Focal Utopia monitors: Diablo vs. Micro Be

I find the direction this thread took so far very funny especially since yesterday night while proof reading the text I wrote I've pushed the submit button instead of the edit button before editing some typos e.g. "interested to here" instead of "interested to hear". (English is not my first language)

Nonetheless, I hope that somebody out there has actually compared these two monitors (preferably in the same room with the same equipment) and can share his/her findings with us.

Thank you in advance.

Maybe I should mention that more than a year ago I have listen the Diablos at a dealer on an all Lyngdorf system. I have liked the audition very much. However, I found it very difficult to judge how much better the Diablos were compared to my Micro Bes. Firstly, the dealer room was definitively better than my room (acoustically), plus the dealer has also dialed in the Lyngdorf room correction system. Secondly, the Lyngdorf house sound was quite different than that of the Musical Fidelity A5 combo I was using back then.

My conclusion back then was that the two speakers had a very similar character. The Diablos seemed a bit faster and also to have a somewhat better control in the low department, however, the improvements were not enough to justify the full retail price (i.e. 9600 euros including the Focal Diablo stands).

Eviukai, obviously my conclusions so far are in disagreement with what you wrote above. Could you please give me more details about the auditions. Also, what do you mean when you say that Diablo will benefit from a subwoofer up to 45 Hz? Do you mean that the Micro Be do not need a subwoofer, or do you mean that the Diablos have nearly perfect output till 45 Hz?

Best wishes
Paul

Elviukai, according to the Focal documentation the nominal impedance of both Diablo and Micro Be speakers is 8 ohms. As I have mentioned twice in my post my Accuphase outputs 30 watts into 8 ohms loads. The E-550 amp will output 60 watts into 4 ohms loads, however, according to the Focal documentation the lowest impedance of Micro Be is 5 ohms. Thus, unless the information on the Focal manual and site is wrong my amp will not output 60 watts when driving the Micro Be speakers. Into 5 ohms loads the Accuphase E-550 amp will output 48 watts.

Paul

Dear Elviukai,

Firstly, I should thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

Secondly, please note that just because I wrote that my impressions were different than yours it does not mean that I do not like what your wrote. To clarify the situation please note that in your 1st post in this thread you have mentioned the Diablo and Micro Be are very different, while in my 3rd post here I have mentioned that after auditioning the Diablos my impressions was that the two speakers have a similar character. Clearly, our two statements are in contradiction, but this is not a bad thing.

On the other hand, I completely agree with you about the immediacy factor of the Diablo speakers compared to the Micros Be. During my audition I have actually told the dealer that the Diablos sound quite a bit like electrostatics. However, even though compare to the MicroBes the Diablos were a bit quicker and created a better and denser stereo image in the dealer room (which of course could be also due to the dealer's better room and due to the Lyngdorf room-correction set-up) the Focal house sound was very evident to me. This is why I've said that the two speakers have similar character. I would call very different speakers Dynaudio C1 vs. MicroBe/Diablo or Sonus Faber vs. MicroBe/Diablo.

So to conclude Elviukai, am I right to assume that going the Diablo route will give me a sound closer to that of electrostatics?

Thanks!
Paul

Hi guys,

Sorry for the late reply.

I have decided not to buy the Diablos for two reasons. First, I was not able to do a direct comparison as the seller was living quite far from me (200 Km or so). As I have mentioned in the beginning of this post I like my current system very much and I do not want to change things just for the sake of changing. Second, the guy did not have the boxes of the speakers. This seems unimportant, but I have learn this lesson the hard way, i.e. last year when moving to a new house one of the Be tweeters of my Micros got shredded because one of the boxes was a bit damaged and it did not keep the speaker inside safe. Focal replaced the tweeter immediately (within 2-3 weeks) but it cost me almost 700 euros.

I am still interested in the comparison (and probably I am not the only one), so I hope the post will not stop here.

Best regards,
Paul

Hi guys,

I want to thank you all for trying to help me. Here are my answers to the last three contributors to this post:

Elviukai, thanks for taking the time to write such a long post. I associate the sound of electrostatics with quickness and presence in the midrange and highs. Diablo definitively had those characteristics when I've heard them. Nonetheless, even though the Diablos did not sounded quite like panels, their presentation of the music reminded me of electrostatics.

Johnsonwu, thanks for the tip. It is not the first time I hear stories like yours (I have read some of your other posts). Every time I get very angry with these companies and the hifi industry. (Of course, this happens not only in the hifi industry, but every where in today's market economy.) These people have not decency at all. Using 1.5 $ caps in a 5000 euros speaker ... it's not like a single crossover network would require 50 caps so the savings/expenses would be significant.

Phaelon, I do not know whether or not Diablo is a easier load than Micro Be. However, I can tell you that currently I am driving my Micro Be speakers with an Accuphase E-550 class A amplifier. The amp has only 30 Watts per channel into 8 ohms. I can assure you that it has more than enough juice to drive the Micros. I did not even consider the possibility that my amp would not be capable of driving the Diablos. At this level quality is much more important that quantity. Of course, 30 watts (into 8 ohms) are not enough to reproduce the dynamics of a full orchestra but if that would be your goal you would probably not look at 30 watts amps and monitor speakers.

Best wishes,
Paul

Elviukai, my last answer to you regarding the output of my Accuphase E-550 amp into the Focal Micro Be speakers was too intransigent. Sorry, you seem to be knowledgeable in this regard. Please read further for clarifications.

Of course, the concept of nominal impedance is a vary vague concept that practically tell you nothing about important parameters like the lowest impedance, the frequency where it occurs, phase angle, etc. Not to mention that the impedance of a speaker as seen by an amp also depends on many other parameters, e.g. cables, how loud the speaker is played, room temperature, position of the speaker in the room, etc.

Since you have measured the speaker (I did not) you are probably right that my amp will delivery more like 60 watts when driving my Micro Be speakers. However, at the levels that I listen this is not a problem for my amp, i.e. according to the onboard meters my Accuphase has more than 20 dB of headroom (before clipping). This was actually the point I made in my answer to Phaelon.

You probably read quickly my answer to Phaelon and missed this point. This bother me a bit as this seemed not to be the first inconsistency in your answers (I have read many of your post about the new Focal Utopia line). The most striking example in this regard are your posts about the differences between the 2nd and 3rd Focal Be tweeters. In this thread you write:

"I would not consider word "blow away" right here."

whereas in a different thread. i.e. "Utopia Skala / Alto speakers anyone hear them both", you write:

"Scala is much better.its deisgned by another enginier in Jm Lab the tweeter itself is 3x better than old ones."

Regards,
Paul