Who is Focal?

Focal is different from almost all other speaker brands. They actually manufacture speakers. Located in Saint-Etienne in the south of France, they produce car speakers, home speakers, and drivers for the specialist home hi-fi market. The company was started in 1980 by a tradesman named Jacques Mahul, and is still owned and run by Jacques. At Focal, all of the people who work here have a passion for music, and a fierce pride in workmanship, attention to detail and the sound quality of the speakers they build. Focal employs between fifteen and twenty people in their own in-house research and development department. This is a massive investment in research for a small company, but it is precisely how Focal manages to stay on the forefront of technology. There is no other speaker manufacturer with this level of innovation. Even the closest competitors are using technologies which Focal used some four years ago. Focal innovations lead the world of speaker design, and have done so for over twenty years.

A long list of Focal innovations includes things we are all familiar with. In 1980 Focal was the first to use dual voice-coils in a speaker. Focal invented inverted-dome tweeters, which are a vastly superior design to any other type of tweeter, and Focal pioneered the use of space-age materials like Kevlar, aerospace foam and fiberglass in the manufacture of speaker cones. Focal Grande Utopia home speakers are used by other home speaker manufacturers throughout the world as reference speakers. Focal is, to this day, the only company with the technology and know-how to use Beryllium, a superior material for tweeter cones.

Focal car audio consists of five speaker lines and an amplifier line:
The Access line is designed as an OEM replacement, for use with a factory head unit. They are very efficient and do not need a lot of power to make them sound good. They are easy to install with multiple mounting holes to suit various cars. Their purpose is to sound louder and clearer than the original factory speakers.

The Polyglass V1 line is designed as step up from OEM replacements, for use with a factory head unit or an aftermarket head unit and amplifier.

The Polyglass V2 line is aimed at people who want a major step-up in sound quality. These are superb-sounding components which play well at low to loud listening levels. They are one of the few speakers which still sound good when the volume is turned down low enough to allow conversation in the car. Most other brands sound quite thin unless they are being driven hard. The Polyglass 165 V2S is a good all-round speaker, and is the best-selling speaker of the entire line.

The K2 Power line is designed to provide both high fidelity and high power. They are ideal for people who like their music cranked up loud, and like it crisp and clear with plenty of bass. Hi-fi with punch. The sound quality of the new K2P series surpasses the old Utopia line in many aspects.

The Utopia Be line is for serious audiophiles. These people are more likely to be listening to jazz than hip hop, and would typically have a high quality head unit and a classy amplifier. The speaker range is designed to be the ultimate in high fidelity.

The Focal Power amplifier line is Focal’s newest endeavor and is the culmination of over three years of intense research into finding the best way that an amplifier can power and complement the sophisticated technology that comprises the Focal speaker lines. They have been designed from the ground up to ideally power Focal speakers and now offer a way to design a perfectly integrated Focal car audio system.