Focal Trio6 Be Monitors

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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2015/10United States / États-Unis

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VOL. TWENTY NINENUMBER ONE

OCTOBER 2015USA $5.99 CANADA $5.99

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mode (see below), the range is 90 Hz to 20kHz at 105 dB maximum SPL. Its crossoverpoints are set at 250 Hz and 2500 Hz.

Like other models in the Focal line, theTrio6 Be offers a power saving modeknown as Automatic Standby. The cabinetspower on in standby, and return to it if noaudio signal has passed through them in15 minutes. Think of it as screen saver/sleep mode for your speakers; when in thismode, power consumption of each monitoris less than 0.5 Watts. When signal isdetected, the Trio6 Be wakes back up witha gentle fade in and resumes work.

The outsides: cabinet, connections, andcontrols

Each cabinet is made from 22mm(0.86") thick MDF finished in a texturedgray. They measure 201/2" x 1015/16" x143/16" inches and weigh 44 lbs. each.The 8" subwoofer is in its own chamberand isolated from the 5" cone and tweet-er. Each section has its own front-firingbass ports: there is a large bass port below

the 8" woofer, similar to the ones found onother Focal cabinets, and there are twosmall matched ports flanking the 5” driver.The latter are similar in size to those on theAlpha series monitors.

Input is handled around back by a sin-gle electronically-balanced 10 kilohm XLRinput jack, complete with an input sensi-tivity switch with settings for –10 dBV or+4 dBU levels. Also on the back are threerecessed, screw driver accessed toneshaping controls. Each one offers ±3 dBof attenuation or boost. There is a 35 to250 Hz Low Shelf, a 4.5 to 40 kHz HighShelf, and a Low Mid bell filter set at 160Hz with a Q factor of 1.

Also on the rear is a standard IEC powersocket, as well as a pair of 1/4" jacks labeledFocus Input and Focus Output.

Sorry, no “Hocus Pocus” jokesOne of the Trio6’s main features is

Focus mode, first introduced on the SM9.This mode effectively gives you two setsof monitors for the price of one.

B Y P A U L V N U K J R .

In April 2015, Recording was invited toa special product launch in Las Vegas atthe prestigious Studio at the Palms. It wasthere that the folks at Audio Plus Servicesgave us a sneak preview of new productsin its distributed lines: a new mic fromLauten Audio, new interface and process-ing hardware from SPL... and the newTrio6 Be speakers from Focal.

Focal is a French speaker company thatmakes some of the most popular pro stu-dio monitors on the market today. Thecompany’s lineup ranges from the afford-able entry-level Alpha series (reviewedDecember 2014) to the SM6 series withits popular Twin6 Be (reviewed July2008), to the flagship SM9.

The Trio6 Be is the new top end of theSM6 series, positioned between the Twin6Be and the SM9. It’s an active 3-way mon-itor with an 8" subwoofer, a 5" woofer,and one of Focal’s famous 1" beryllium(Be) inverse dome tweeters.

The insides: brand new, powerful, fast,and toxic

Both of the drivers are a brand new Wcomposite sandwich cone design madespecifically for these monitors. A dual glassfiber design, each cone is made up of twothin layers of woven glass fiber sandwichedtogether onto a structural foam core.According to Focal, this is a more homoge-nous and flexible design than cones madefrom Glass Aramid or woven Kevlar.

Focal both pioneered and perfected theberyllium tweeter design. Incredibly lightand rigid, beryllium is said to offer a faster,more linear transient response than titaniumor aluminum designs. Its only real down-side is that it’s poisonous if ingested, so nolicking the tweeters... and no, you’re notsupposed to touch them, either!

The Trio6 Be is a triamplified activedesign. There’s a 200 W Class G amp forthe 8" driver, a 150 W Class G amp for the5" driver, and a 100W Class AB amp onthe tweeter. The Trio6 Be has a range of 35Hz to 40 kHz with a 115 dB SPL. In Focus

Focal Trio6 Be MonitorsPower, accuracy, beauty, detail... and did we mention the power?

Excerpted from the October edition of REcORding Magazine 2015©2015 Music Maker Publications, inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 idylwild Trail, Boulder, cO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-954-653-3927 or www.recordingmag.com


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Get all of the screws loose (just on theverge of release), hold the section steady(note that the two bass ports make greatfinger holders), finish unscrewing thespeakers, and then slowly and gently liftthe assembly out by about 1/2", rotate toits desired position, and tighten thescrews. Remember, do not touch thetweeter! If you fear tweeter damage orcontamination, the Trio6 Be ships with atweeter guard on it. Leave it in place untilafter you position the speakers, and saveit for when you need to move the speak-ers or change their orientation..

On the subject of speaker guards,Focal also includes a set of stylish snap-onspeaker covers. These give you more pro-tection for the woofer and subwoofer ifneeded... if, for example, your room islikely to contain kids, pets, or drummers.

Sound and useUnlike many monitor reviews I have

done, where I rarely get to hear them out-side my own personal listening environ-ments, it was great to get my first taste ofthe Trio6 Be with two pairs set up in bothrooms at the Studio At The Palms. TheFocal crew gave us all a lot of time andfreedom to audition songs ranging fromthe stellar soundtrack work of film com-poser Armand Amar all the way toAC/DC’s classic “Back In Black”, withvarious EDM, Hip-Hop, Classical, andJazz tracks thrown in as well. We also gotto hear them in a simple vocal/acousticguitar tracking session when demoingLauten’s new Eden mics (review forthcom-ing) with producer Fab Dupont andsinger/songwriter Will Knox.

The monitors easily held their own inthese large, professionally treatedspaces, with fantastic wide imaging, full

and natural low end, and stupid amountsof headroom and volume. This makessense, of course, as the Trio6 Be is a 3-way design with a pro-studio build, pedi-gree, and price tag. It was that volumeand low-end fullness, however, that mademe wonder how they would fare in small-er project rooms, home studios and such.

My mix room at Moss Garden Musicmeasures 12.5' x 15.5'. It is fully trappedand treated, but it is still a convertedoffice space and just a tad larger thanmany bedroom studios I have used. I setup the Trio6 Be, did 48 hours of continu-ous burn-in, and came back two dayslater, fearing that these speakers wouldsimply pack too much power for myroom, as 3-way monitors often can....

KaBOOM!The Trio6 Be can and will get loud!

Thanks to their headroom, even withoutthe clip protection it is quite difficult tofeed these speakers a signal so loud thatthey will distort (or worse yet, fart out onthe lows) like so many less expensivemonitors.

One of my mix setups for over sevenyears has been a set of 2-way 8" KRKE8b monitors with the matching 12sHOsubwoofer, so I am used to, and love, asolid bottom end. Surprisingly the Trio6Be monitors held their own in everyway—no sub needed or wanted, andthe sound was more focused and directthan one often gets with a satellite/subrig.

Unless you want to level buildings, Isee zero reason why you would needa sub with the Trio6 Be. It has low endfor days—and that low end is usablelow end. It is a full and gently focusedbass response that sounds impressiveto clients when cranked, but naturaland honest at low levels for mixing.

High yet clearThe tweeters in my older KRK monitors

are also of the inverse dome berylliumvariety. They are clear and open, but theydo have more than a touch of that “thingsare brighter in the mirror than they are inreality” studio monitor sheen to them. Iassumed that I would hear something sim-ilar from the Focal tweeters. Well, I washalf right... clear and open, very muchso, but worryingly bright? Not so much.

The Trio6 Be uses the same TB872tweeter as the more expensive SM9, andit shows. This tweeter is still clear andopen, but it is noticeably less edgy thansome. I would say these hint at a studiomonitor brightness but are much easieron the ears, especially for long periods ofmix time. Bright ’90s guitar rock, trumpet-based jazz and the like will not take yourhead off when played on the Trio6 Be.

If I had to distill the sound of these moni-tors down to 3 words, it would be powerful,

When Focus is engaged, the 8" sub-woofer is muted and the Trio6 becomes acompact 2-way box with a more limitedfrequency response. This is great forchecking mixes and hearing how theymight sound on smaller consumer-style sys-tems. I found it fantastic for really check-ing where the bass and kick sit in the mix,as well as zooming in on the mids.

This 2-Way/Focus setting on the Trio6 Beis much fuller and more balanced than a sin-gle driver check box, and as such is not evenremotely similar in sound or use to the manysealed-single-driver speakers like Auratones,Avantone MixCubes and the like.

Focus mode is activated by plugging inany simple third-party single button footswitch into either speaker’s Focus Inputand then daisy chaining one speaker tothe other, Output to Input, via an addi-tional instrument cable. (Note that nei-ther is included and there is no way toturn on Focus mode without them.) Youcan visually tell when Focus mode isactivated due to a front-located LED,which sits below a power/clip LED.

Turn, turn, turnBig Feature Number Two of the Trio6

Be is that it is specially designed to workproperly in both vertical or horizontaluse. Of course, for better or worse, engi-neers have been placing vertically-designed speakers horizontally foryears, and companies like Focal evenoffer horizontal-only models. However,few cabinets on the market are pur-posely built to excel in both positions.

The positional versatility of the Trio6 Beis made possible by a 360º rotating baffle.This section, which holds the tweeter and 5"driver, is held in place by 4 Allen screws.Removing the screws allows you to gently liftout the baffle, rotate it in 90º increments,reseat it, and screw it back in place.

This choice of positioning allows you tokeep the tweeter above the driver at alltimes, regardless of whether you positionthe speakers horizontally with the 8" dri-vers facing out or facing in. Focal recom-mends placing the tweeter/mid sectionson the inside (nearest to each other) in asmall room, or the reverse in a largerroom, but this choice can also depend onthe imaging you are after.

A practical note about the rotationprocess: it is simple and Focal evenincludes the Allen wrench, but be carefuland take your time! The speaker and tweet-er are attached to wires, and this baffle hasno retaining clips or rotation track. You donot want to have it fall out or drop it.

Focal Trio6 Be Monitors



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even, and full. The mids are very smooth,being neither scooped sounding or toopushed forward. The one word I would notuse is “punchy”; they don’t sound hyped orin your face. For all of their power and vol-ume, they are well balanced and verypleasant to work on, even in my relativelysmall room.

As I’d done at the studio in Vegas, Ispent quite a bit of time listening to musicand mixes that I know well. I was pleasedto hear that there is no style of music theTrio6 Be can’t handle, either whencranked or at moderate listening levels.

The mixWith all of this pleasant impressive

sound, I was a tad worried how mixeswould translate. Would I overmix thehighs to maintain the studio brightness Iwas used to? Would I undermix the basssince these monitors were so sub-like?

I jumped in and mixed a song I just fin-ished tracking with multiple passes ofclassic rock guitars, vintage Slingerland4-piece drums, miked bass cabinet, malevocals, and real Hammond B3. For “trialby fire” purposes, I did not do any mixchecks or tweaks with my second andthird sets of monitors, although I did useFocus mode often.

After a few hours of mix time, the finalmix I heard in my studio sounded almostspot-on in my car, on my iPhone, on mywife’s Bose Bluetooth speaker, and more.I did overmix the vocals a bit, but thatwas an easy and quick fix. I am not say-ing that I don’t expect a bit of a readjust-ment and learning curve as I do moretracking and mixing on them, but for aquick mix right out of the gate, I was quitesatisfied with the results.

What a Trio!The more I mix on these monitors, the

more I appreciate their versatility, theirevenness of tone, and of course their bassoutput, which can “give good client” oneminute and provide accurate clarity formixing the next.

As expected, being at the top end ofthe SM6 line means the Trio6 Be monitorsare not cheap. But real quality rarely is. Ifyou are ready for a pair of uncompro-misingly high-end 3-way monitors thatwork great at any volume and translatebeautifully, these are well worth takingout for a spin.

Price: $2795 each ($5590/pair)

More from: Focal, www.focal.com; dist.in North America by Audio PlusServices, www.audioplusservices.com

The Editor gives special thanks to thestaff at Audio Plus Services for makingPaul Vnuk Jr. welcome at its product pre-miere event in Las Vegas.


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Focal Trio6 Be Monitors