Last year, the release of the Focal Utopia and Elear headphones garnered many pages of internet discussions on sites devoted to headphones. Barring a lottery win, I will never own a four grand pair of headphones, but I wanted to try the Elears and hear how they compare to my other (erstwhile) supercans*: Beyer T1s and Audeze LCD 2.2s.
First, there’s the look, build quality, and fit. The headphones look undeniably cool in hand. These are wide open cans: peering through the sides, one can see the driver housing surrounded by nothing; the outer and inner meshes not supporting the drivers are see-through. The drivers themselves look like generously sized dome tweeters firing at the listener’s ears, which, in essence, they are. Build quality is generally high, though the rivets holding the cups to the band are not one hundred percent snug, at least on the left side on my pair. There’s no wobble or chance of disintegration, but it should be noted. As to fit, well, these are the best fitting luxury headphones I’ve worn, either for an extended period or a demo. They fit almost as well as Audio Technica wing design headphones, but have greater clamping force. Outstanding.
Now to sound. These are not for everyone, starting with people who plan on listening primarily to solo piano music. There is a massive frequency dip around 4 kHz, followed by a massive increase in high frequency energy. This makes the upper midrange sound a bit dark and recessed, which means that upper registers and harmonics for piano sound a bit dull. Coupled to this dip and rise is a boosted bass, in what appears to be a slightly exaggerated headphone variant of the boom-tizz design used in many mini-monitors. This design not only means that solo piano is not ideally reproduced, but also string quartets suffer a bit, and the increase in treble means that the sound can become fatiguing if volume is not adjusted properly. On the upside, these cans handle rock music splendidly. The bass frequencies lack the extension and sheer weight of the Audezes, and the clarity of the Beyers, but the bass in punchier and groovier than in either of those two cans. The recessed upper mids mean that even some harsher sounding rock and pop music sounds appropriately tamed. It seems that these headphones were voiced more for rock and pop than classical, with its generally more natural frequency responses. To be sure, clarity and detail through these cans is superb, and when watching TV, if perhaps a slight hollowing out of voices can be heard, so can every ruffle of clothing and every last bit of studio reflection in live voices (eg, the news). For gaming, they are well balanced, but if one wants big sounding ‘splosions, Audezes are better. However, one area where the Elears really excel are dynamics, which makes sense for a dynamic metal driver. Dynamic contrasts are simply outstanding. This can make adjusting volume a bit tricky, because fortissimo through these is
loud. The headphones are easier to drive than either the T1s or LCD 2.2s, which means even more care must be taken when setting volume. I should note that these headphones need an amplifier devoted to headphones to sound their best.
One other thing to note is that this is the first pair of headphone in my experience than benefit from break-in. I generally don’t put much store in stories of dozens or hundreds hours of break-in of stereo gear, and ‘net stories indicate at least dozens of hours for the Elears. I can’t confirm that, but I can say that right of the box, the big 4 kHz drop made the cans sound very closed in and dark, and that this improved after a few hours of break-in. This was assessed not by listening continuously, which would indicate aural acclimation only, but rather by listening, letting them run, then listening again, repeating a few times, this indicating aural acclimation and possibly some break-in. Again, since this is the only pair of headphones I’ve heard where this has happened, there may be something to it. By contrast, the planar Audezes sounded the same from the first note to the last time I listened to them.
So, a qualified success. The Beyers are still the best overall headphones
for my tastes, and the Audezes are better overall, but the Focals have their place outside classical music.
*Only a few short years ago, Stax and the original Sennheiser Orpheus aside, a grand was the threshold for super-luxury headphones, but now that amount has been erased as the prices for ultra-premium cans march ever higher, straight to absurd levels.
