by Ed Selley Today at 9:10 AM - Focal · The Focal was tested with a Lenovo T530 ThinkPad with and without a Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS, Furutech ADL Cruise and Chord Electronics

Sélectionné par / Selected by Focal-JMlab - Tel : (+33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Fax : (+33) 04 77 37 65 87 - www.focal.com

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Focal Spirit One S Headphone Review

Is Focal’s latest headphone a flight of Frenchfancy or a gruesome Gaul?

by Ed Selley Today at 9:10 AM

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Focal Spirit One S - What is it?

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After a few years of headphone sales being exciting enough to bring all sorts of companiesinto the fold, the market has calmed down a bit. Sales are still good (certainly incomparison to a number of other categories that remain rather sad) but we seem to bereaching the limits of how big the category will get. If you haven’t already got your productin place, it's probable that trying to do so now is unlikely to reap you a big return. Themajor headphone brands have adapted well to the new market conditions and thecompanies that arrived early have made an impact too.

The interesting phenomenon we get to see now is how the new arrivals in the headphonemarket perceive their own levels of success in the category. As such, they can stick aroundwith their existing models, cut their losses and leave or feel sufficiently confident that theychoose to invest more money. I suspect that not every manufacturer will be coming backfor more. This is a complex market to get right, with performance, price, styling anddistribution channels all needing to be effective for a product to create any impact. Often,talented and well-designed products have fallen by the wayside because they failed tocapture the public’s imagination.

As one of the earliest non-headphone manufacturers to launch products into the category,



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Focal Spirit One S - How does itlook and feel?

Focal clearly feels as a company that their initial investment has been worth the effort. Theoriginal Sprit One was joined by the Spirit Classic - which we rated very highly - and SpiritProfessional. Now the company is taking a look at the original Spirit One and has carriedout some fine tuning to the design to come up with the Spirit One S which keeps to thesame principle of a lightweight full size headphone but one that supposedly offers higherperformance at a lower price. Does S mean success in this instance?

If you stick a pair of Spirit One S headphones next to an older pair of the Spirit Ones, youare not going to be bowled over by the differences between them. Both designs are visuallyidentical and work around the same basic design principles. This isn’t a bad thing though.The original Spirit One was good enough to pick up an EISA award and has been a strongseller in the two years it has been on sale. With this in mind, it would be change forchanges sake to bin the experience of the Spirit One and do something different.

As such the One S is a folding design with full size earpads that enclose the ear and mounta pair of 40mm dynamic drivers. Connection to your equipment is made via a metre longdetachable cable that connects to the left hand enclosure via captive locking connector and3.5mm jack. While the basic recipe is the same, the details have changed. The earpad is alarger size than before and a slightly different shape to improve overall comfort levels.



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These contain an all new driver and baffle that are collectively intended to offer betterfrequency response, lower distortion and improved sensitivity over the older model.

These changes are incremental - the driver is still 40mm in size and made from lightweightaluminium- and the layout and principle is unchanged but they take a capable headphoneand move it forward. This is hardly that radical a proposition- the Grado SR225e reviewedrecently has been doing this for the best part of twenty years- but what is more notable iswhat has happened to the price at the same time. The outgoing Spirit One had a retail priceof £200. The One S with all the detail improvements present and correct is £150. This is aserious saving to pass on even if there were no real differences to the design but given theeffort that Focal has put into improving the model at the same time is genuinely impressive.

One positive reason why Focal leaving the basic design of the Spirit One unchanged is agood thing is that they make for an attractive pair of headphones. The Spirit is designed insuch a way as to have Focal brand styling touches but they are secondary to the functionand fit of the headphone itself. The result is a distinctive yet not too showy design thatmanages to balance usefully light weight with solid build and good overall comfort. TheSpirit One S is a genuinely easy headphone to wear for long periods of time and thanks tothe closed back design, is one you could consider wearing for a long commute without anissue - although do be aware that there is some noise leakage even at relatively sensiblevolume levels. After moving from the Grado 225e which is never truly comfortable, theFocal is like having a head massage.



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Focal Spirit One S - What comeswith it?

The Focal isn’t lavishly kitted out but for the asking price and the intended role it issupposed to have, the supplied equipment is useful enough. The cord is detachable andfeatures a microphone and remote (although this is the one area where some cost cutting isvisible as the original Spirit had a machined metal section for these functions where theSpirit S makes do with a small plastic one). If you needed a greater length than the 1msupplied, it shouldn’t be too hard to find an aftermarket replacement. The cord as standardhas a 3.5mm socket but a quarter inch adapter is supplied.



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Focal Spirit One S - Any downsides?

The carry case is the most welcome accessory though. This is a hard shell zip type thatallows for your Spirits to be protected while out and about. As a package it isn’t quite ascompact as the one that Lindy supplies with the NCX100 but it is flatter (making it fit into amanbag style holder rather better) and it feels genuinely tough and resilient.

The result manages to balance a usefullylight weight construction with a solidbuild and good overall comfort.

The Focal is generally sufficiently well built and well thought out that any issues are more ofa gripe than an actual problem. I feel that the remote and mic module is a little too far upthe cord to be ideal for calls. I suspect that the idea is that you shouldn’t have to pull itcloser to the mouth when making a call but on my face at least, it is still a little distantwithout pulling it in. The cord is also a little on the short side for home use unless you sitnext to your electronics although it can of course be swapped for a longer one.

Otherwise, the only minor point of annoyance is the colour. The original Spirit was a



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Focal Spirit One S - How was itsetup?

Focal Spirit One S - How does itsound with music?

grey/silver combo (and a white version was released later). The Spirit Classic thenintroduced a rather lovely and achingly fashionable ‘Hot Chocolate.’ Sadly, the One S is aslightly unhappy blend of the two. The slightly bronzed finish of the new headphones is - forme at least - not as nice as its predecessor although I stress it is far from unattractive.

The Focal was tested with a Lenovo T530 ThinkPad with and without a Cambridge AudioDacMagic XS, Furutech ADL Cruise and Chord Electronics Hugo. They were additionallytested with a Google Nexus 5 phone, iPad 3 and a Naim SuperNait 2 integrated amp.Material used included lossless and high res FLAC via Foobar as well as streaming servicessuch as Spotify and Grooveshark and on demand video services such as iPlayer, Sky Go andNetflix.



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The original Spirit One didn’t become a successful headphone simply because it looked niceor because people associated a reasonably priced headphone with the beryllium lacedesoterica that Focal also produces. It also sounded genuinely good - refined, powerful andwell balanced. Given the physical similarity of the One S, it isn’t the most surprising newsgoing to learn that it has a fair amount in common with the older model. The One S is aheadphone that demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to voice a headphone to workeffectively on the move without winding up the bass and treble for more ‘excitement.’Having recently gained access to a chunk of my CD collection that had previously beentrapped behind a wall of boxes, the Focal treats Coldcut’s Sound Mirrors with an appreciablesense of fun and energy.

I had previously experienced this subjective but entirely noticeable phenomenon with themore expensive Spirit Classic and ‘fun’ remains an impossible thing to measure but listen tothe same tracks back to back with the Grado SR225e (an exercise that makes the twinheadphone outputs of the Chord Hugo suddenly look less bonkers) and the differences arereadily apparent. The Grado is fantastically accurate and brings all the benefits of openbacked drivers to the music with a sense of air and space that allows you to forget that thedrivers are so close to the head. The Focal by contrast is less forensically detailed and bydint of the design sounds more ‘buttoned up’ than the Grado does but when the heavy andcomplex bassline of This Island Earth kicks in, the Focal is simply more exciting to listen to.The One S is able to make music a more visceral experience.



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This does mean that in terms of the last word of accuracy that the Focal might not be yourfirst choice. It is far from coloured but it trades the last word in forensic detail for the abilityto draw you into music that you love and make it an experience. It also allows the One S tobe impressively forgiving with less than perfect recordings and compressed music. As adevice designed with portable use in mind, the Focal is perfectly happy with Spotify andinternet radio services and impressively then manages to bring a useful jump in soundquality with higher quality material.

The most appreciable step forward that the new model demonstrates over the old is interms of sensitivity. Focal helpfully supplied some data on the differences between old andnew and in absolute numbers terms, they aren’t radically different - no more than 2dB atany given point up to 1kHz and appreciably less above this - but it manifests itself as aheadphone that is extremely easy to drive from the output of a smartphone. This greatersensitivity at the low-end also manifests itself in the form of truly excellent bass that isphysically present as well as audible and usefully detailed and agile. With really bass heavymaterial you can wind up with a little too much of a good thing and find that the Focal is alittle bass dominated but for the most part the balance is pretty good. I found that the littleCambridge Audio DacMagic XS helped to control the low end effectively- the slightly leanpresentation worked well in this instance and as a £250 combo, this duo was a bit of a classact.



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Focal Spirit One S - How does itsound with film and TV?

The One S is able to make music a morevisceral experience.

If slightly over excitable bass can periodically be an issue with music, it does mean that theFocal is one of the most effective ways of enjoying action TV on the move. Catching up withthe latest season’s silliness in Hawaii 5-0 (consider it a guilty pleasure) shows the Focal offto excellent effect. The sensitivity means that an iPad faces no challenge at all to drivethem to any listening level that might take your fancy and action sequences (ie, most of theprogram) have real punch to them. Dialogue is easy to follow and although the slightlyclosed-in performance remains in comparison to an open backed rival, the Focal isenjoyable and well suited for use on the move.



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Conclusion

9

99SCORE

OUT OF10Pros

Lively and entertaining sound

Comfortable

Well built and well spec'd

Cons

Bass sometimes a little exuberant

Mic slightly high on the cord

Colour a matter of taste

Focal Spirit One S Headphone Review

Is it any good?

The headphone market is now effectively saturated at any price point you could think ofand unless you are the sort of person that breaks headphones on a regular basis, it is

00

00

00

I own this

I want this

I had this



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The Rundown

highly likely that the last few years have seen you buy a pair already. To convince people tobuy now or to upgrade, manufacturers need to offer more headphone for less money. Thereis simply too much competition to try it any other way. This makes the arrival of the revisedSpirit One S very timely indeed. This is a pair of headphones that builds on the positiveperformance of the original in small but meaningful ways. They are a little more exciting tolisten to, they are easier to drive and they work well across film and music. The ribbon thatties off this enticing package is the £50 saving over the older model.

What are the alternatives?

You can get higher performance or more specialised features from models like the HarmonKardon BT or Sennheiser Momentum but at £150, the Focal is seriously good value formoney. It looks like Focal is settling into this category for the long term - the competitionwill need to step up their game.

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Build Quality

88

8888Ease of Use

99

9999Sensitivity

99

9999Design and usability

88

8888Sound Quality

99

9999Value For Money

1010

10101010Verdict

99

9999



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Is Focal’s latest headphone, the Spirit One S, a flight of French fancy or a gruesome Gaul?

Ed SelleyAVF Reviewer

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by Ed Selley Today at 9:10 AM - Focal · The Focal was tested with a Lenovo T530 ThinkPad with and without a Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS, Furutech ADL Cruise and Chord Electronics