Focal Utopia Main 112

Focal’s new Utopia speakers are their biggest and most ambitious yet.

We’ve reviewed numerous Focal monitors over the decades, but they have always fallen into the nearfield or midfield category — until now. With the launch of the Utopia Main 112 and Utopia Main 212, Focal have ventured into fully fledged ‘main monitor’ territory. The 112 is a substantial three‑way reflex‑loaded active system comprising a 13‑inch bass driver, a 3‑inch dome midrange driver and a 1.5‑inch dome tweeter. The 212 adds a second 13‑inch bass driver and a second midrange driver to create a 3.5‑way system that builds on the 112’s substantial dimensions and weight to become genuinely imposing and ambitious.

The Utopia Main 112 reviewed here is too big and heavy for my modest studio space, but I was able to spend a few hours listening and generally getting to know the monitors in the listening room at Focal’s professional retailer in London, KMR Audio.

Both the Utopia Main monitors are fully active, but rather than containing the necessary electronics within their speaker cabinets, each monitor of a pair is driven from a separate active crossover and power amplifier unit. The entirely analogue unit comprises a 4U rackmountable case with a top‑panel heatsink. It provides 500 Watts of Class‑D power for the low‑frequency band and 180/90 Watts of Class‑H power for the midrange and high‑frequency bands respectively. Connection facilities on the rack’s rear panel comprise mains power, balanced XLR analogue audio and two multi‑pole Speakon socket outputs. Also on the rear panel, behind a removable sub‑panel, is a variety of trim pots and DIP switches. These provide some configuration options (adjusting the input sensitivity and turning auto‑standby mode on or off) and EQ facilities (see box).

Although the Utopia speakers are active, their electronics reside in a separate 4U rack, which also houses a set of configuration DIP switches.

Mid Journey

The design and technology of the Utopia Main 112 fully reflect the distinctive approach Focal have traditionally taken to electro‑acoustics. I’ll start with its midrange driver. In removing the requirement for a midrange driver to play bass, a three‑way speaker like the 112 enables special emphasis on midrange driver design. It’s pretty obvious just from glancing at the 112’s midrange driver that it’s had some serious attention. It looks like few midrange drivers that have gone before and appears to be a genuinely innovative and impressive example of contemporary transducer design.

Conceptually, it’s a dome rather than a cone‑diaphragm driver, although in this case the dome, rather than being fully convex, has a concave section in the middle. Focal describe this as an ‘M‑shaped’ cone and hold a patent, first granted in 2020, that protects elements of its design — particularly the way it provides benefits in terms of manufacturing consistency, and in helping stop the diaphragm/voice‑coil assembly from rocking laterally (because the centre of gravity of the voice coil and diaphragm are closer together than would be the case with a conventional dome). The concave section of the M‑shaped dome also helps, say Focal, to reduce a form of time‑domain distortion that’s inherent to any non‑flat radiating surface. To explain: a fully convex dome results in acoustic radiation from the periphery being slightly delayed in comparison with radiation from the apex, which, at higher frequencies, can produce a comb filtering effect. Pushing the centre of a convex dome back to create a concave section reduces this effect.

Around the periphery of the diaphragm, the compact surround/suspension component incorporates a tuned mass damper (TMD), a feature I also encountered in my review of the Focal Shape Twin (SOS September 2018). The TMD technique involves adding a localised circumferential thickening of the surround material to increase mass at a specific location. The combination of the localised mass and the compliance of the surround introduces a targeted resonance that serves to dissipate vibrational energy that might otherwise be reflected back into the diaphragm.

Behind its M‑shaped diaphragm, the midrange driver features a motor system arrangement incorporating a radial neodymium‑iron‑boron magnet that leaves an unusually large open space directly behind the diaphragm. This means that energy radiating from the rear of the diaphragm is able to be dissipated backwards rather than being reflected forwards and interfering with the forward radiation.

Big W

The material from which the midrange diaphragm is made also has a single‑letter designation. The ‘W’ diaphragm material is a Focal‑developed solution to the unending challenge of speaker design: hunting diaphragm materials that are unfeasibly light, remarkably rigid and appropriately damped. Focal’s W material is a composite sandwich comprising a sheet of resin‑impregnated glass fibre either side of a structural thermoplastic foam core. The glass fibre provides the necessary rigidity and the foam provides damping, while the low density of both materials means the construction is inherently light. The W material is not new (it has been previously employed on numerous higher‑end Focal hi‑fi speakers and pro‑audio monitors). It has proved its effectiveness many times...