Some videos posted here:
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The worst kept secret is finally alive, the Focal Bathys is here!
Any eagle-eyed headphone fans in Vancouver may have seen me on the bus wearing them for the last couple weeks as myself and @andrew both received pairs when we visited Focal in France in early September!
These are hands down the best wireless headphones that I’ve ever heard (that’s including the 5909 on the list) and with the caveat that I have not heard the new Bowers & Wilkins PX8 yet. If I were to compare the sound to any of Focal’s closed-backs, I’d say its most similar to the Radiance tonally.
Lots more to come on the Bathys and they’ll start shipping soon for everyone else to here!
Here’s a photo from my last day in France at a restaurant in Lyon
Enjoyed the headphones with a delicious steak!
And as an even better added bonus at this fine 3am PST time, @Resolve has dropped a new video around Focal and the Bathys. Check it out!
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Are the ear pad attachment system different to the existing Focal line up? Just wondering if you can mix-n-max / swap pads around.
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The ear pads on the Bathys are smaller than Focal’s regular HiFi headphone line-up so unfortunately they are not interchangeable in that fashion.
However, the Bathys pads still do clip off and I imagine there’s been some thought put into interchangeability on future products along these lines.
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wow Focal sure knows how to make great looking products along with performance. I enjoy my celestee + go blu but perhaps this just made them irrelevant.
Great content and nice editing on the video @Resolve. It’s really satisfying to see companies that are focused on delivering quality products and are trying to advance the markets into new territory. You could see how proud every one of them were to talk to you about the challenge and how happy they were with the end product. It’s a great time to be an audiophile. So much great stuff out there!
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The Naim app (for mobile devices) has now become the Focal and Naim app. “The new Focal & Naim App unites our brands in one, user-friendly app that combines the original Naim App functionality and a fresh design to support Focal’s new App-enabled product.”
@Resolve when you do the official review could you comment on the measurements/tuning. I’m worried that with more bass and treble than Radiance that we are approaching a very deep V almost dare I say Beats level of tuning.
I also heard that the codec support with iphone wasn’t great in terms of bluetooth and it was much better with alternate devices that had other codec support.
This is so exciting! It’s strange no hifi company has attempted this before. It seems like an obvious avenue of potential. Personally I’d rather have a great sounding headphone with NC slapped inside of it than the dozen NC headphones that have muddy sound. Even if these aren’t amazing, the least impressive Focal headphone will blow a wh1000-xm4 out of the water any day.
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When are these expected in stock? Got my pre-order in this morning and didn’t see a date.
Here are my initial impressions and some early measurements I was able to do of the bluetooth ANC mode.
More info to come as I do more testing and comparisons to other high end ANC headphones like the 5909.
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This has every indication of being the business headphone of my dreams. I’ll be looking for an excuse to call one of the Lissimore’s to check on call quality, but hells bells, these are lovely.
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Hahahaha. I love it.
does Bathys still have as much frequency response variation as most passive closedbacks?
I struggle to get good bass response on most passive closed backs including the focal radiance when I tried it.
But some ANC headphones seem to get better consistency due to their feedback mechanisms.
Like the akg N700NC M2 sounded great on my head, or a bit too bassy actually. While the akg 371 was a bit thin no matter how hard I tried to get a perfect seal.
I was hoping bathys would have that feature. No one really advertises it but it is a huge selling point for me.
Thanks for that. It (the ear cups and pads) looks a little more oval and not as fat or rounded as the existing Focal series.
My main concern is that I find the cups are a little too small for my ears so I’ll likely have fit issues with these too. With the existing Focal ear pads, I’m able to harvest the mounting rings and pad swap with others such as HiFiMAN and Kennerton pads. Not sure I can do that with these.
Guess I’ll have to get back into Muay Thai training or take up some form of MMA to reshape my ears (Cauliflower ear).
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fantastic! High praise indeed, if these get close to a Radiance, or an Elegia after a bit of EQ, then these are incredible wireless headphones. I have Airpods max and another expensive pair of ANC headphones, to me the performance of both is quite far from an Elegia.
Well, it’s not quite on the level of the Celestee or Radiance - this is still a wireless headphone, but the tuning is very similar.
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How would you say this stacks up against the Ananda BT or Deva Pro w/ BT adapter? I think it’s unanimous that this blows the Bose, Sony, etc options out of the water sound-wise, but I’m curious how it stacks up against the very few audiophile wireless options out there.
Ok understood. Interested to see the final review and just how well it can perform while wired.
It’s great to see Focal moving into this space, their closed backs are tremendous in my opinion, especially Stellia. Having some of that performance available on the go will be quite something.
that dip between 500 and 1k is right in the fundamental vocal range. Does that mean the vocals sound hollow and thin compared to rest of tuning?