Focal’s highest head-fi yet

Focal has announced a new closed-back headphone to rival its open-back Utopias, the $4499 Focal Stellia. The new headphones not only include a new generation of exclusive speaker drivers, the French company has achieved a nominal impedance of 35 ohms, making the headphones driveable from the output of a phone, tablet or laptop if required — audiophile headphones that are made to travel. For this purpose they come with a nice ‘cognac and mocha’ faux-leather travel case to match the new headphone’s colours.

The new generation of electrodynamic speaker drivers use Focal’s ‘M’-shaped pure beryllium dome, beryllium offering mass seven times lighter than titanium of the same rigidity, and they use a frameless 100% copper voice coil exclusive to Focal, magnetically coupled to the motor. The unusually low combined mass allows, according to Focal, “reproduction of the tiniest sound details at both high and low frequencies.” The Stellia has an extensive frequency response of 5Hz–40kHz, and the earpads are also designed to improve linearity: “50% of their height is designed to diffuse sound through a non-perforated full-grain leather,” says Focal, while “50% absorbs the audio signal through an acoustic cloth which covers the memory foam. This solution also provides a linear frequency range between 1 and 10kHz.”

Two cables are provided — a home 3-metre cable with symmetrical 4-pin XLR connector, and the second cable designed for portable use, 1.2m long with 3.5mm stereo minijack and 6.35mm adapter plug.

We note that the open-back Utopias have a higher RRP of $5499, but are currently available at $3999, making the Stellias now the highestlevel headphone from the French marque.

Focal has simultaneously released the $3799 Arche DAC and headphone amplifier, developed for Focal by Micromega, another French company with which its equipment is often combined in some markets. It combines twin balanced DACs with two alternate amplification circuits which are user-selectable.

The DAC section of the Arche parallels twin AK 4490 DACs operating at an extended 32-bit/768kHz and processing PCM to 384kHz, as well as DSD up to DSD 256, from the USB-B input. The optical and coaxial, digital inputs operate to 192kHz.

The converted analogue signals are then routed to a choice of two separate pure class-A amplification circuits, user-selected as ‘Voltage’ and ‘Hybrid’. The ‘Voltage’ option is a pure current amplifier providing an output impedance of just 0.1 ohm, while the ‘Hybrid’ offers a higher output impedance through which Focal says “the tonal balance slightly favours the bass, midrange and extreme treble registers”.

Focal has also nicely served its existing headphone customers by including dedicated settings for each of its Utopia, Stellia, Clear, Elegia and Elear headphone models, via presets with the products’ names. Both balanced and unbalanced headphone sockets are available.

There are both digital and analogue inputs to the Arche, including one unbalanced analogue RCA, one

USB-B input for computer connection, and one each of coaxial digital S/PDIF and optical digital input, both operating to a maximum 192kHz sampling rate. A headphone stand can be attached to the top of the Arche, to perch your precious ’phones thereupon. More info: www.busisoft.com.au