Headphone Reviews

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
When people talk of the "Apple tax," they mean the priciness of Apple's products—a negative that for many of us is offset by how well the company's devices usually work, separately and together. Apple, though, has rarely emphasized interoperability with non-Apple devices, and the Bathys is no exception. Focal includes only a minijack cable and a USB-C–to–USB-C cord in the box; to use the built-in DAC, I had to go rummaging through drawers for a USB-C– to-Lightning adapter. The good news: I found two. The bad news: Neither worked.

Even after much online troubleshooting and a few calls with Focal, the cable connection between the headphones and my iPhone 14 Pro Max produced only silence. Ever hopeful, I plugged the Bathys into my wife's and daughters' iPhones, too. Still no dice. It was the same story with my (admittedly aging) iPad Pro. But Focal's headset worked flawlessly when I used the same USB-C cable with my Android phones—an LG V30 and a Samsung Galaxy S10e, both of which I use as music players only, and to test certain apps and devices. My USB-C–equipped MacBook Pro also had no issues with the supplied cord.

I had to be missing something; the Bathys retail box proudly states that the product was "made for iPhone/iPad." After I contacted the kind folks at AudioQuest and told them of my troubles, they sent me their $230 USB-C–to-Lightning Carbon cable. Sweet—but another strikeout.

Fortunately, Focal Naim's ever-diligent head of PR, Wendy Knowles, then came up with the solution. She had Amazon ship me Apple's $29 "Camera Kit" Lightning-to-USB dongle (footnote 4) along with a $5 Basesailor-brand USB-C–to–USB-A adapter (footnote 5). To our mutual relief, that duo did the trick, and admirably too—as long as I heeded Knowles's advice to "power on the Bathys in DAC mode, connected to the adapter cable, before you plug the whole cable-headphone chain into the iPhone. Otherwise, the phone won't recognize it."

Reached by email at Focal's French headquarters, marketing manager Mégane Montabonel (a name fit for a poem or a sunny song) explained that the Bathys's USB-C cable "is provided for charging and USB audio for all Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and others." Note that this excludes iOS devices, except that the cable "works with the new iPhone 15 and late-model iPads," which have USB-C inputs. Montabonel ventured that the issue I experienced "is more about Apple's policy regarding Lightning and the authentication required to convert it to USB." She clarified that the promise of the "Made for iPhone" designation specifically "refers to Bluetooth functionality," not the use of the Bathys's internal DAC.

In fact, using the Bathys in DAC mode, Montabonel added, "is a secondary-use case" because "Bluetooth is used most of the time." That's probably true. But the Bathys is marketed as being both wireless (for convenience) and wired (for superior sound). I asked if it might be a good idea for Focal to include the necessary cables for most iOS users in the Bathys box. "Unfortunately, it's very hard to provide all cables and all accessories for all uses," came the reply.

Lesser plaints include the fact that the Bathys's power must always be switched on when you listen, even when you just use the 3.5mm minijack ("due to it being an active amplification input," says Focal). The EQ feature, adjustable in the Focal Naim app, gives the user only five bands (62Hz, 250Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz, and 16kHz). I'd like a lot more granularity, maybe via a parametric EQ instead of a graphic one, something that could perhaps be addressed with a future firmware update. Oh, and in DAC mode, it's not possible to answer calls on your iPhone. Hmpf. (On the plus side, Bluetooth calls were always clear, sans static, in both directions.)

I got the music in me
My sonic preferences—biases?—may work both for and against Focal. It hurt a little when, 18 months ago, I slapped down my credit card to buy my new reference speakers, the glorious Focal Utopia Scala Evos, but I haven't regretted the purchase for a minute. I reviewed the Scalas' bigger brothers, the Maestros, in Stereophile's November 2023 issue, sparing no superlatives. Sopras, Kantas, Choras—I don't think I've heard a Focal speaker I didn't fancy.

But the handful of Focal headphones I've auditioned—I haven't heard the Utopia—never quite hit the spot for me. I found they had too much top-end energy for my tastes—a little bit of a zingy character. So the fact that I liked the Bathys as much as I did came as a bit of a surprise. In Bluetooth mode, even without EQ or Mimi, I found it impactful, punchy, and convincing. Its treble seemed better controlled this time—or at least, better tuned to my liking. I've heard Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball destroyed by hot treble and excessive sibilance, but the Bathys reproduced the album with poise and sangfroid. No aggressive sss sounds or overly wet chs and ts.

And when I listened in DAC mode, with the standard cable and the aftermarket adapters, I had to raise a second thumb. The timbre of all kinds of instruments, from cellos to guitars to snare drums, was attractively rendered. Avishai Cohen's moody jazz reinvention (footnote 6) of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," from Big Vicious (24/88.2 FLAC ECM/Qobuz), proved a joy through the Bathys. His horn pierced the soul, not the ears. On this and other tracks, detail retrieval was especially excellent on acoustic instruments and vocals. Male voices sounded natural and not overly chesty (more so after Mimi did her thing), making the Fairfield Four's Standing in the Safety Zone (16/44.1 FLAC, Word Records/Qobuz) sound as good as I've heard that album on a sub-$1500 headset. To test for the reproduction of transients, I played a recent favorite: the Anthony Fiumara composition "Chorale," performed by Dutch percussion group Slagwerk Den Haag (16/44.1 FLAC, Orange Mountain Music/Tidal). The leading edges of each strike had primo immediacy. In other words, transients through the Bathys are extraordinary for 'phones with dynamic drivers, if not as stellar as what I hear from the (admittedly much pricier) planar or electrostatic headphones I generally favor.

Closing time
I like the Bathys the way I liked my two huskies, now (dog)gone to the great kennel in the sky. Despite our best precautions, those dogs got out and ran away so often that the local cops knew them by name. They ate anything they could get their mouths on (the dogs I mean, though I have my suspicions about the cops). In short, our furry companions were challenging—and yet, at their badass core, loveable and wonderful.

So it was with the Focal cans. True: connecting the Bathys via Bluetooth was a cinch across all six smartphones I tested. And there should be no problems with the USB-C cable if you want to listen in DAC mode and you have an Android or an iPhone 15. Other iPhone users though? They may have to procure the aforementioned Apple dongle and Basesailor adapter to get it all to work.

Sonically, the Bathys sacrifices little accuracy even over Bluetooth and kicks it up a notch once DAC mode is engaged. It hits the bullseye so confidently that the $700 asking price seems on the modest side.

That said, I often still prefer using the $249 Apple AirPods Pro 2 I reviewed in this magazine a year ago, partly because they use advanced trickery to push the music out of my head, making it seem as if it's coming from in front of me. The AirPods also offer no-fuss integration with other Apple products, which is no small thing if, like me, you've long drunk the Cupertino Kool-Aid (or Apple juice). And the Apple version of ANC, like Sony's, is a step ahead of Focal's in sheer noise-suppressing prowess.

But the white plastic buds are chintzier than the stylish Bathys; and although the ubiquitous pods are very good soundwise, it's the French headset that deserves the Stereophile nod based on sonics.

In the future when all's well
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that a new generation of wireless headphones is going to make us reach into our wallets again, and soon. Remember the Edifier S3 I mentioned earlier—and the fact that it offers Bluetooth and hi-rez audio simultaneously, without cables or adapters? That's the way (uh, huh )I like it! Within a couple of years, either the future Bluetooth 5.4 will be compatible with native lossless streaming, or headphone companies will go the Edifier route and use chips that enable lossless music via the current Bluetooth 5.3 standard. I can hardly wait to see—and hear—what the likes of Apple and Focal will come up with next.

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Footnote 4: See apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter.

Footnote 5: See amazon.com/gp/product/B07N47QRCY—although any properly designed USB-C to USB-A adapter should work; the missing element here was the camera adapter.

Footnote 6: The trumpeter, not the bassist of the same name.