New Upgraded Version of an Award Winning "Best Headphone"
Focal's new Utopia 2022 Reference Headphone represents an evolutionary design upgrade in terms of both acoustics and aesthetics. The winner of "best headphone" awards from audiophile publications around the world several times over, Utopia has become a leader in high-end headphones. The new 2022 version manages to improve upon an already exceptional component.
Upgraded Speaker Drivers
With the new Utopia, you get superior sonic performance and unequaled reliability. Utopia retains its famous ‘M’-shaped dome and pure Beryllium speaker drivers for transparent and true sound reproduction. The new addition to the speaker driver is the upgraded voice coil. The brand new coil is made up of 30% copper and 70% aluminum, taking driver reliability to the extreme while maintaining Utopia's excellent performance.
To push the limits even further, Focal has incorporated the ‘M’-shaped speaker driver grille originally developed for Clear Mg headphones, which follows the curve of the dome. This improves the linearity and reproduction of the treble.
Sophisticated Comfort and Aesthetics
Utopia 2022 pampers you with a new level of comfort and aesthetics. The forged carbon yokes, made from recycled carbon, are modern and sophisticated in style, while providing more lightness. The honeycomb grille, synonymous with Focal's open-back headphones – and the Black Chrome ring – showcase subtle design details, like the Yin and Yang on the outer case and the black and red double grille on the speaker driver.
Like its predecessor, Utopia 2020, the new Utopia 2022 continues to include a treasure trove of valuable accessories. It comes with a faux leather box for storage plus a lightweight, rigid carrying case. You also get two detachable cables: one 5ft (1.5m) mini-jack cable with 1/4” (6.35mm) adapter, and one 10ft (3m) cable with XLR connector.
An Outstanding Listening Experience
The listening experience is outstanding in terms of realism, natural sound reproduction, dynamics and clarity. When listening to Utopia, the headphones virtually disappear and the audio signal is revealed with a level of precision never achieved until Utopia.
The Utopia Story
Utopia is result of a rather risky challenge: to offer an audio experience worthy of the brand's high-fidelity loudspeakers . In order to achieve this, Focal approached the design of the various components very differently to other players in the market.
The first obvious aspect is the extent of the open design. When Utopia is worn, the sensation is remarkable: there is absolutely no change in perception in terms of room size. This desire to not have an impact on the impedance of the room the user is in, clearly contributes to the realistic sound of the headphone.
Vastly Improved Comfort
The next step for Focal's mechanical engineers and designers was to improve the comfort of the headphones. There are still many high-end headphones which no doubt offer excellent performance, but comfort is a difficult issue over long periods. So, Focal focused on designing a headband with a constant bend, regardless of the size of the user's head size. This spreads the weight of the headphones evenly over the head to avoid the feeling of pressure on the head or ears, which is all too often the case with other products.
The yoke is also very impressive, both in terms of purity of the design and in terms of comfort. Thus, the yoke doesn't have traditional vertically rotating mechanics, as this has been integrated into the headband.
In addition to this, the asymmetry of the attachment points connecting the yoke to the ear-piece improves the distribution of clamping pressure and ensures excellent sealing and great comfort.
The ear-piece also deserves praise for its remarkable aesthetics and its impressive open design. This avoids any mechanical compression of the transducers while preserving exceptionally realistic sound. Equipped with high-density memory foam, Utopia provides perfect sealing and adapts seamlessly to heads of all shapes and sizes.
Pushing the Limits of Speaker Driver Performance
A characteristic which really sets Focal apart is its ability to innovate and push back the limits in the field of speaker drivers, while managing its own industrial process at the production site based in Saint-Etienne, France. The challenge to reproduce experiences worthy of the brand's best loudspeakers has resulted in a major innovation in the world of headphones: the very first completely open back full-range model.
