Focal Elegia

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by netforce, Oct 5, 2018.

  1. Poleepkwa

    Poleepkwa Friend

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    I have been looking for a pair of good sealed headphones for work. I do most of my listening at the office these days so I was will to spend a bit on it. I thought the Elegia would be a perfect fit since I like the Pro and if it is a upgrade to that, I should be good.

    Surprisingly there was a demo pair available locally, so I stopped by and had a listen.
    My Source was ZX300.
    Technically the Elegia was an improvement over the Spirit Pro.
    Better transients, better dynamics, better imaging, better seperation. Treble did not seems to peaky with my test-tracks, although slightly to bright.
    They has surprisingly strong sub-bass, but that midbass/lowermidrange was way to flat, robbing the body from the music and making it sound a bit disjointed and not very fluid.
    Kick-drums lacked impact and power. Tried with glasses, without glasses, did not change much with fit. Felt like if the clamped stronger the sound would gain some body and density.
    They tried so hard to make a flat sounding sealed headphone, they totally squeezed the life out of it.
    Probably by strangulation with that zebra noose...
    So I will hang on the my Spirit Pro's a little longer and wait for an updated version.
     
  2. Mithrandir41

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    Another alternative could be a new (or used) pair of Oppo PM-3s. They've been my portable standard for nearly 4 years.
     
  3. Poleepkwa

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    Strange you should mention it as I was just thinking that would be a good alternative. They are just stupidly expensive here in Europe.
     
  4. Mithrandir41

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    If you can find a decent used deal on a pair, they are just an amazing on-the-go reference.
     
  5. Johnston98

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    I just picked up a pair since they dropped the price $200. I love my Clears, but the wife gets a little testy when she can hear the music when trying to sleep. :)

    Paired with the PolyMojo, they sound fantastic. The store I bought them from weren't terribly impressed when they first got them. Customers described them as "flat". When they heard them paired with Mojo, the revelation was palpable. These truly are cans that need a quality source.
     
  6. Bloom

    Bloom MOT: Bloom Audio

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    Yes, wholeheartedly agree. The Elegia are extremely easy to drive, but that doesn't negate the need for a high quality DAC to get the best results. Mojo is a great pairing.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Getting Elegia in for measurement and loaner. Shameless plug to site sponsor @Bloom. Call him for the best deal.
     
  8. Josh83

    Josh83 Friend

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    I think your assessment is correct with regard to scaling. The Elegia isn’t perfect, but it’s very underrated IMO. It has a little taste of the Elear “suckout” that robs electric guitars of bite, but its much smaller than the Elear’s. More like a closed Elex. Overall, I found the Elegia to be impressively neutral, especially for a closed can, which (as you said) some people seemed to find boring. In reality, they’re much more accurate than most closed “studio” cans, and are now kind of an easy closed upgrade option in the price chasm between the NAD HP50 and the closed ZMFs.
     
  9. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    Just buy Stellia pads and stop putting up with suckouts and other weird midrange tunings. I'm sure there are cheaper pads too that will sound better than the stock pads. I thought the Elegia was quite good with the Stellia pads as long as you can put up with treble spikes. The stock pads made me want to rip them off my head within seconds.
     
  10. Johnston98

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    Especially at a $699 price point. I’d like to hear the Stellia, but I don’t think my ears would appreciate the improved sound quality at 4x the price of the Elegia. Too much aural abuse in my younger years.

    @Serious
    Are you suggesting the Focal Stellia replacement pads? Or is there a 3rd party replacement that is equally good?
     
  11. Bloom

    Bloom MOT: Bloom Audio

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    That Father's Day promo was a steal at $699. These are really good closed-backs already at $899.
     
  12. Johnston98

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    They still are on Amazon for $699. 11 pairs in stock. This is what caught my attention to buying the Elegias. I then noticed adverts on that other headphone site about the Father’s Day sale.

    Not sure if buying headphones off amazon is considered “gray market” (i.e. warranty issues will not be honored). I have a really good relationship with my local dealer and preferred to go with them.
     
  13. Bloom

    Bloom MOT: Bloom Audio

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    FWIW, you are not allowed to sell Focal on Amazon without being an authorized dealer, and authorized dealers are required to list at MAP. That promo price ended on June 15th, so the sellers still listed at $699 are breaking Focal's policy. Not saying there's anything wrong with you grabbing a pair on Amazon at that price, just that it's not what the current price is actually supposed to be.
     
  14. Johnston98

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    That’s what I figured. Like I said, I have a good relationship with my local dealer. Great guys. I’d rather pay a bit more to keep them around than get the absolute lowest price. That’s just my thoughts though.
     
  15. Bloom

    Bloom MOT: Bloom Audio

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    I couldn't agree with you more! ;-)
     
  16. Josh83

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    I’d be interested in pad options, too, especially if there are ones less pricey than Stellia pads.

    FWIW, any suckout issues were minor (at least relative to the Elear’s) on my pair, and I don’t really see them as having a problematic treble spike, at least insofar as my pair’s treble (black) is similar to my Clear’s treble (blue) above 8k.

    144F5877-0EEC-43F2-80DA-854BA7542F13.jpeg
     
  17. Serious

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    I'm sure there are third party pads that are as good - I only tried it with the Stellia pads. But yes, I quite liked the Elegia with the Stellia pads and the Stellia itself.

    @Josh83 I found the suckout around 200Hz combined with the FR that was overall similar to the Elear (see RTings FR tool) not to my liking.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I'm not seeing them as so similar relative to each other (FWIW, RTings grossly understates the bass, i.e. Harmon's garbage target)

    • Elear has more upper bass suckout and much more low and sub bass.
    • The mid-treble peak is approximately 5db less present.
    • The upper-mid dip of Elear is shifted down from 4-5.5kHz to 2.2-3.5kHz, which IMO is a more desirable spot, i.e. BBC dip, albeit the dip is slightly deeper.

    upload_2019-6-19_12-38-13.png
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2019
  19. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    Yep, the Harman target definitely needs to be accounted for and I agree they don't sound the same as the Elears, either. In fact the midrange didn't really remind me of the Elear at all, but I still didn't like it and preferred them with the Stellia pads. Actually in their measurements the Elear left channel looks very similar to the Stellia from 500Hz to 6kHz, which is odd. I don't think the Stellia sounds similar to the Elear at all.
    • The Elegia does have more bass (as does the Stellia) and I preferred the Stellia with my glasses breaking the seal. Elegia with Stellia pads I'm not so sure. The Elegia seemed to require more of a seal.
    • They may be less peaky than the Elears, but the same rough driver tendencies are still there in the midtreble. FWIW I thought the Clear also still mostly had it, so YMMV.
    • The 200Hz suckout is there in real life and might even be worse than the graphs suggest. No matter how hard I tried to get a seal, I couldn't get rid of it.
    • From memory the graphs are probably mostly accurate in that I heard the dip as between 3 and 6kHz instead of 2-3.5kHz. In the RTings measurements the Stellia is quite a bit smoother from 2-6kHz. Neither of them have as smooth treble as the Sennheisers, but I didn't expect that either.
    FR-wise the Stellia with my glasses and the Elegia with Stellia pads I thought were quite good. The balance in the upper mids isn't too far off from the HD650 (just a bit lower in level). I still felt the biggest problem was the claustrophobic staging. My UERM's headstage is probably 3 times the size and I can use them with the GO plugged into my phone and get better sound and look less like a dork than if I was wearing Elegias.
     
  20. crenca

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    About 3 weeks with the Elegia. I agree with Serious in that subjectively, that 200Hz taming (not sure I would call it a "suckout") affects the character of the sound more than I would have assumed based on FR plot. They don't scale like the Clears (e.g. they don't reveal the delta between my Jot and BW2 like the Clears), and they are closed (so the "holographic" soundstage of the BW2 becomes more mundane), but overall they have most of the advantages (i.e. speed, microdynamics, what I consider timbre accuracy compared to say the ZMF Eikon) of the Focal driver.

    I would not mind seeing an overly of the Elegia to the Clear @purr1n )in high contrast color - I am red/green color blind) if you get bored ;)
     

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