montanari
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2012
- Posts
- 1,125
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- 276
This is a nice one!
One of the bests!
This is a nice one!
I wanted to buy an Utopia. Prefer location EU. Send me offers.
One question: What about the 5 years guarantee. Do I need the original invoice from the pre owner or not?
Here's something I wanted to raise for other owners' consideration, seeing how many Utopias out there must be going on 2-3+ years in age:
When I recently popped out my old pads in order to replace them with some new ones, I discovered a sticky/gooey substance on the exposed inside part of the drivers, around the flat ring-shaped surface that makes contact with the pads. This was easy enough to rub off.
The same sticky stuff was on the flat inside surface of the outgoing, original pads. It kind of looks like oil or grease in the pic:
I proceeded to try to rub this out, too, as described above. Turns out the sticky substance is coming from the pads themselves, and I ended up causing this (mostly) cosmetic damage:
The flat ring-shaped surface there seems like it's just regular hard plastic, but on closer inspection, is slightly soft to the touch. And possibly degrades over time, turning sticky (??).
My current thinking is that this isn't unique to my pads, as a friend of mine had discovered the sticky stuff on his old pair as well, and had no clue where it had come from.
Anyway, others may want to give their pads/drivers a quick inspection as well...
Here's something I wanted to raise for other owners' consideration, seeing how many Utopias out there must be going on 2-3+ years in age:
When I recently popped out my old pads in order to replace them with some new ones, I discovered a sticky/gooey substance on the exposed inside part of the drivers, around the flat ring-shaped surface that makes contact with the pads. This was easy enough to rub off.
The same sticky stuff was on the flat inside surface of the outgoing, original pads. It kind of looks like oil or grease in the pic:
I proceeded to try to rub this out, too, as described above. Turns out the sticky substance is coming from the pads themselves, and I ended up causing this (mostly) cosmetic damage:
The flat ring-shaped surface there seems like it's just regular hard plastic, but on closer inspection, is slightly soft to the touch. And possibly degrades over time, turning sticky (??).
My current thinking is that this isn't unique to my pads, as a friend of mine had discovered the sticky stuff on his old pair as well, and had no clue where it had come from.
Anyway, others may want to give their pads/drivers a quick inspection as well...
Yep, discovered the same thing myself a few months ago.
Like you say, it appears to a breakdown of the pad surface where it meets the headphone.
I don't think its likely to migrate to the driver area but disappointing nonetheless.
... the Utopias do sound better with the Arche. There is more texture to the music. Vocals are very natural. Bass is powerful and more present. Treble is detailed and smooth.
No goo on my exactly 3 years-old set — just checked.Here's something I wanted to raise for other owners' consideration, seeing how many Utopias out there must be going on 2-3+ years in age:
When I recently popped out my old pads in order to replace them with some new ones, I discovered a sticky/gooey substance on the exposed inside part of the drivers, around the flat ring-shaped surface that makes contact with the pads. This was easy enough to rub off.
The same sticky stuff was on the flat inside surface of the outgoing, original pads ...
Has there been a recent firmware update ? Could you tell what the firmware update number is ? Mine is 01.01.08 I have to turn mine on and off a couple of times (not good for electronics) to make it connect to a computer or a DAP either with USB or Toslink. It's a bug that Focal know about and are supposed to be sorting it.It took a bit work to get the microRendu working with the Arche, but after updating the Arche firmware and setting it up as a Custom DAC on the microRend, it works perfectly, but limited to only to sample rate 192khz. Im quite positively surprised with just how good the Arch/Utopias sounds. At some point I will try the Arche just as an amp with my Berkeley Reference DAC. The Berkeley DAC surely was better than the Sony. That said, the Utopias on the Arche are extremely synergistic. Truly a match.