Interested in Focal Scala Utopias

James63,

Thank you, I like to think so.

I really appreciate your comment on the aesthetics as I made a conscious effort to address that aspect while building my system. While performance is paramount, performance isn't mutually exclusive from presentation. My girlfriends may not fully appreciate my hobby but outside of reservations over the size of floorstanding speakers generally they typically love the way the system looks and is integrated into the room and, further, seem willing to accept the size of the speakers when they get to hear their favorite music on my system (they start bringing over their favorite CDs just to listen to them on my system and I'm generally a nice host but have to draw the line on some CDs ;) ).

Question: does the Scala have less midbass than the Sasha?

The Scala definitely has more mid bass. I just demo'ed both speakers head-to-head. Reading this thread and my in home experience, I spiked the Focals and played with the Sashas positioning at length. It took a solid 2 days to get the Sashas to kind of play nice in the room. I really want to buy the Wilsons and to give them a chance in that space but they just do not perform like the Focal Scalas did. I listen to a big variety of music and again, the Focals did a noticeably better job with handling the challenging media.

Pkancel, if the Scala had more mid bass than the Sasha, I would think it would be more difficult to position.

In my room, I have to EQ the Sashas @75hz down about 9db to get rid of the hump.

I had a quick audition of the Scala today at a dealer, but the setup was problematic (in a crowded room with the speakers on each side of a massive, three-column equipment rack). Midrange/treble was gorgeous, no edge at all (although it didn't seem overly extended in the high frequencies), but bass was all muddy boom (again, non-optimal setup)

Would love to hear more details of your head to head, i.e.
1) what size is your room
2) what electronics
3) what media you used/listen to

Pkancel- unless we think diferent about midbass decription(to me 55-75hz)there is no way that Scala have more midbass than Sasha.
as they are rear and down ported speakers it may possible to arrange spekaers placement far away from rear wall where Scala would get close to very atenuated Sasha midbass, but even in this condition Sasha still have stronger midbass.

Scala is very nice but polite sounding in midbass.