Focal Loudspeaker products have garnered their incredible reputation through continuing innovations in driver design and through their obsessive commitment to research, development and quality craftsmanship. The Focal factory in France has become one of the world’s most complete facility for the testing and design of loudspeakers, drivers and exclusive parts that are manufactured and supplied to countless other companies. As a result, Focal has earned many awards for performance and innovation from all over the world. After extensive trials and comparisons, Focal engineer Dominic Baker has adopted Shunyata Research HYDRA’s and power cables as references for both his own and Focal’s testing and reference studio systems.
I’ve just spent a very informative morning listening to our reference system. I have to say that the results with the HYDRA are extremely interesting. Everything has become clearer with greater projection, but at the same time smoother. Stage depth is also greatly improved, something which I was not expecting as this is normally dominated by mechanical/acoustical constraints. Very impressive. Last night I had similarly impressive results at home with my Barco. Noise is dramatically reduced and the image is now far more punchy and better defined, Being an engineer I tend to be a little skeptical when it comes to cables etc, so this was a very pleasant surprise. I’m so impressed with the results that I would like to order your HYDRA MODEL-8 straight away for my own use which will feed my whole HT ensemble.
Dominic Baker, Chief Engineer of Focal/JMLab: USA