In Reply to: Your source is your most important piece in the audio chain posted by airtime on April 27, 2017 at 08:09:39:
Thank you for your suggestions. I managed to exchange them for some B&W CM1s that sound more neutral and are also more convenient for my small room and creaky body. The dealer very kindly set up the Focals alongside the B&Ws and played them on his rig which featured pretty high-end stuff. Only this demo was in a different room. We used the dealer's source material filtered through my preferences.
On his equipment in the different room they sounded harsher than ever and the B&Ws sounded warm by contrast. If you feed the Focals high voltage symphonic material, like the end of the Firebird, they can produce some breathtaking resolution, but they tend to sound too peaky on everyday fare.
Focal has a very fast tweeter in the 706 but I think they have a problem with smoothness and neutrality. Great tweet, woofer only meh.
As for breaking in, I don't see why they can't be broken in at the factory. Why try to sell a speaker that isn't working up to its potential? Why not hook all units up to white noise for a few days? Break-in sounds to me like a convenient excuse when a speaker doesn't sound good.
I will say that the Focals are absolutely beautiful in the white gloss with black grills and have great connectors. Manual is totally minimal though.
It's never too late to turn back the clock.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Your source is your most important piece in the audio chain - ph5y 10:12:14 04/29/17 (2)
- RE: Your source is your most important piece in the audio chain - airtime 20:07:01 04/29/17 (1)
- RE: Your source is your most important piece in the audio chain - ph5y 13:21:01 05/02/17 (0)