Focal is a pretty unusual company because it is one of the very few that designs and fabricates nearly its entire speaker line, from the tweeters to the woofers to the magnets and even the cabinets. The Utopia line is very special because it uses all the most advanced technology and inventions of Focal, including the inverted Beryllium tweeter.
It took about 2 hours and 5 people to bring the speakers to my 3rd floor. I didn’t realize till yesterday that the crates themselves weigh 180 pounds each so the combined weight of speaker and crate is more than 430 pounds.
The first thing I noticed about the Maestros is that they are more efficient than my previous front speakers, the Electra 1037 Be. Even if, based on the specifications, they are supposed to have the same efficiency, when we removed the 1037’s and connected the Maestros, I had to reduce their trims by about 2 db.
I finally got to do a serious Audyssey Pro calibration late last night (I can only do it late in the evening because of ambient noise). Audyssey Pro produces a “Before” and “After” frequency response chart so I knew that, based on the charts of the Electra 1037 Be, there would be a mid to upper bass hump, probably because the front speakers are so close to the wall. The Maestro has an external jumper which you can use to adjust the bass, mids and highs. We moved the jumper of the Maestro so as to reduce the bass. Nonetheless, the bass hump detected by Audyssey was still huge, up to around 13 db at around 90 to 100 Hz, which is the crossover point (with the Electra, the hump was around 8 db). Without the Audyssey filter, the speaker is too boomy for my room. With the Audyssey filter, the speaker performance is pretty good.
The Maestro has a true subwoofer. It has 2 x 11" woofers and one of them is dedicated to 90 Hz to as low as 25 Hz. That's better than some subwoofers.
Against all of my previous thinking, I have set the Maestros as “large” speakers without any crossover to the subs (but only by default, because for watching movies, I can shift the crossover to 80 Hz). The reason for this is that in our preliminary listening tests, the bass of the Maestros seems to have more detailed harmonics than my subwoofers. Of course, this creates another problem, which is that the power amp is now under a bit of strain ...
Based on reviews that I’ve read, I was expecting the Maestros to have an excellent performance with drums. They did not disappoint. All sorts of drums sound so different now because you can hear much more detail.
The highs were a big surprise to me. I thought that the tweeters of the Electra 1037 Be were incredible. The tweeter of the Maestro is 2 generations ahead of the Electra 1037 Be and it shows. Cymbals have much better shimmer and air. The high frequency extension is incredible and yet, it is smooth, not shrill.
The mids are also a surprise. In my DVD of “Fosse”, there’s a scene from “Sweet Charity” with around 8 girls talking sequentially. I’ve watched that DVD and that scene numerous times but now, the voices of the girls sound much clearer and more natural. This is true in general for all vocals, whether male or female.
The stereo image is huge. Those 2 speakers fill my room with a very natural and relaxed sound. The improvement in sound is not subtle.
Obviously, I have a lot more listening to do but initially, I have found that for a lot of my concert videos, stereo sounds better because there is much more detail and naturalness in the sound produced by the Maestros. Multi-channel provides a bigger soundstage and listener envelopment but in most cases, this is trumped by the incredible performance of the Maestros. So far, I have found that only on concerts with a full orchestra is multi-channel better. Perhaps the Viva Utopia would help? Probably.
