> Focal

As far as I remember…

Elear

• Weak headband with the rest of the “Gen 1” Focals (or so I call them) and prone to snapping since they’re plastic on top underneath the pleather and tend to snap there, not at the yokes
• First batch had awful QC and dead drivers made it to customers hands, later batches tightened QC but the weak driver/voice coil remained
• High excursion driver bottoms out on bass heavy tracks at high SPL, THIS IS A QC ISSUE IF YOURS CRACKLES AT YOUR VOLUMES RETURN IT, it should only crackle at unsafe SPLs and allowing them to ship QC failures that bottom out at 85dB is a yoke

Utopia OG

• Gen 1 headband although I’ve not seen any snap, could be the price causing people to handle them a lot more carefully
• Same voice coil, same driver failure issues even past the 2020 SKU refresh but warranty was generally extended to 5 years to compensate (iirc Elears had the extension as well)
• Same driver bottoming out issue
• 2020 refresh gave it the braided cables, which are also prone to dying because the internal copper wires just snap (all braided cable Focals have this issue afaik, although they’re doing you a favour by having it die so you no longer need to use them)
• Bad glue on pads as mentioned by the other poster, caused sticky residue to leak out (some claim it killed their driver but my guess is it’s more likely to be the driver just doing Focal things more than because of the residue)

Clear OG

• Same Gen 1 headband
• Same braided cables (the Pro has similar cables sans Ikea lampshade braiding, but I’ve not seen reports of failures like the normal one)
• Same bottoming out issue
• Paint sucks, peels off after a while and your headphone catches leprosy (also not an issue on the Pro)
• Strengthened and materially-changed voice coil, seemingly fewer failures than the earlier models but still failure-prone
• Early pads are supposedly different from later pads so those that paid full price for replacement pads got shafted, the Elex has the same issue since it uses discount Clear pads

Elegia

• Same Gen 1 headband (most failures have been Elegias after they went on fire sale from what I’ve seen on this sub, makes you think about the relationship between units sold and number of failures seen)
• Same braided cables
• Printing on cup side is actually printed instead of being etched on, unfortunately they used squid ink leftover from lunch and it gets rubbed off easily
• Driver is either the Elear’s or Clears in the low-excursion backing, but for some reason this change means it doesn’t fail as much and avoids the bottoming out problem

Elex

• See Elear section, it’s literally an Elear with a paint job and Clear pads
• Same braided cables
• Pads just generally suck tbh the Clear’s pads feel properly expensive, the Elex’s feel like high-quality toilet paper in comparison

Stellia

• Same Gen 1 headband, although I don’t recall seeing any failures
• Same driver/coil as on the Utopia, but for some reason the low-excursion backing means it doesn’t fail or at least not as often

Celestee

• Same Gen 1 headband
• Same braided cables
• Same terrible print quality

Radiance

• Same Gen 1 headband
• Same cable as the Pro headphones actually so a plus instead of the awful braided ones
• Pads in production were different from the samples sent to the press - see Resolve’s measurements and review of the first Radiance he had and the later one, although I’m not sure if the “bad” pads made it into production or was entirely a preproduction prototype problem

Clear MG

• New “Gen 2” headband! Clamps harder but seems stronger
• Same cables, but not sure if they still fail
• Driver bottoming out seems to occur at higher SPLs, probably better QC but also could be due to the new shaped grille allowing for more excursion before impact
• Early MGs (mine) got the same pads as the OG, later MGs got thinner pads (this is where I suspect the MG hate comes from, since with the OG pads the MG retains the same mids but has better subbass extension and more air >10k, see Jude’s measurements for how the MG with the OG pads differs from the OG)
• Still too new to say if it’s as bad as the old ones, but seems quite a bit better

Utopia 2022

• New Gen 2 headband! See Z’s Utopia 2022 review, he literally stretches the poor thing damn near horizontal and it still works fine, so it should be better.
• Revised voice coil specifically to stop it from dying like the old models
• Cables seem to be the same braided awfulness from what I remember
• Still too new to make a conclusion

So just a few things.

> Fostex

My guess is the yokes snapping and possibly the old non-removable cables breaking but I’m not entirely sure on this one either.