Stella Utopia EM
Real technological twin sister of the Grande Utopia EM, the Stella Utopia EM floorstanding loudspeaker has absorbed the gist of the most outstanding innovations, in a 3-way version and with more convenient dimensions. The new 13" (33cm) built-in W woofer works with the same electro-magnet as in the Grande Utopia EM, which is as well efficient in the infrabass as in the midbass. A major innovation that makes you rediscover all the dynamics and definition in a critical frequency response that's totally brought to light by the Stella Utopia EM audiophile acoustic hifi loudspeaker.30 years of “the Spirit of Sound”

since 1979, focal is one of the world leaders of the high-end acoustic loudspeakers. 30 years to fight for our values, to keep our production in france and to stand up for the idea of a luxury “à la française”. innovation, tradition, be the world’s best in everything we create for your pleasure, that’s our philosophy: “the spirit of sound”.

The world’s best
all our loudspeakers are made according to the same quality standards to offer the best listening solution whatever the size or price. so, what’s the difference between a worldwide reference loudspeaker grande utopia em and a multimedia system focal xs? between this infinitely tall and this infinitely small? in the end, the difference’s not that big…

Tradition
the traditional loudspeaker and the driver are the historical channels of focal, the heart of its dna, made of technologies, mechanics and noble materials. but that’s also an object that’s part of our everyday life. that’s why we took much care about each detail…

Innovation
innovating is pushing the envelope. focal permanently invents new solutions to integrate a quality sound whatever the conditions, in-wall, on-wall or in-ceiling loudspeakers. and everything becomes possible…

Pleasure
listening to your music everywhere in your everyday environment, it’s now possible. focal has the solution to bring a quality sound in any rooms: the living-room, bedroom, hall, kitchen or even the bathroom. even outside with the outdoor range, waterproof and resistant to all kinds of weathers. for a great listening pleasure everywhere.

Evolution axis of transducers
The first meetings, with our driver and filtering engineers consisted in sweeping over the progress potentials in terms of transducers.

Tweeter
If Beryllium has never been questioned, very soon we agreed that a new magnet should be designed in order to take advantage of a better decompression by a totally cleared profile. The experience gained with the “IAL” tweeter developed for the Electra 1000Be range had already brought evolution ideas for, on the one hand, raising the magnetic field and on the other hand, extending the frequency response in the low range. The challenge was simple: win efficiency and increase the dynamic capacity as well as power handling.

Woofer and mid-bass
In a passive system, these 2 transducers set the loudspeaker sensitivity. If the 11” mid-bass speaker should progress, being a limitation point in dynamics of version II (Be) of 2002, the key point concerned the 15” woofer. The challenge with version III of 2008 was to bring a decisive evolution in the bass, in the image of the technological step brought by Beryllium in 2002 in the treble. The requirements straightaway fixed 2 demands: efficiency increase and possibility of level adjustment in order to be adapted to the acoustics of the listening room. An active solution offered advantages, even better, an AES publishing of May 2004 dealing with a dipole system that forms a cardioid source, was appealing in terms of coupling with the different kinds of rooms. However, after a pre-study, this choice required - to be precise - to resort to a source of 2 speakers independently driven and digitally treated in order to create an adjustable directivity scheme, which represented a decisive advantage in terms of adaptation. The study promised to be arduous and complex... Moreover, it could have an impact on the design depending on the use of two 13” speakers instead of one 15” speaker or even one 18” speaker.

Midrange
During the last 2 years, we tested new materials for the cones. Could we do better than the last W evolutions? We set ourselves 6 months to finalize a choice concerning the cone. We also began working on the spider and surround. At last, improving again the performance steadiness in production, in the ear high-sensitivity zone, made up another work axis.

Crossover
Besides a state of the art valuation in terms of passive components (copper-foil inductor, wire type...), capacitors (electrodes, dielectric, envelope...) and resistors (self-inductance...), the choice of the internal wiring had also to be considered by a series of blind tests. However, concerning the crossover, a key point had to be satisfied: offering fine tunings so that the dealer can step in during the installation in order to optimize the performance (reverberation time of the room, customer taste, adaptation to other equipments such as electronics, cables...)

Design requirements
The first design meeting took place in Paris on October 13th 2005 in the design cabinet Pineau & Le Porcher premises... The goal: find the DNA of version III. The list of the initial constraints was as follow: Focus Time, separate midrange blocks and limitation of diffraction effects, 18”, 15” or 2x13” woofer, Tweeter Be at ear height, streamlined vent tube to avoid turbulence, the setting device on the back of the midrange compartment, possible cardioid woofer in an active system. The conclusions of these first exchanges were clear, the Utopia III DNA should lean on two dimensions; the Focus Time and the separate blocks for each transducer.