> 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.

Did they raise the price for this run? Could've sworn it was around $150 before. I'm trying to find excuses now not to pay the $90 shipping...

Nice, only US/CA models available so I don’t get tempted.

Saw your edit - don’t bother chasing power specs. The Magni+ will be a side grade for the money (and you’ll still need to stick with the Zen DAC to feed it), so I’d focus on going up the headphone chain since the Zen DAC should be enough for most upgrades.

If you can go and listen to a THX amp before buying, they seem to be in the same polarising camp like Topping where they measure extremely well but can sound worse than cheaper still good measuring but less focused on chasing analyser SINAD amps to some ears. Never heard any so can’t say if it’s as bad as some say.

Do you still notice the changes when you’ve set high gain slightly quieter than low? Higher volume levels can lead to what you’re describing, but in my personal experience it depends on the amp - my old Asgard 3 was noticeably better in high compared to low even with the volume turned lower than in low gain, but I don’t really notice any difference with the Jot 2 to make the more sensitive volume control worth it.

Placebo or not, if it sounds better just leave it there unless you notice yourself turning the volume even higher than you would in low - killing your hearing isn’t worth it!

This applies to ALL measurements you see being done and not just on ASR, but always try and find at least 2-3 different sources for measurements of amps/DACs/headphones to rule out sample variation and measurement errors. Some screw-ups are very obvious (see his joke of an Ananda "review", which to this day has no mention about how the measurements were of a broken seal and are not very representative), but others such as his Mojo 2 review have extra noise past 7k since he seems to have tested it with a crap non-isolated source and thus fed all the USB noise through (which you wouldn't have realised unless you also referenced the GoldenSound review, where he actually bothers to test it with multiple sources to find out if the noise is a problem with the device or because of the source).

It's not always his fault, as sometimes manufacturers send units to him then make changes later on changing the measurements. I would argue that the "ESS hump" IMD fix makes it a better overall product (bringing distortion from -130dB down to -110dB doesn't matter, but bringing IMD at -25dbFS from -70dB to -95dB might), but as long as the site continues to use their stupid "higher is better" SINAD chart and has members/passer-by that seriously believe that, manufacturers have an incentive to "cheat" tests there since he basically never edits his main review to reflect changes and the community there always treats less distortion wayyy past the point of it mattering as some blessing from God.

> But if you were to choose between two seemingly similar products, why choose the “bad” measuring one?

Subjective sound quality (and what even are "bad" measurements?) aside, there's a lot more to consider than just measurements. I recently got a Cavalli Tube Hybrid to try tube hybrids for cheap, but the overall experience in use just doesn't match up to my old yet very similarly priced Asgard 3. The knob feels cheap and too easy to turn for something with no gain, the buttons are long-throw with a cheap actuation (therefore feeling scratchy as it rubs against the case, which is not a problem with the switches on the A3), and they used some cheap Zwee XLR connector which feels worse when inserting and is harder to pull out than the Neutrik on my Jot. I haven't felt one IRL, but the 789 seems to use the same components and at the original price of $350, would be an overall worse experience to use v. the Jot 1/2.

I'm also a bit weird for considering this, but also I prefer to put my money towards designs that are not the standard op-amp reference design with a few tweaks sold as some massive feat of engineering. The A90 and the Jot 2 both measure very well, but the A90 has the majority of its performance coming from the IC op-amps (with circuit tweaks to measure better), while the Jot is a design from the ground up which also measures very well, and is $100 cheaper. Same with the Bifrost - I can justify the money for a design that required quite a bit of R&D to figure out how to interface not-for-audio DAC chips with their own filter and still measure well (see the BF 2/64 or the Yggy MIL measurements), so to me charging the same price for what is mostly the reference design for a TOTL D/S DAC chip is a joke. Then again, I haven't seen anyone else saying the same thing, so maybe my considerations are just a bit weird.

This paints a picture of QC getting better the more you spend, which I guess makes sense considering how much more their margin probably shoots up with a Utopia compared to an Elex. Thanks for sharing your experience, I remembered seeing posts about Utopia and Elear clipping, or maybe I was confusing them with the driver failure.

> driver failure particularly on older (pre-2020 revision) Utopias

The 2020 revision was purely to add the new accessories, as far as I know the headphone/drivers remained the same. Purely anecdotal, but I know someone who bought the 2020 revision Utopia and had a driver die within 3 months. It was replaced under warranty, before one side died again - it was the lampcord XLR cable the second time. I get why they had to specify the 2022 Utopia had "increased reliability" at that point, if they never took the chance to fix it with the 2020 SKU.

> and the Elex

Did you see the post on Head-Fi where someone repaired their broken Elex? The voice coil's wire had broken in the black goop they use to shield the soldered connection to the 3.5mm, so you could theoretically clean it off, desolder the old wire and solder on a new stronger connection to fix it. With broken Elex going for $200+, I'm quite surprised more people haven't cleaned up on the broken eBay ones and fixed them for an audio bargain. The same thing is probably happening with the OG Utopia drivers as well, since the Clear OG/MG had a new voice coil and seemed to fix most of it, and the 2022 Utopia also only replaces the voice coil for higher reliability.

It's a QC issue, which is why some clip at 80dB and others go to >95dB without issue. I got lucky with my old pair that never had the clipping until I stuck a Harman EQ on and cranked it way past normal listening levels on the traditional 2049 clipping test.

From what I've seen, it affects the 1st gen open backs the worst (Elear/Elex, Utopia), the Clear is a lot better, and I haven't seen any complaints with the Clear MG (presumably the 2022 Utopia as well, but it's still too new to say). My pair can be maxed out on my Apple dongle playing 2049 without any issues, so it's not an issue for me.

Just an aside, but this is how silly Focal's statement that "the clipping is intentional, turn the volume down" was. Their PR relied on QC never letting headphones go to customers with this issue, but 3 bottles too many during lunch and people get headphones that clip in YouTube. Now we have the "my pair has no issue, stop killing your hearing" bunch making the whole issue bigger than it is. It's 100% a QC issue if you are encountering it 1) at normal listening volumes, and 2) your listening volumes don't average ~>95dB like some very deaf people. Force a return of the headphones until you get an acceptable one, or get a newer model that doesn't have the issue as much, since it's quite unreasonable to pay their prices just to be unable to watch YouTube.