back in the speakers, and getting the sub set properly after playing with the levels.

I'm now totally sold on them. The music sounds great, I can hear every detail in it.

My only problem now is the rear levels. I sit fairly close to the right rear and even after adjusting the levels the rear left sounds a bit distant but that I can fix.

I just need to setup the 2nd sub to balance out the room. Thanks for everyones comments and suggestions, I'm glad I stuck with them now.

After visiting a friend's place last weekend (he's got the older Revel Salon front left/right, the matching Revel center, and a pair of Studio's used as his surrounds) and hearing his system, I'm now seriously considering upgrading my relatively ancient B&W Matrix 800 series speakers. His room is fairly similar in size and layout to mine - both have vaulted ceilings, no formal room treatments, hardwood floors with some rugs, etc. His electronics are nothing overly special - he's using an Onkyo or Integra surround sound processor (a few years old, not sure exactly which model) and a Sunfire amp - but his Revel speakers sounded absolutely wonderful. I've been thinking about upgrading my current speakers for a while now and not doing anything about it, but hearing his system got me thinking about finally getting on with it.

My current speaker configuration is B&W Matrix 802 S3 front left/right (original MSRP ~$4200), B&W Matrix HTM center, and B&W Matrix 804 sides and surrounds. I also have a pair of Submersive HP subwoofers that I'll be keeping. My electronics include a Denon AVP-A1HDCI surround sound processor, Denon POA-A1HDCI amp, Oppo BDP-95 Bluray player, and Oppo BDP-105 Bluray player (I'm a beta tester for Oppo, so I'm keeping the 95 in my system to test new firmware as needed).

I'm here in this thread for several reasons. First, in reading a bunch of reviews of some options I was considering (B&W 802 Diamonds, Revel Salon (used, obviously) / Salon 2, etc.), I seem to be finding a LOT of comparisons favorably comparing Focal 1038 Be's to many of the other options I was considering for the front left/right speakers, even though the Focals are less expensive than most of them. I also currently own a pair of Focal 1027 S's that I use in my home office that I'm very happy with, so I'm obviously familiar with Focal speakers. And Music Direct currently has a pretty good deal listed on 1027 S's that I'm considering getting to use as my sides and surrounds, assuming they do still have some left in stock.

So what I'm considering is getting a pair of 1038 Be's as my front left/right, the matching CC 1008 Be center, and then using 2 pairs of 1027 S's as my sides and surrounds. I'm planning on taking my current pair of 1027 S's down to the home theater room tomorrow and temporarily using them as my front left/right speakers to get better a feel for how they compare to my B&W's. But I'd appreciate any feedback on how people feel the 1038 Be's in front would work with 1027 S's (so obviously non-Beryllium tweeters) in the sides and surrounds. There's only 1 Focal dealer listed on the Focal site in the Boston area and I'm not at all familiar with that dealer, so I'm not sure an in-home audition would be possible. There's also a dealer out in Western MA that I am familiar with (Spearit Sound, which used to have a much more convenient location, at least for me, in Boston), so they're an option but not very practical for arranging an in-home audition given the distance. I'd like to jump on the 1027's before they sell out at Music Direct if I decide to go with this option, so any feedback would be appreciated. Either way, I won't be getting the 1038's and CC 1008 right away - I'd be getting the 2 pairs of 1027's now, selling off the B&W's (other than the HTM until I get the CC 1008) and then getting the 1038's and CC 1008 in a few months or so when my play money fund recovers a bit .

I hauled my 1027 S's downstairs this morning and did some listening comparing them to my B&W Matrix 802 S3's (with Audyssey disabled as it had been calibrated for the 802's). My impression is that they're definitely an improvement over the 802's, but not a huge improvement - so basically about what I expected. This makes the 1027 S's a pretty substantial improvement over the B&W Matrix 804's and the 1038 Be's should be a pretty substantial improvement over the 1027 S's. So I called Music Direct and have 2 pairs of 1027 S's on the way that will end up as my sides and surrounds. They were willing to negotiate a bit on price (not a huge discount, but glad I asked) and shipping 2 pairs was only slightly more than shipping 1 pair ($315 to ship 2 pairs vs $280 to ship 1 pair). When my play budget recovers, I'll get the CC 1008 Be and a pair of 1038 Be's for the front 3 channels.

Cograts on the new speaker purchases. Once you get everything you'll have one hell of a system, you'll be joining a small group who have towers for surrounds, very cool!

Edit.. Opps, embarrasing moment, especially as I'm a B&W owner I forgot the old 804 Matrix speakers are towers, duh
Edited by Rod#S - 12/26/12 at 12:59pm

But these will be bigger towers...

I've got a question regarding finish options for the new Electra 1000 Be speakers. As mentioned above, I'm going to be using 1027 S's for the sides and surrounds and then add a pair of 1038 Be's and a CC 1008 Be later. The 1027's will be in the Macassar finish. Given the available finish options for the new series (Champagne, Basalt, Mahogany, and Black Lacquer), I was figuring on going with Black Lacquer as it would be the best match for the Macassar speakers and other items in the room. But according to info posted here, Macassar is available as an "on demand finish". Does anyone know if that information is correct and if so whether there would be an additional cost for it? I would assume it would mean I would have to wait a while once an order was placed, but that's fine. It would be nice to have all 7 speakers in the same finish.

I can't say for certainty about the 1038 finish options but in the past, Focal has offered on demand finishes for a fairly reasonable upcharge. A dealer should be able to confirm, or give their US distributor a call: Audio Plus Services - 800-663-9352. They've been very helpful when I've had technical or production questions.

Hi guys,

I'm looking to upgrade mine current stereo system to floorstanding speakers, what I have now is bookshelf speakers Chorus 706v hooked up to Nordost Super Flatline speakers cable. I am looking at the Focal Profile 918 peated against the Triangle Genese Quartet. What do you suggest out of these two pairs?

Also, why is the Profile line discontinued anyways?

Thanks a dozen.