Focals from $499/pair through $190,000 are highly recommended by ABSOLUTE SOUND & STEREOPHILE for excellent sound & superior value. Focal is one of the few companies that still makes every part of their speakers, all in Europe.

"Two of Europe's most successful high-end audio brands, Focal & Naim, are joining forces. With annual earnings of $82 million & more than 300 employees, Focal will automatically become a European hi-fi leader in terms of sales & resources." STEREOPHILE 11/11.

Today most European speaker brands, including B&W, KEF, Mission & Tannoy, are made in China. Most U.S. brands, including JBL, Infinity, Boston Acoustics & Polk, are made in Asia. Focal is one of the few world-class speakers still made in Europe. Unlike most competitors, every Focal home stereo speaker, even at $499/pair, includes real wood veneer at no extra charge. Their cabinets have exquisite craftsmanship with beveled  baffle edges to minimize diffraction. Cabinet walls are .8" to 1" thick with extensive bracing in the towers, plus non-parallel woofer & midrange subenclosures. 

Focal's comprehensive speaker line includes  models for stereo & home theater; bookshelf & tower models, centers, subwoofers; on-wall, in-wall, in-ceiling & outdoor models, plus powered computer speakers. In addition to their superb craftsmanship, Focal speakers are efficient, usually over 90db.

High efficiency gives you more volume & less distortion. Most other speakers are at least 3db less efficient. This 3db is double the power, or the difference between a 100W & 200W amp. A 90db efficient Focal speaker is twice as loud as a 87 db speaker & four times louder than a 84db speaker with the same wattage input. This efficiency saves you money. Less powerful amps can play as loud. Your current amp will sound cleaner, since it will run at a lower power level with less distortion.

We display the 807W bookshelf & 836W tower speakers. All feature Focal's 1" aluminum-magnesium dome tweeter & non-parallel cabinets with extensive internal bracing to minimize resonance. The towers have nonparallel midrange subenclosures & cast aluminum bases with spiked feet that can adjust from the top side. The CC800W matching center channel is $899. The SW800W subwoofer is $1599. 

            price/                    Max    Freq     Eff.  Size     Wt.
            pair   Woofer  Mid watts  Resp    db   HWD    lbs.
807W $1599 1-6.5"    -     160  4l -28k   92  l8,9,l3"    22
826W $3699 2-6.5" 1-6.5" 220  37-28k  92  4l,l2,l5"   57
836W $4499 3-6.5" 1-6.5" 250  33-28k  92  45,l2,l5"  66

 Gold Sound is Colorado's first dealer displaying Focal's new Prestige 800 series, all with Focal's patented W composite sandwich speaker cones. The W cone excels in all three essential speaker cone qualities simultaneously:

1] Low mass, for quicker transient response.
2] High internal damping, to avoid sound coloration.
3] High rigidity, for better bass & less distortion.

The W cone is 20 times more rigid than paper or Kevlar; 89 times than aluminum & 160+ times than polypropylene. Focal invented the W cones for their state of the art $190,000 Grand Utopia, often called the world's best speaker. 

   The following is from STEREOPHILE, 11/05: "The ideal cone material should be stiff so the cone acts as a piston over a wide frequency range. Piston behavior is especially important for low distortion bass. Low mass allows quick transient acceleration for the best fine detail reproduction. Internal damping quiets any ringing in the cone, which colors the sound. The W cones optimize the balance of stiffness, low mass & self-damping. W drivers are made largely by hand. Every stage of production involves precise, exacting work."
   "Today's top-of-the-line Focal tweeters are made of beryllium - one of the rarest & most expensive of metals. Beryllium is 7 times more rigid than titanium or aluminum. [This] tweeter [is] only a few molecules thick & weighs a mere 0.02 gram. Focal is not into being clever or innovative, just for their own sakes. They're into delivering real consumer benefits."

    "Every Focal driver is measured & listened to. [By designing & building all their drivers] you can customize drivers for each particular model, adjusting the cone thickness to achieve the desired frequency response without resorting to a complex crossover [which hurts  phase response, efficiency, etc.] The result is cleaner, clearer sound & improved efficiency."   
   
"Since it began in 1980, Focal has been a driving force in high-end speaker design, developing many driver technologies, earning 30 patents. Unlike many speakers who use drivers from one supplier & enclosures from another, Focal makes almost all its speaker  components from scratch. For most of its 31 years, Focal's primary business was supplying drivers to a Who's Who of the world's great high-end speakers [including Wilson Audio, whose founder, Dave Wilson, praised Focal tweeters' sensitivity, dynamic contrast, transient attack & power handling. ABSOLUTE SOUND 9/12].
  
"On one tweeter production line, which can build 25,000 tweeters a month, a roll of aluminum-magnesium alloy specially formulated for Focal is cut into squares & the dome structure impressed into the square. The domes are trimmed to a round shape & mounted in a housing that contains a foam compliance. A worker hand glues the voice coil to the dome. Another worker adds the motor assembly. This is high-precision work - the voice coil must be perfectly centered on the inverted dome. The tweeter works correctly only with a precise amount of glue. Focal designed & built the specialized machines to achieve this precision, repeatability. Every driver is individually tested for physical parameters & acoustic performance. Specialized software-controlled imaging technology looks at every driver for tiny physical defects invisible to the naked eye. Focal has refined driver-building for over 30 years. The tweeter builders have 15 years of experience." ABSOLUTE SOUND 1/12
 
"The R&D lab, housed in a separate building, features Europe's largest anechoic chamber. I'm always interested in the ratio of engineers to sales staff; it gives you an idea if a company is engineering driven or market-driven. In Focal, R&D was far larger than the sales department." 

"Driver & cabinet factories are oriented towards high quality. Every worker can stop the line & reject a part. Employees are rewarded for a low failure rate & have profit sharing. Most cabinet factory employees have been building speaker cabinets for most of their lives."

"The Focal is immensely proud that the company designs & builds speaker drivers, cabinets & complete systems in France. Many companies have lost touch with manufacturing due to outsourcing to inexpensive overseas production. They become little more than marketers. Focal stressed that its raison d'etre is innovation & high quality; without these values it could no longer differentiate itself from other speaker manufacturers. Focal intends to be around at least another 30 years & from what l saw & heard, its best days are ahead of it."

FOCAL on DISPLAY

BOOKSHELF SPEAKERS:
   Chorus 705V, 706V, 807V
   Prestige 807W
POWERED BOOKSHELF SPEAKERS:
    XS Book
TOWER SPEAKERS: 
   Chorus 714V, 716V
   Prestige 836W
SUBWOOFER:  SW700V
HEADPHONES: Spirit One

FOCAL SPEAKER REVIEWS

705V, Bookshelf, list $500, now $399, Similar to 706V, below "with a little less bass extension & output," ABSOLUTE SOUND EDITOR'S CHOICE 3/12

706V, Bookshelf, list $700, now $499, "Bass power & extension of many small floorstanding units. Very dynamic & visceral, it has a forward perspective that puts vocals right upfront. Shines on rock, blues & orchestral music. Highish sensitivity makes it an easy load for an amp - 50W is plenty in a moderately sized room. More bottom end than similar priced B&W." ABSOLUTE SOUND 11/11; ABSOLUTE SOUND EDITOR'S CHOICE 3/12

XS Book, list $400, now $299/pair, powered small bookshelf  speakers, "Work beautifully; offer a lot of sound, flexibility & functionality," ABSOLUTE SOUND 2013 HIGH END AUDIO BUYER'S GUIDE, MOST AFFORDABLE POWERED SPEAKERS 
   NOW WITH FREE BLUETOOTH ADAPTOR!  

Bird, $999/pair, powered small bookshelf  speakers with subwoofer, "There is perhaps no finer (or more user friendly) starting point for the high end audio experience than the compact, self-powered Bird system from Focal. The genius of the system is that it looks disarmingly stylish, simple & small, yet offers an amzingly big, rich, room-filling, focused & three dimensional sound. Very sophisticated." ABSOLUTE SOUND 2013 HIGH END AUDIO BUYER'S GUIDE, MOST AFFORDABLE POWERED SPEAKERS with POWERED SUBWOOFER 
   
807W,  Bookshelf, $1599/pair a terrific speaker & not just for the price. As a two-way speaker with a crossover at 3000Hz, the woofer handles the lower & middle midrange, which it does seamlessly. The high frequencies are detailed without being bright. Although I did not have a tube amp on hand, the efficiency is such that I can see using one profitably. The 807W are gems. ULTRAHIGH END REVIEW