Focal Sopra No.2

[samurai7595]

Did you pay attention to the speaker cables they had on the Sopra 2?  It's just recently become quite apparent to me that the beryllium tweater needs transparent cables. The brand that is, they mellow that tweeter out nicely.

The dealer is using AudioQuest Rocket 44 speaker cables.

Now that I have my speakers on the long wall with first reflection points almost non existent, it dawned on me to reduce toe in more than my last room.  Well I'll be damned if everything didn't just come together.  Treble backed off and bass and mids just locked in.

I have to give props to the transparent cables i have on loan right now as well. They mellowed things out.

So what kind of toe in did the dealer have on the Sopras?  I've come to the conclusion you want almost no toe in with the beryllium tweeter, and the sound stage will still be there.

On Friday evening, I went back to the dealer to audition the Sopra 2 speakers (yet again).

This time, we tried the Devialet 120, 200 and 250 plus we experimented with speaker placement & toe-in.  I was there for about 3 hours and no matter what we tried, the Beryllium tweeters always sounded a little harsh for my liking.  Unfortunately, for speaker cables, they only carry AudioQuest so we couldn't experiment with that aspect of the setup.

Then on Saturday morning, I was dropping off a buddy of mine at a different dealer to have his Leben integrated amp repaired.  While he was talking to the sales rep, I noticed a pair of Focal Sopra 2 speakers in one of the listening rooms.  They were in a walnut veneer finish which did not appeal to me (looks like fake wood).  I was looking at the speakers, when the owner walked in and asked me if I wanted to audition them.  I explained my experience of the Beryllium tweeter to him and he immediately told me that the Devialet integrated amps are a wrong match for the Sopra line.  He told me that the other Focal lines work great with the Devialet but not the Sopra line since they need a warmer / more laid back sound of which the Devialet are not.  So he paired it with the Luxman L-550AX Class A (20W) solid-state integrated amp, Analogue Audio entry-level CD player and a pair of Transparent Audio "The Wave" speaker cables.  To summarize, I was blown away.  The Focal Sopra 2 speakers sounded AMAZING with the Luxman integrated amp.  The Beryllium tweeter was no longer an issue and every type of music we played, sounded amazing.  Incredible deep, powerful, well-controlled bass, smooth midrange and highs with no harshness at all and a coherent sound with excellent driver integration.  Plus the soundstage was extremely wide with music going beyond the outer sides of the speakers.  This experiment has proved (to me) that the Focal Sopra 2 may not be the best match for the Devialet.  

Finally, on Saturday afternoon, I visited a third dealer who carries the Sonus Faber speakers and auditioned the Olympica II speakers with a Devialet 200 and with this combo, the Devialet magic was back!  The speaker cables in this system were the Crystal Cable Micro Diamond cables and we used an Aurender N100H digital streamer.