So I have had the Elegia for 3 days. Here are some initial impression after burning in for nearly 20 hours.
Sound isolation
A lot of ppl asked about sound isolation. It is quite good. In a quiet office environment it does block off a lot of noise. The background buzz is gone but neighbor typing and chatting still (barely) go through.The best I can describe it is that it is similar to sound cancellation headphone. If a pair of 3M earplug blocks out 99%, a pair of IEM with good seal will block off 95%. Elegia blocks out 85% but not complete. Once music is going on then the background noise is gone. So if you plan to use it in low noise environment, it will be good. I am not sure how well it would work in the subway/bus or walking around the street (probably not safe to do that anyway)
Comfort
I have been using IEMs for office use for a while. Mainly because a couple of very old headphones that i used (HD580 & some old AT ones) holds my head so tight that they give me a pretty bad headache after 30mins. On top of that open headphone don't work in office environment. The Elegia is my first experiment with going back to fullsized (closed) headphone.
Glad to say that Focal did a great job with the Elegia. The headphone are very wide (not sure if other Focals are the same) and thus it doesn't have a lot of compression on the side of the head. The top band is very well padded and I can set it to the most open setting and it will stay on my head quite comfortably. I have a medium sized head (I wear a size M bke helmet) so people with larger head might get more compression. The ear cups are also very spacious. My ear protrudes sideways and won't work at all with Grado or other small headphones. The Elegia do no bother me at all.
Cable
There have been a lot of complaints about the cable. I haven't opened it up but from feeling it Focal decided to wrap a pair of coaxial and call that a cable. So it ended with a oval cross section. They also chose 4ft length probably expected either a mobile on the go or sit down on office desk use cases. Unfortunately with the thickness of the cable it is stiff and prone to kinking. It is not the ideal cable but honestly they need to be swapped out anyway (see later) so don't get too wrapped up by it.
Sound
Now the intersting part. So far there is a whole spectrum of reviews going on. I just want to add one more small data point.
My initial reaction is that the Elegia is bass light. I mainly listen to classical which stresses a uniform spectrum. But somehow the cellist seems to be on strike here. I have used various amps, WA8, Hugo2, iFi micro. they pretty much all render the same frequency spectrum. iFi with bass boost makes it slightly better but not really ideal. And frankly I am not a bass head, I just want a realistic amount of it. Other measure, clarity isn't that great either, violins are muted and lacking life. Soundstage is a bit laid back and not well defined. At this point I was quite disappointed. It wasn't the sound that I was hoping for.
So started playing with the idea of changing the cable. I have from eons ago (15 yrs?) a Clou Blue cable that I used for my HD580 (starting to show my age now). It was tipped for Senn but since my HD580 has long retired I cut the end and soldered on a pair of 3.5mm plug fitting the Elegia.
To my surprised, things improved a lot. The treble opened up. Now instruments have more clarity and texture. Soundstage is also well defined with instruments appearing at the right spots of the orchestra and have a more defined body. Bass is also better, but still light. Cellos can now be heard. Overall, the listening experience has become more enjoyable. In fact, aside from a bit thin on bass, it is sounding rather good. I am not sure what the Clou is doing differently. I measured it the resistance is a fraction of a Ohm more, and capacitance is around 4x more than the stock cable. But then the values are in the pF range so not sure if that's even a factor. Whatever it is, it sounded better but not perfect.
So overall, after cable swap, I am more optimistic, but even then at this stage I am not convinced 100% by the Elegia. I am not getting the even tonal spectrum that Jude have measured. Or am I not well listened on headphones (I am more of a IEM / hifi guy) have an unrealistic expectation on the bottom end of it? The Elegia is now getting round the clock exercise and hopefully things will open up after a few more days.
