LATEST ADDITIONS

Stephen Mejias, our excellent assistant editor, is fully in the grip of vinyl fever. He and I are now having daily conversations about the once and future allure of the long player.

I never cared much for Santana. (The band, not Johan. Johan, I love.) You know, there was always "Evil Ways" and "Oye Como Va"&#151fine songs for a stretch of highway when there's nothing else on the radio, but, eh: So what? I shrug my shoulders.

Focal combines high-tech work stations with a phenomenal amount of hand labor. Metal drivers and inexpensive dome tweeters are heavily automated, but many drivers are assembled by <I>hand</I>, especially Focal's "W" composite cones.

Another hand process is stretching and fitting various layers of adhesive-impregnated glass-fiber material to the front and back of the foam center. Again, depending on the driver's purpose, different amounts of glass fiber layers are employed. Since Focal controls the flare, drive system, and crossover, the company has massive amounts of control over elements like mass and Q.

One of Focal's core technologies is its use of "multi-ferrites," Mahul having realized that it was more precise to use multiple magnets in big drivers than it was to rely upon finding enough truly huge, uniform magnets.

Of Focal's 200 employees, only 15 are "allowed" to build the Utopia line of loudspeakers. "Utopia, to Jacques Mahul's way of thinking, represents the finest expression of Focal&mdash;so only the most experienced employees can build Utopia products. They are also the most critical employees and we do not push them to produce mass numbers&mdash;we push them to produce <I>perfect</I> products," said G&#233;rard Chr&#233;tien, Focal's managing director (and former editor of <I>L'Audiophile</>.

Fewer loudspeaker companies have anechoic chambers than you realize. They take up an awful lot of space, for one thing. Focal has one, and it has a twist&mdash;rather than have a suspended floor, the company puts its speakers on a hydraulic jack and suspends it 30' above the floor. This makes getting massive speakers into and out of the chamber a lot easier and safer.