God-Tier Headphones? | Focal Utopia Review

[@davidcoons89]

Oh my goodness bro, absolutely fantastic review, both in content and in style/production. I thoroughly enjoyed your natural and more non-scripted approach. Definitely goes a long way when using extemporaneous speech like you did here in conveying your natural emotions and the whole experience. It just feels easier to connect with for sure and I just really enjoyed that. The music in the background btw, literally perfectly done to my ears. Very nice and perfectly appropriate level for background/ambient music as well, and it just added to the experience quite a bit IMO. Your mic is well setup and recorded obviously as well and that’s very much so appreciated. Then for the content of the review itself, it felt perfectly appropriate in overall length as well as time spent on individual elements of the tuning and dynamics, the detail retrieval/resolution, staging and imaging etc. Very thoroughly approached and beautifully done and I’ll be looking forward to catching up on all your content. I have absolutely no doubt that your channel will grow leaps and bounds in hardly any time whatsoever! Your production and quality are very high, you’re likable and quickly established ethos and trust with you our audience in stating your general sound sig/tuning preferences up-front as well as in giving a disclaimer on the differences in sources/gear etc and how that’ll affect your individual experience considerably. Thanks again for this awesome video and I absolutely can’t wait for more in the future! Def subbed btw 👌🏼👌🏼

[@KindredGh0st]

I'm digging this channel bro. Greetings from a stateside fil-am!

[@patrickfung1644]

Excellent review! I do agreed that the Utopia is very demanding. Unlike some other reviewer put out Chord Dave and MScaler think that combo is reference setup. I would say the Chord Dave direct headphone out is very crappy. Once I use the Dave balance out to Nagra Class pre headphone out. It's night and day different. For me I chose an all in one DAC/amp, one less connection cable mean one less variable. Current using Copland DAC 215 with a pair of NOS Telefunken CCa to drive Utopia, I can feel like the sound stage coming from behind my back sometimes. Sound like in heaven, no other headphone can dream of, the mid is well defined and high is very sweet and has very punchy bass to match, pin point imaging. But the downside is rarely hard to find a good pair NOS tube to begin with. The stock tube Electro Harmonix 6992 is a waste. Won't able to hear the best what this combo can do. One more important thing the stock 3 meter long stock heavy cable sound the best. Tried some other famous brand cable it change the tonal balance a lot and degrade sound.

[@HeadphonePH]

Ah quite insightful. Thanks for sharing all those details. The long heavy cable is flimsier than I like though. After a year, it begins to tear up on various joints. Outside of that I'm quite happy with it. The Utopia's stage in most amp and dacs are small but it really scales up with nice gear pairing. But I like that it's not super wide as well. Imho, the sonic character is perfect for the type of staging that it has.

[@stevennunn]

Great review of the Focal Utopia headphones, I own the Utopias along with the original Grado RS1 headphones, and both are top-notch, but at the moment I'm either using them plugged directly into a Samsung Galaxy tablet or via a Grado RA1 headphone amp. Sometimes I plug them into a Technics SU-V500 M2 integrated amp, source being an Arcam FMJ CD23t CD player . When using the tablet, I use MP3 files. I'm definitely considering buying a Focal Arche dac/amp.

[@HeadphonePH]

Interesting! I also tried the Utopia from my S10 using the RS1 cable adapter and I didnt like the sound very much. But hey, if you're happy with it, that's really all that matters! I briefly considered the Arche but it's way too expensive for my liking lol. Do keep me posted with your impressions with the pairing once you have it. 🙂