Focal Elegia - Closed-Back Dynamic Headphone

The Elegia is a shut back unique earphone and Focal's most recent offering in their "top of the line" and "at home" earphone line, just as the principal shut back model in that arrangement. It joins the open-upheld Utopia, Clear and Elear in the line-up, and comes in at $100 not exactly the typical retail cost of the Elear - making the Elegia the most economical earphone in the arrangement.

I previously heard the Elegia in the CanJam area of RMAF 2018 - and my early introductions there were that they seemed like a "shut back Clear or Elex". I didn't get the opportunity to invest much energy tuning in, and show-conditions are far from perfect for assessing sound in any case - even with shut back earphones, however that underlying impression was sufficiently certain to make me very on edge to get my hands on a couple for appropriate trying out.

Only multi week later, I had a retail set of Elegia in my grasp by means of Heapdhone.com - and it is my own (acquired) pair of earphones that I'm utilizing for this audit.

Innovation

The Elegia are furnished with another cycle of Focal's 40mm aluminum/magnesium M-vault driver, which exploits the earphone's bass-reflex arrangement to diminish the scope of driver explanation required for a given sound weight level, taking into account a 20% shorter curl (4mm versus 5mm). Therefore, impedance has additionally dropped from the 55 ohms of the Clear (and 80 ohms of the Elear/Elex), while affectability has expanded in all respects marginally to 105 db/SPL, which makes them the least demanding to-drive jars in the family (even unassumingly controlled players will drive them well).

These are combined with an extraordinary, volume-improved, walled in area that utilizes a dynamic vent to help scatter low-recurrence back-wave from bass notes, in blend with a progression of acoustic diffusers that separate standing waves and further disperse any remaining back-wave weight. At last, an extraordinarily formed EVA froth safeguard sits behind the driver to control higher-recurrence reflections.

Survey Equipment and Material

Sources and amps utilized in this survey incorporates the Chord DAVE, Chord Hugo 2, Schiit Yggdrasil, RME ADI-2 DAC, Sony NW-WM1Z, Questyle QP2R, Woo Audio WA234 Mk2 MONO and SPL Phonitor x.

Earphones utilized, for correlation, incorporate the Focal Utopia, Clear and Elear, Massdrop x Focal Elex, Fostex TH900 Mk2 and Massdrop x TR-X00 (Ebony), Sennheiser HD820, Sony MDR-Z1R and ZMF Eikon (Padauk).

Most of the music I use in my assessments is in "Red Book" CD group (16 bit, 44.1 kHz), a large portion of which originates from CD tears; an underlying playlist for my tryout listening can be found here. Where fitting/referenced I use various brilliant, high-goals, collections, needle-drops, and furthermore some local DSD content.