Appreciate the impressions. I'm REALLY close to ordering these!! Really wish I was able to hear the Clear, but seeing that these are close in sound signature and have great isolation is a huge plus. Price and lack of isolation really held me back on the Clears. (Wish my apartment and A/C wasn't so noisy...)
Nice to see you listened to these with metal! I find my Z1R not very synergistic with this genre imo. What kind of metal did you listen with? Is it quick enough in the bass to keep up with faster songs? Do guitars have enough bite to them without sounding harsh? etc?...
Hi ctaxxxx,
Thank you for your nice words.
You asked about which kind of metal I listened with, here are my test tracks (tracks I know by heart, having listened to them for years, even almost daily during some periods):
- Amon Amarth, [from studio EP Under the Influence] track = Burning Anvil of Steel (viking melodic death metal)
- Manowar, [from studio album Warriors of the World] track = Call to War (so-called "true" heavy metal)
- Eluveitie, [from studio album Everything remains as it never was] tracks = Otherworld, Everything remains (Celtic folk metal)
- Summoning [from studio album Oath Bound] track = Bauglir (Tolkien epic atmospheric black metal)
- Summoning [from studio album Summoning. Old Mornings Dawn] track = Flammifer (Tolkien epic atmospheric black metal)
- Majesty, studio album = Hellforces, track = Hellforces (so-called "true" epic power metal).
I listened to other tracks which are not purely metal,
like some tracks by the band Elffor (which band I classify in a genre which I see as a hybrid between on one side symphonic black metal and on the other side dark ambient).
I fully understand your point re. the Z1R and metal.
For me metal is a musical genre involving a complex combination of several musical sources aggressively played at full speed:
aggressive drums at full speed, one or more aggressive electric guitar at full speed, aggressive singing-shouting-growling... at full speed, and often further instruments
all of which acoustically recorded (unlike contemporary electronic music which is created and recorded "in silico").
For me almost all headphones are way too slow to properly render metal
(but some people amy prefer a relaxed presentation for long listening sessions, even if not the real thing).
While not hyper-fast like the Utopia, the Elegia is still super fast like the Elear and the Clear,
including its bass which I find easily quick enough for metal (by contrast to the bassof some expensive flagships like the Susvara, LCD-4 and LCD-4z whose bass I find too slow for metal, this is fun as it gives the bass drum an extended duration allowing its impact to be felt longer, but this is not the real thing in my opinion).
I find it renders also the electric guitars of metal great.
Compared to the Clear the Elegia has more sub-bass, making it even more suitable for dark ambient (this is one of the few genres of electronic music I listen to -- I usually don't listen to beat-based electronic genres).
If you want to order the Elegia, I can advise to be very quick while the shops still have some in their inventory which they received ahead of the RMAF announcement,
before they are sold out (= the case at my dealer).
With the other Focals, it was very difficult in Europe to buy them during the first 6 months after their announcement as there was too much demand, dealers could not get hold of them or they would be immediately sold out after the reception of each new shipment.
I expect that there might even be a stronger demand for the Elegia given that it performs very well in spite of being closed (unlike what I am used to hear with closed headphones), is great fun, has a carrying case and a nice pricing.
I heard the Elegia today. To me it's a disappointment. To be sure, the super noisy CANJAM room may be part of the reason, but the top end for the Elgia seems to have been chopped off. It sounds very very muddled. However, it isolates quite well and the low end and midrange are pretty decent. For what it's worth, I'm comparing it to the Utopia ... so take that very brief impression with a lot of salt.
While the Elegia is not the Utopia, it really should not sound like what you heard. I have good news about this:
- the (demo model) Elegia at my dealer absolutely didn't sound muddled at all but rather the opposite, nor did it have its extension cut off, out of a Chord Hugo 2 and out of my Samsung Galaxy Note 9
- it is the same with the model I purchased, paired with my gear at home.
If I understand correctly you auditioned the Elegia during the show out of a Woo (tube) amp?
Many people here at head-fi have reported experiences according to which the preceding Focals (Utopia, Elar, Clear), being very easy to drive, would not pair well with many tube amps (which are usually made for headphones difficult to drive like the HD 800 or some planars) (although there were exceptions reported). The Elegia has even a lower impedance of only 35 ohms, and given how well it paired with my Samsung phone, I would expect it to be even more picky for pairing with tube amps. If so, I assume this could explain why it sounded so badly when you heard it?
Have a nice weekend and enjoy your music,
bidn