Focal Sopra - More Business than Hi FI

Focal has recently introduced the Sopra line of speakers and demonstrates two things:

• We live in a time of mid-fi $16,000 speakers
• Focal has terribly good business acumen

From a technology stand point, the Sopra line is a continuation of the Profile and Electra lines.  Despite the hype, there is very little new here.  All of the drivers are fairly similar to the previous drivers with some inexpensive changes made.

Cabinet

The cabinet is bent pressboard. A fancy type of cardboard. I wouldn't buy a trash can made like that, let alone a speaker. I'd venture to say that the real reason for the "infinite horn loading" section is that it makes the design of the cabinet very simple. Construct two cardboard, excuse me, pressboard, tubes of identical cross sections and glue together with a wedge of particle board to hold the tweeter and you are done. Outstandingly cheap to manufacture. Now if they'd add a foot pedal at the bottom I would have an easy place to dispose of the cat lint that accumulates here daily.  That would definitely add class to this joint.

Tuned Mass Damper

Essentially new surrounds with slightly more complicated profiles than we've seen before. They may be effective, but from a price point, the surrounds are just not very expensive.

Infinite Horn Loading

The middle chamber allows Focal to mate an open back tweeter a horn to essentially absorb the rear wave.  They call it "infinite horn loading".  As mentioned, structurally the chamber serves the purpose of connecting the midrange and woofer drives in a very sexy and terribly inexpensive enclosure.

Little innovation here, and indeed, an irrelevant application of older ideas. The concept, as far as I know, was first seen in the B&W Nautilus lines, and continues in the latest B&W loudspeakers. In a nutshell the tweeter is a dipole, without anything to block the rear wave, and therefore eliminating the possibility of reflections internal to the tweeter housing from causing distortion and frequency response comb effects. Focal has been making different "grades" of the same tweeter by changing the rear chamber.

Of course, the proof is in the compression and distortion measurements.  While I haven't seen distortion figures, I can say the measured compression at 90 db is terrible for what should be class-leading dynamic performance.

Crossover Components

I've had exactly one glimpse at the crossover used in the Sopra in a video showing the making of them.  It looks like the same relatively inexpensive parts used all the way back to the Profile line. What's worse is that I discovered an impedance lowering circuit in the crossover of the Profiles, and the chart for the Sopra seems to take full advantage of this. This is a circuit that did almost nothing for the frequency or phase matching, but lowered the woofer impedance into the 2 Ohm range. Why would any reasonable person do this? Because it makes the speaker appear more discerning. A 2 ohm speaker is a snob, and can only be well driven by a hefty amplifier. That same speaker at 4 Ohms looses it's aloofness and plays well with any amplifier.

Own one? Open it up and count the number of high power resistors. If it's around 8, I win.By the way, those resistors are super cheap.

The Bottom Line

The Sopra 2s are tuned like ghetto blasters, with a nice big smile.  Measurements taken for SoundStageNetwork also show huge amounts of compression in the tweeter, no surprise there, and   very low impedance around 100 Hz. In addition, the line appears to use fairly old crossover design, due to essentially inexpensive woofer and midrange motors.  Instead of adding more powerful magnets to the low efficiency and low impedance woofers, Focal has done very little and has created a "discriminating" speaker.  Again, cheap drivers, inexpensive and inadequate cabinetry and poor crossover design say I.

Alternatives

Consumers could find much better values in this price range, but there is no denying that Focal is doing everything right, business wise.  Limited R&D investment, inexpensive manufacturing combined with creating the aura needed to create the perception of a speaker commanding over $10,000 dollars.


If you are looking for speakers with a similar frequency profile but worth their manufacture, and with a more natural and dynamic presentation in the same price range I would encourage you to look at the latest Magico S1 / Mk II instead.  It's not only a better performing speaker, with better components it's also more beautiful and smaller.