Anyone heard the new Focal Grande Utopia EM?

Not to my knowledge. The Scala will be $30K (fyi, the Alto when last sold was $25K; the Mezzo is irrelevant).

James63,

Yes, I'm sure; I've seen the pricelist.

Keithr,

No.

That move is questionable at best. While the Scala may be slightly better than the Alto, the improvement surely isn't worth the 15 grand or so it will cost to make that move; that money would almost certainly be better spent elsewhere in the system. In any case, if you are looking to stay in the Focal family and are looking for a worthwhile improvement from the Alto, you are probably looking at the Maestro and higher.

Jb8312,

You said it, not me ;)

R_paton,

As I understand it, there will be a gap of time (up to 12 months iirc) where there will be no Nova replacements.

Phaelon,

To my knowledge, there won't be a replacement for the Diva.

There's probably less than 30 people on the planet that have heard it; it won't be in showrooms until late September from what I understand.

Come on guys. If you want to slam a product you'll have to do a lot better than Wilson Sophia, Dynaudio C4, Revel Studio2 and B&W 802D.

At 70K? Real bargain.

Check again:

http://www.bluelightaudio.com/evo_mm3.html

That's not surprising. The amount of customization by itself lets the speaker be fine tuned to an extent no Utopia model could dream of. Add to that the EM woofer and rebuilt drivers and you have something that should impress.

If you're going to be in SoCal they're on the floor in Tustin at Digital Ear.

Talk2me,

I finally had the chance to compare the Scala head to head with the Alto and I stand corrected - the difference is significant. What Focal has done is pretty impressive and something I am still having a hard time comprehending given what I thought were the similarities between the two designs; the Alto remains a great speaker but the Scala just improves upon it in every way top to bottom and somehow makes the Alto seem slightly veiled (which is pretty shocking considering how veiled most other speakers sound in comparison to the Alto ime).