New Focal Grande Utopia EM

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.

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

I'm just back from RMAF and heard those Grade Utopie EM. It one of my favorite sounds of the show. Admittedly I was sitting right in the sweet spot. Also, I was not familiar with the music, so I was not able to judge vs. what I believed to be the 'ideal' or neutral sound of a familiar recording. Still, what I heard was quite breathtaking.

There were at least two other systems at the show that had more expensive speakers (Acapella Trillion Excaliber, and Marten Designs) and they were no comparison to these Focal speakers, IMHO. But, I'm sure room-specifics and set up present less than ideal venue for effective comparison.

All I can say is that the sound had essentially all of the characteristics I could want. The bass in particular was breathtaking.

How much do these cost! close to $200K never mind how much money in electronics and cables further up the line to actually run these?

Don't you think that you should be left in awe saying to yourself and others this is just unbelievable?

This is absolutely crazy amounts of money we are talking about here which most people can not even fathom.

Looks remind me of a "SAUSAGE" with cuts in it that I get from a street vendor outside at show events. Hopefully it looks better in person.

This is the Utopia III catalogue if anyone is interested.

http://www.focal.tm.fr/catalogue-docs/EN/32/files/1826.pdf