Tom Gooderidge, Naim’s UK Sales and Training Executive, recently paid us a visit at the Portsmouth store and brought four sets of Focal headphones for us to listen to: the Azurys, the Clear MG, the Stellia and the Utopia. We share our views on these quality wired headphones.

Bluetooth headphones are having a moment thanks to the ubiquity of powerful mobiles, streaming services and high-res BT codecs such as Qualcomm aptX HD and aptX Lossless.

A number of Bluetooth-enabled headphones from brands such as Bowers and Wilkins, Cyrus, DALI, Sennheiser, Sonos and Focal themselves give us genuinely high quality listening experiences wirelessly and on-the-go.

But, for many hi-fi enthusiasts, wired headphones plugged into a good headphone amplifier are still the way to go for a truly high-end listening experience.

Focal, the French speaker manufacturer and now parent company to British hi-fi legends Naim, offer a range of headphones, including the award winning Bluetooth Focal Bathys. But it was their wired headphone models that we recently had the pleasure of listening to in the store.

Meet the family

We used a Naim Uniti Star to power the Azurys and the Clear MGs before switching to a Naim Nait 50 and a Naim ND5 XS2 combo for the remaining two.

Azurys

At £499* the Azurys sit at the more affordable end of the headphone market competing against the likes of the Sennheiser HD660 S2 model. They are well made with a leather headband and textile-covered earpads.

As closed-back headphones the Azurys deliver good isolation and, at just over 300g, they seem suitable for on-the-go listening. Generally, you tend to get a bassier, fuller sound from closed-back headphones compared to open backs. Open-back headphones tend to offer a greater sense of space around the music and less weighty but sometimes tighter bass.

The Azurys certainly have a weighty low end, but it is not overpowering. There is a decent sense of air and space for a closed-back headphone, no doubt thanks to their rigid aluminium/magnesium drivers.

Clear MG

Switching to the open-back Clear MG there is an obvious step up in the appearance, feel and weight (450g). These £1,299* headphones exude quality with their metal, leather and suede-like materials. The listening experience is high quality too.

They incorporate all magnesium drivers (hence the MG in the name) which are designed to deliver a faster, more precise sound than the Focal Clear models that they replaced. The soundstage is larger than the Azury and there is greater clarity and transparency.

The Clear MG do a great job at placing you in a space in which music is playing as opposed to playing the music between your ears. Bass is articulate, tuneful and well-integrated. Micro-details are well presented, and voices and instruments have excellent tonality.

Stellia

The Stellia headphones were next up and shifted us back to a closed-back design, incorporating Focal’s electrodynamic pure Beryllium M-dome speaker to give improved lightness and stiffness compared to many other materials. The metal and leather construction of these £2,899* headphones is classy.

There is an immediate improvement in the attack and detail of the music played through the Stellia. Vocals have the power to surprise, occasionally shock, because they are so immediate and accurate. You are placed in the studio in front of the singers while guitars and other instruments are rendered with wonderful realism. Bass was beautifully reproduced with real weight and speed.

Utopia

It was now the turn of the Utopia and, frankly, we wondered if and how the excellent Stellia headphones could be bettered. The Utopia also have the Beryllium M-dome drivers. Their carbon fibre, metal and leather construction is high tech and luxurious.

These £4,699* headphones did not disappoint. As open-backed, as opposed to closed like the Stellia, they were fantastically honest and engaging. The sound staging was superb. There was an almost tangible sense of the studio or venue in which the music was recorded. Their openness was such that it felt like listening to a pair of high end speakers in an acoustically engineered room.

Instruments and vocals were startlingly real, rendered with a tonal authenticity that was gripping whether it was the raw leading edge of guitar chords, the physical rap of a snare drum or the micro-tones within a single synthesiser note.

Headphones like the Utopia, Stellia and even the Clear MG deserve a good headphone amp, ideally a stand alone unit.

It’s said by some in hi-fi circles that to get the same sound produced by a pair of high quality headphones (with good quality headphone amplification) you’d have to spend two or three times the amount on speakers.

It is true that a pair of decent headphones may give you the detail and a bass response that a modest pair of speakers might struggle to match. But in our experience speakers will give you a greater soundstage and space, allowing the music to propagate and breathe in your room (although, as we know, rooms can create their own problems for hi-fi enthusiasts).

So, music played through headphones isn’t necessarily better nor worse compared to speakers. It’s just different. However, having said that, the Stellia and, particularly, the Utopia headphones come as close as we have heard recently to recreating that open sound you get from speakers – and then some.

Check out Audio T’s range of Focal headphones

Thanks for reading

Alan, Stephen and Luke - Audio T Portsmouth

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