Thanks for the great review!

Excellent review, thanks!
After about a month of listening with the Clear, I very much agree with your impressions. Coming from HD600, it is indeed a significant upgrade, except perhaps a slight lack of warmth in the low mids, especially with few male voices that sound a little more throat than chest to me with the Clear. The Clear are definitively superior in all respects to the HD600, but in terms of low mids timbre, oh boy, the HD600 are quite hard to beat...

This is probably the most well-written, rational, and complete review I've ever read. You also made precisely the comparisons I needed, having a new HD800 here with some trepedation but still feeling like the HD600s are engrained in my soul as the tonal benchmark. You just sold a pair of cans for Focal.

This is a fantastic, comprehensive, detailed and extremely well-written review. I agree with the poster above, probably the best review of a piece of audio gear I have ever read. I'd put this up against anything published in the two leading US stereo gear publications. A sincere "thank you" for the time, effort, and thoughtfulness you put into crafting this review. It's members like you that make this forum so valuable to the rest of us.

Thanks for the kind comments! This review took a lot of time and effort, but it was sort of a passion project (biggest jump in SQ since the Sennheiser HD 600/650/HD800S). I'd add the Clears to the class of products that defined an era and and truly pushed technology forward.

I've sometimes considered applying to become a contributing reviewer at some of the headphone sites out there, but for whatever reason never went forward with the plan/it has always stayed on a "maybe someday" level...

+ Since this review was published I've gotten another opportunity to listen to the Utopias again and I stand by my previous comments: when you view sound quality as a sum of parts the Clears if you ask me superior to the Utopia no matter what the cost difference is. The Utopias are now in dire need of a revision, but that's just what happens when new technology matures... The first version is always going to get outdated pretty fast.

This is a really good review. Thanks for all the detailed comparisons you added in as reference points.

Very good review. +1 on mentioning Californication. I love that album, but it is not recorded very well.

Love Californication too... Such a tragic case though, so much of the music was indeed destroyed in the studio. Hard to imagine how good it would sound with triple the dynamic range and so on, but one can always dream.

Thanks for mentioning the protective mesh for the driver on the pad side! I was driving myself crazy trying to confirm if it was actually there or just my imagination.