New blog post: Living with Focal Speakers

Sorry to disappoint you all, but I haven't owned Focals in years.  I'm afraid the joy for me as an audiophile is in building speakers, not buying them anymore. The thrill of a box of parts is just far more than I'll ever get from a store bought speaker.

My last pair were Focal Profiles which I disassembled and analyzed from top to bottom, and my recommendations are based in large part on my findings there, in part on a number of other reviews online.

I'm still a fan of composite drivers however and use them exclusively except for the tweeters.  Whether it's Focal's W sandwich construction or Scan-Speak's sliced paper and resin.

You took focal speakers apart to examine them? Sounds like some of the brilliant ideas I get sometimes.

In most speakers theXover is the main weakness in lack of quality 

rebuilding it with much higher Xover parts is= to adding 50% more on your speakers in refinement imaging as well as soundstage depth 

speakers are built to a price point ,even in Wilson’s, martens, Harbeths and many others. I have been involved with capacitor and resistor upgrades 

look at humble homemade hifi capacitor reviews you can see a bit about the grading 15 being the most most are using Solen, or Mundorf cheaper Evo line 

even in $20k+ loudspeakers , sad but true. The Dynaudio I rebuilt transformed them $well over $1k in parts but thespeaker is 20% better sounding which is huge 

and = to the next more $$ expensive model $50% more monies.

@erik_squires curious if the newer Focal's have that same edge I've heard from the tweeters as the older models you had back in the day? At a friend's we have tried firing them straight out and then toeing them in 1/2 " at a time but still found the highs not to my liking. Personally I've always preferred soft dome tweeters but YMMV it's really such a subjective issue, we all hear things so differently.

Nice write up Erik. I only have an older pair from when they were called JM Labs, a pair of Tantal 509s and yes, the tweeter is very bright and sometimes fatiguing. They are in a 3rd system so no biggie.