High-end audio is about precision.
What I didnt expect was how much of ahumantouch is part of the process.
The company takes its Made in France tagline seriously.
Disclaimer: Focal flew me out to France to check out its facilities for its 40th anniversary last year.
This article is meant as more of a look into Focals design process than a judgement of its speakers.
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Its the cabinet factory that stood out the most.
Its where Focals hi-fi speakers start their life as wooden skeletons before being shipped off to St-Etienne for assembly.
The woodworking facility, originally known as Guy HF, has been making Focals cabinets since the 80s.
Just sanding the front portion of a Sopra cabinet can take 45 minutes.
Cabinets complete, theyre shipped over to the St.-Etienne facility.
The amount of manual labor going into creating the drivers is perhaps even more surprising than the cabinets.
For example, the company makes aW sandwhich cone.
It just so happens sometimes that tool is a bit of muscle.
Beryllium dust can be poisonous, so the woman running the machinery wore a hazmat suit.
Its a surprisingly arduous process.
As Nicolas Debard, Product Manager, told me, Focals strength is in its flexibility.
The company is not organized to manufacturer tens of thousands of drivers a day.
We are definitely focused on manufacturing many different types of drivers on the same day.
The ability to rapidly iterate has also allowed the company to develop unique driver materials and shapes.
On the tweeter side of things, the vast majority of manufacturers use a dome-shaped tweeter.
Focal instead uses an inverted dome.
While not a geometry exclusive to Focal, its still pretty rare to see.
These benefits were certainly present with theChora 806 among the widest directivity speakers Ive measured.
Each speaker is put together by a single worker,ensuringno steps are forgotten along the way.
No wonder Focal so proudly flaunts its Made in France labels.
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