Well dynamics are more efficient by design. That said Focal floats above other dynamics with what appears as natural ease but it is the result the cutting-edge design that brought Focal from decent but decidedly mid-fi designs (Spirit One, Listen Pro etc.) to being THE reference in high-end to esoteric models that have conquered a sizable part of that market in a mere 6 years of existence. Before those came out The reference in dynamics was the HD-800… so I stuck with planars… made poor expensive choices (HE6se), good affordable ones (Sundara), good less affordadable ones but st still within reason (Arya), well this one ceased to be within reason when the Focal Clear came out.In fact as soo as I heard the low end on the $1,000 Elear I agreed with Tyl Herstsens that it was worth the hefty (for a dynamic at the time) price provided it was backed by the Nain DAC V1 so it was a $3k combo (and the discovery of what miracles DSP can accomplish.
Then came the Clear, which also is good with the the Naim for those who don’t know the DAC V1 had been specially designed for the high-end Focals by Nain, Focal’s sister company. Oficially the company is called the Focal Naim Group but the French seem to have a hard time not being able to fit JMLabs into it, so much so is JMLabs (Focal’s first name and still the name of its driver division dating back when JMLbabs was a money no-object, no-compromise outfit. Focal is the Wilson of France, those who know Grande Utopia could not not miss the resemblance in both price and shape. as a headphone man those achievements are impressive but what interests me is how much engineening was minituarized successfully to achieve similar performance at the headphone level. The answer: a lot, and with impressive efficiency.
Impressive enough to get Hifiman’s full attention for this time it was facing a very serious competitor that meant business at the high-end and esoteric levels. there weren’t that amy models to compete with but the ones facing HFM were no-compromise (for the price) at the top end only HFM’s to of the top could compete with the Utopia (Espcially with the Utopia’s new DAC ARCHE V2 wich is more up to the task than the aging DAC V1. That’s finr for thr Utopia I suppose (I don’t have the Arche so can only comment based on hearsay, being as I am confined to my home). But stereo shops are re-opening next week in Canada. At least in Toronto, Quebec City and Ottawa. Montreal the following week, as Montreal is the hardest-hit city in the country with the number of cases and casualties, which is ridiculously low compared with Europe Methinks our closing of the US border to casual traffic despite US pressure not to do so (why? I used to to the US NY and Penn. to get cheap gas but they almost give it to us here now…) was a sound idea.