Spending a little time with Focal Lab Speakers
 

Several months ago I was able to spend an afternoon at a friends listening to his Scala Utopia speakers with Hovland electronics and I rather enjoyed what I was hearing.

Earlier this morning I had the opportunity to go and listen to the Electra 1038 Be from Focal paired with a Moon 700i integrated amp and a 650D DAC Cd transport. I was rather quite impressed with the laid back presentation of this combination and the amound of bottom end was rather quite surprising. Of course compared to my ProAcs this should come as no surprise, but I found the sound quite engaging a somewhat more robust to what I normaly listen to.

Since this was a spontaneous visit to a dealer in Quebec City (I`m visiting my in-laws), I did not have the usual set of CD`s I bring with me when I auditioned. After listening to several jazz pieces, I asked the salesman for some blues, guitar music. Rather then bring me a handfull of CDs he connected the Linn Akurate Music server to the amp and then let me browse through their full CD collection. I was able to immediately pick out music I was more familiar with and created a queue and hit play...... :no:.... the sound was suddenly bright and forward and way too intense and I immediately lowered the sound volume.. Thinking it was just that CD, I hit the next song in my selection and again, I was struck by how bright the music was. After a few more selections, the salesman popped back into the room and I described what I was hearing and that I thought it was a rather substantial difference in the Linn Akurate. He immediately agree with my assessment and then offered me the option of listening to the Akurate but hooked up throught the Moon 650 DAC/CD unit. Resuming my audition, I found that the music had once more toned down and I cranked the volume up and listened to music for well over an hour.

What I found interesting is that I had thought I would be more impressed with the Linn compared to the Moon, however, the opposite is what occured and not by a little bit. Had I just listened to the speakers throught the Linn, I would have been disappointed with the Electras. I now know three things: a) Linn is off my list (yes, I am surprised too), b) Focal Lab IS on my list, and c) I am very impressed with SimAudio and it is definitely a system I would spend more time researching.

Rock.......Very interesting. Had you not had the opportunity to audition the system prior to the Linn Akurate server, your initial impression of the Focal 1038 Be's would have been negatively influenced. It is good the sales guy worked with you, offering additional options that presented the opportunity to discover where the culprit existed.