Focal Utopia 2022 Headphone Review & Comparison to the Original 

I'm trying. All in due time.

I cannot be held responsible for your choices ;p But also, great choice! Good luck on getting one soon.

mine sound are abit lesser in accuracy experience kind of downgraded, but sq technical aspects are there

i mean real devices should sound way better, i have to keep mentioning it

Nice score. Enjoy!

I think so yes. IMO an ofc cable is the way to go for the previous Utopias. The new one is a bit more relaxed in the areas a copper cable helps with so options expand.

Oh, a headphone on the level of Clear will sound like a whole new headphone compared to the headphone jack on something like a tablet or laptop. Dedicated amps, particularly when paired sigh quality dacs, are cleaner, quiter, more resolving, more holographic, more dynamic... Basically better everything.

yes

Agreed, the OG is excellent 👍.

I am with you on this. The biggest telltale to me personally is the decay on pianos. It is considerably longer on the OG and feels more natural. The new one sounded a little short and softer on the decay. Just my own preference.

@@factoryrefresh102 Excellent point. Decay is also my big problem with planars… Any positive experience of those?

@@TheRevoR Exactly my own subjective experience. If you have the chance, try the Yamaha YH5000SE, it's definitely reference level but still can't beat the Utopia OG when reproducing piano. Current amp is Cayin HA300B Mk 2 from a Luxman D10X source.

@@factoryrefresh102 Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep my eyes open. Awesome setup 🤩. I’ve actually been thinking about that amp to complement my setup (Ferrum OOR + Hypsos with Merason DAC1).

Partially agree. Focal definitely had some early units fail. OTOH, there are LOTS of OG Utopia units living in homes now. If you got a good unit (which seems to be the vast majority), you got a headphone that is still among an elite tier in performance.

To my ear definitely. OG is neutral-bright and MG is warm-midforward

@Reviews By WaveTheory I love my Focal Clear MG's. To me, they are way good enough to enjoy geat details on a high end open back headphone. Sometimes however my Beyerdynamic 1990's more open top end and more 3D sound provides a better option though it is thinner sounding compared to the Focal Clear MG

too plain/accurate

but sounds better esp at videos

I just got better looking 😆 Naw awhile ago I just switched to using my Galaxy S22+ smartphone with a USB mic adapter. Cameras in phones seem to be outclassing most

@@wavetheorysound Yeah, they're really good now.

Lol. Was the fleece not the bigger indicator?

There's a good chance, yes. The OG Utopia is notoriously source gear picky. It's also a challenging load, especially for a transportable amp. My Hugo 2 does OK but that's a nearly $3k piece. Have you perused the Head-Fi Utopia thread? There will be a wide range of ideas for amps in there.

I sent it back, I will buy it again latter when I can get a better setup, thanks for responding I think you do a great job.

I bought an open box pair of Utopia OG for $2800 and ended up sending them back. Paired with my OG Mojo they sounded special. The most dynamic and detailed headphones I've heard but my LCD i4s are nearly as good and better in some ways

Hart uses Mogami cables which are what many professional recording studios are hard fitted with, and used for 99% of the music we listen to. But audiophiles think they have golden ears and hear more than the musicians and engineers making the actual music 🤓

@@ariam6168 Not all audiophiles. And top of the line audiophile gear is leagues ahead of studio grade gear. The best producers are mastering on audiophile setups. Its ironic how most people are attacking the audiophiles for talking about fine tuning components, calling them snake oil, while they never experienced or experimented with this stuff. There is a reason people at high end Munich for an example, use 50k dollar cable for a single speaker and if you think the reason is they have been brainwashed, thats on you. I bet you never heard any of these systems in a treated room and compared side by side cables for hours. I also know many producers and most of them are deaf, they have very weak hearing past 10khz. Musicians are even worse. They invest more money weekly on booze or smokes than on headphones and have even more damaged hearing than producers ive met. Listening is natural thing anyone can do, logically, but knowing what to listen to opens up another dimensions to it. Having a ultra high end system will reveal the dimensions you never imagined in music and only then you begin to understand the importance of, like guy said in a video, OCC cable, external power supply or anything else that is considered "snake oil" by the majority of the people who think they can spend 300 dollars on a headphone and hear everything there is in a recording, or as most try to cover themselves by saying "90-95%" of the information. Thing is you cant put a percentage to thing like that and even if you could, realistic number for the 200 dollar studio headphone would be 30-40%

@@zerooneonetwothree1872 point being, If upstream recording gear/cables/etc that captured the music is what it is, downstream audiophile “upgrades” aren’t going to do a darn thing to improve it, and diminishing returns hit quick. Can’t add quality (data).

@@ariam6168 And that is why producers like Chesky are played on the high end systems and not mainstream ones. Because you can actually hear how horrible it really is. The reason it sounds great on most systems is because of the limits those systems have and producers mixed it with that in mind, using multiple bad playback options to make sure it will "come out" decently trough any crap average consumer is using. But do not for one minute think that something like Daft Punk sounds worse on the ultra high end system, it sounds miles better and more effortless than on a high end focal or pmc monitors, its just that the pure recordings sound... Purer than said Daft Punk, so once you have the option to play compressed butchered chaos or realistic and clean life-like performance, the choice is obvious, so that is not a firm point either...

@@zerooneonetwothree1872 So you’re admittedly chasing recording quality and not the music itself… what is what people criticize all audiophiles for. Be ready to eliminate 99% of existing recorded music in history then. To each their own I guess. A Furtwangler 1943 Beethoven 7 is astronomically superior and more enjoyable to me as a listening experience than any DSD recording out there, with all of its hiss and noise.

Agreed. Are you keeping both?

I think I'll let go of the OG 2020, too many headphones right now. I can't wait to hear your opinion on the Stax SR-X9000, I plugged it into my Mojo2/Mscaler with the Mcinstosh MC275Mk6 via iESL. Responds very well to EQ compared to the Stax 009S, I add +5db sub bass via mojo2, fantastic, dream come true. .

@@davidpilon9433 I would love to review one of those. I haven't had estat gear lying around (like energizers) so that makes it tougher. But hopefully sometime I can get that figured out.

@@davidpilon9433 x9000 being how much than anything else in the world?