2/26/2024 0 Comments Focal maestro utopiaThe number of companies in the world that can fabricate beryllium drivers can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Trouble is, it’s both expensive and difficult to work with, requiring a HazMat (hazardous materials) clean room environment. Significantly lighter and stiffer than titanium and with good self-damping and heat dissipation, beryllium is known to be an ideal material out of which to form a tweeter dome. And all this without even mentioning Focal’s technical tour de force, its inverted dome tweeter formed of pure Beryllium that is manufactured entirely in-house. Similarly the company’s ‘power flower’ motor assembly employed in Utopia models’ midrange drivers uses multi-ferrites to improve linearity, Focal claiming improved precision by using multiple magnets rather than relying on massive magnets that often vary in uniformity. But after more than a decade’s experience of building it the company boasts that it can now ‘dial in’ characteristics for a given speaker design by varying the thickness of foam and layers of glass-fibre accordingly. Its ‘W’ composite cone formed of an aerospace foam called Rohacell sandwiched between layers of glass-fibre material might be an old story now that it’s been around for so many years. Champagne corks will be popping in Focal’s French HQ by the time this edition of HFN is published.Ĭredit where credit’s due, the company hasn’t been short on design innovation in recent years. To round off the news for today, as I write this Focal doesn’t yet know that its gorgeous Diablo Utopia standmount has been voted European High-End Speaker of the Year in the 2009/2010 EISA Awards. It’s scheduled for release around the end of this year or early next, and I assume we can expect it to be priced between £60-70k. And the ‘EM’ in the nomenclature indicates that it is designed to be a baby Grande, featuring the flagship’s innovative electromagnetic woofer system. Called the Stella Utopia EM, it will sit inbetween the Maestro Utopia and the Grande Utopia EM. There’s another model on the way as well – even grander, if you’ll excuse the pun – than this Maestro model. World exclusives don’t come any more exclusive than this! You’ll see that we did a little arm-twisting and secured the very first Maestros to come off Focal’s production line, our sample pair bearing serial numbers 1 and 2. When you get to the last page of this review on page 37 take a look at our photograph of the speaker’s rear panel. HFN found out about the imminent introduction of the Maestro Utopia when we visited Focal’s factory earlier this summer. Clearly there are holes in the middle of the Utopia series waiting to be filled – which is where this new £30k Maestro model comes in.Īnd when I say this Maestro is new, it really is brand new. Currently there’s the Diablo Utopia standmount (£7000), Scala Utopia three-way floorstander (£17000) and Grande Utopia EM that busts the £100k price barrier. Its top-of-the-line series, called Utopia III (as it is now in its third generation of evolution), is a series that’s yet to be completed. Privileged indeed are the audiophiles with adequately large listening rooms in which to accommodate them and deep enough pockets to afford them.įocal is France’s largest and most successful speaker manufacturer, producing several series of hi-fi models ranging from affordable to, well, the price of a Bentley in the case of the aforementioned flagship. Standing over 2m tall and weighing 260kg (each!), the four-way ‘Grande EM’ with its electromagnetic 16in woofer and user-adjustable ‘Focus Time’ cabinet construction is a statement product that challenges the envelope of speaker performance. When Scott Walker famously sang ‘My Ship Is Coming In’ he could have been describing taking delivery of a pair of Focal’s £110,000 Grande Utopia EMs, surely one of the finest dynamic loudspeakers known to humankind. A high-end speaker for enthusiasts who can't quite stretch to Focal's £110,000 flagship model, the Maestro Utopia offers extremely precise mid-field monitoring
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