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New Focal Grande Utopia EM

I just auditioned the long-awaited Focal Grande Utopia EM at Digital Ear in Tustin. This is in Southern California and I believe they are the first in the country to have these beauties. These speakers perform like nothing else I have ever heard and have officially out-classed everything else in the top speaker category. This setup was being actually broken in on a Mcintosh C2300/MC1.2kW/Esteric P-03+D-03 setup. Again, I am wondering if anyone else out there have heard these and their thoughts.
pkancel
dgad
782 posts
 
Heard it at Rocky Mountain. It has potential but did not sound special in any regard. They were using Boulder Amplification & Digital. No one was very impressed. Maybe it needed break in, better recordings. I will give it one more go.
pkancel OP
47 posts
 
Dgad, what did you hear that you did like in that category?
branislav
405 posts
 
I personally think the system at RMAF sounded great. Well, it better at that price... :-)
pkancel OP
47 posts
 
I spoke to a group of enthusiasts that visited RMAF and they consistently loved the setup. i was starting to question my own ears before i spoke to these guys. They mentioned that the "Wilson-ites" frown on anything not produced from Wilson and i hope that is not the case with luke-warm feedback listed above.
dcstep
1,518 posts
 
I'm not a Wilson hugger and slid out of the 20-minute Utopia demo about 5-minutes in. The set up was way off. Neither of the vocals in the Warnes/Wasserman cut or the Knoffler cut sounded right. With such huge speakers the setup has to be absolutely right and the level properly set. I think that neither happened in this case.

If I were considering these I'd seek out a qualified dealer and try to audition in a room where the set up has been optimized over a few weeks.

Dave
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