Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

guy sergeant wrote:

http://www.audiounlimiteddenver.com/ Focal Utopia EM

You are right: The Grande Utopia is one of the names that very much in the mainstream and have very much pre-inclined exposure in industry. That all will assure the audio-intellectuals with pack mentality to follow.

The Grande Utopia was more or less OK, had problems but still was near acceptable. The second generation – the Beryllium version was a nightmare – I am very actively hate it. This new their generation… I do not know. I never heard them, I most likely never will as I have no specific interests. Juts reading the specification sheet I very much do not like what they were trying to do – or at least what they stating in their marketing presentation.

Let look what they say:

11" (27cm) "W" midbass High efficiency Multiferrite magnet

What does the High Efficiency mean? The speaker has the same 94dB Efficiency as any other Grande Utopia

61/2"(16.5cm) "W" Power Flower midrange drivers  Power Flower magnet, maximal power and reduced magnetic leaks

Yes, I know this driver, it is very good driver and it is available for $300 retail.

IAL2 pure Beryllium inverted dome tweeter
› very large bandwidth from 1 to 40kHz
› IAL2 (Infinite Acoustic Loading): low resonance frequency at 580Hz
› definition, rapidity and transparency of the midrange/treble

Stick your very large bandwidth in the ass of the idiot who design it. why the person in right mind would proud that tweeter has low resonance frequency,  large bandwidth down to 1kHz and at the same time to use it in 4-way installation and being a high order crossover point? The low resonance along with ultra-light Beryllium cone create a situation when the cone is not balanced with own inertia – I have much do not like any of the drivers that operate in this mode. The mass of cone, the force of flux, the exertion of cone and the resonance frequency should be balanced and “normalized”. If you want to make drivers with tweeters sitting at with 1kHz then make two-ways mini-monitors but not 260kG 4-ways monsters.  I can’t  believe that people might pay probably &100K for a demanding 4-way speaker where a tweeter sitting at 2500Hz!

16" (40cm) "W" Electro-Magnet EM
› extremely powerful Electro-Magnetic EM (BL = 34 T.m)

And I have a LOT of problem with it. The fact that they claim it extremely powerful makes me VERY nervous. The woofer still has 94dB sensitivity - so the extremely powerful this gone into the bumping up flux. However, my own observations showed that very high flux for electromagnets is god only for HF transducers. For bass drivers it very much opposite – overly high flux dries out bass, make it too fast and too none-harmonic. I would like them to use electromagnets to stretch the gap longer, holding the exertion in linear flux as far as possible but not to raise flux too high.  The short throe high flux woofer sound like crap and the electromagnets would not help here – in fact they would do damage as it is too easy to get high flux with filed-coils.