Focal, the French speaker and headphone manufacturer has today unveiled Clear, the company’s newest reference headphone. Clear is Focal’s new circum-aural open-back headphone for audiophiles and represents a new evolution of Focal’s open-back, full-range speaker headphone family.

The ‘M’–shape Aluminum/Magnesium dome is equipped with a copper voice coil. The new generation of perforated microfiber ear cushions add to Clear’s open design.

“With Clear, we solidify Focal’s position as key innovators in the manufacturing of high-end headphones,” said Ben Jensen, president of Focal North America. “Building off the research used to develop high-end headphones Elear and Utopia, Clear is poised to be the reference open-back headphones under $2,000. Clear completely envelopes the user in musical purity, as one of the best headphones on the market.”

In 2016, Focal launched the Elear and Utopia headphones, featuring a full-range, completely open-backed electrodynamics transducer. One year later, Focal is revealing Clear. These circum-aural open-back headphones feature an enhanced speaker driver in addition to an upgraded open back design when compared to Elear. Clear is equipped with a new generation full-range speaker driver, as well as a frame less copper voice coil. The use of copper gives the voice coil an extremely strong magnetic field. The 55 Ohms of impedance means you can use Clear with portable high-resolution audio players.

Headphones generally sound different to loudspeakers due to the shape of the sound wave created by the speaker driver and the distance between the listener and the speaker. Whether it’s an inverted or positive dome, a listening distance of barely an inch requires that the shape of the dome be completely redesigned to achieve a plain wave in the context of a full-sized headphone. Drawing on its 35 years of expertise, Focal has developed the “M”-shape inverted dome, originally launched on Elear and Utopia headphones. Composed of an Aluminium/Magnesium alloy, it offers an ideal combination of lightness, rigidity and dampening.

Clear also supplies a full range of connectors. Included are three types of cables, the braided cotton sleeve and 24 AWG oxygen free copper cable offer low resistance , while the two 3.5mm mono jack sockets in the headphones themselves are lockable to secure the connection of the cables.

The 3 cable options are:

• A 4ft (1.2m) cable finished with a 3.5mm stereo jack plug

• A 10ft (3m) cable finished with a 6.35mm stereo jack plug

• A 10ft (3m) with a 4-point XLR connector

The final accessory supplied with Clear is the rigid carrying case.

Focal developed a headband in which the bend remains constant, regardless of the size of the head. This spreads the weight of the headphones evenly over the head, to prevent pressure on the head or ears. The solid Aluminium yoke with its asymmetrical attachment points has been designed to improve the distribution of pressurethis is all thanks to its lack of traditional vertical rotating mechanics, as they have been integrated into the headband.

A new production line specifically for Clear in Saint-Etienne (France) develops the light-weight components that live inside Clear. Each pair of headphones features an identical frequency response curve of +/-0.5dB.

SPECS

Clear Availability & Pricing

Available now $1,499 USD / $1,899 CAD / £1,399 GBP