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Enough of the Stereophile futuristic statements about the Focal Diva Utopia

There have been multiple times that Stereophile has claimed the Focal Diva Utopia is a futuristic product. In the last issue of Stereophile, they did a review of this speaker. The 1st paragraph, he referenced "2001: a space odyssey". 2nd paragraph, states: "I am sitting earthbound".... "almost a quarter century beyond the year 2001, living a similar scenario with the Focal Diva Utopia". Then it goes on: "I feel more in a sci-fi future young me".

There is nothing futuristic about these speakers that haven't been done many years before now. We have had active speakers for decades. We have had all the features of this Focal speaker in other speakers for a few years now. 

The speaker that has had these features plus more are the Kef LS60 and the Kef LS50 wireless II.

My take on these Focal Diva Utopia: 

1) ugly, the felt/carpet on the cabinet is cheap looking

2) doesn't do Roon

3) sounded terrible at the latest audio show. Normally the smaller Focal speakers have no bottom end, but these speakers added more woofers and they produced terrible bass. 

4) $40,000!!! 

Compared to the Kef LS60:

1) The LS60 speaker is an active version of a baby Kef blade. Very similar. When I played with these for a couple of hours, I got to listen to the owners Blade speakers. 

2) More features, settings done by iPhone, does Roon. It's also very easy to hook up 1 of the Kef subwoofers and have them mesh well with the LS60.

3) Gorgeous! Many different colors to choose from, even the drivers can be different colors

4) $5000!!!!!!!! Steal of the century

5) Sound quality, excellent! Like I mentioned earlier, these speakers have you think twice about moving up to the Blades. Tight Bass, Very nice Mids/Highs. 

If you are thinking about: downsizing your equipment to just a couple of high quality pieces without losing any sound quality, you can cut it down to 1, all you need is an ethernet cable to stream Roon from your server or if you are using them for both music and video, these have the earc input too. 

Bottomline: After hearing both of these speakers, the Kefs are far superior sounding and are $35,000 cheaper than the Focals. They are so good, I'm going to replace my $20,000 2nd system with a pair of the LS60's.

p05129

Showing 2 responses by p05129

p05129 OP
524 posts
 

I didn’t say they were better than the blades, they aren’t, but I wouldn’t buy the blades if I was going to spend $20-$100k either. I have $20k speakers that are much better than the blades. Why would someone make excuses for a $40k speaker? There is no guarantee that the Diva’s will get Roon certified, and I asked at the show and they didn’t say it would be Roon certified either. This is huge! What other speaker is covered in felt? Then a $40k speaker in felt? Also, both rooms were not ideal that I heard both speakers in. I heard the kefs at a dealer and they were in a 50x50’ warehouse room with different speaker setups, many unopened boxes, no room treatment, nobody would buy this speaker for this size room, but they sounded excellent. The focals were at the audio show, in a room that is much more suited for this size speaker, and they didn’t sound good.

My point of the post was all the hoopla about the focals bringing to market a unique futuristic speaker, that has all of this technology built into it, which it turns out, is not unique, and for the price, it is not worth it. If both speakers were both $5k, the LS60’s sound much better and I would jump at the Kef’s.

As for focal speakers, I have never heard a pair I liked except for the $100k Utopia, and then, I would buy other speakers at 1/5 the price that I like better.

p05129 OP
524 posts
 

Curiousjim-I have heard them, actually for a couple of hours. I also heard the blades and the ls50 wireless II speakers all in the same room. Hated the ls50’s, liked the blades but not as good as others for around the same price, and really liked the ls60’s. From what I heard and what my friends heard at the Tampa show, the divas just sounded terrible, and looked cheap, and didn’t have the technology that the ls60’s have, namely Roon. I wouldn’t buy anything that wouldn’t allow me to use Roon in a wired setup.

After we heared the divas at the show, we all made the same comment that the $3500 Axxess/burreson L1 bookshelf speakers sounded much better than the divas, and when you added in all the audio gear, it was less than 50% of the cost of the divas. 

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