Этот обзор на русском.

I’ve been familiar with Focal headphones for a long time, but in a one-track manner: for 5 years now, I’ve had amazing Focal Utopia in my personal use, which I haven’t wanted to change for anything over all this time. But the old Utopia are one thing, and the new Hadenys are a totally different thing.

Many thanks to my reader Vasily for the headphones sent for this review. If it hadn’t been for him, there would be no review.

The headphones cost about $700 on Amazon, 100,000 rubles, or $1,130, in official retail in Russia and 57,000 rubles ($645) in unofficial one.

All but the sound

The headphones come in a large box. There is a case with the headphones and a cable inside the box.

The case is thick, covered with fabric. You can easily put something else inside, in the central compartment, for example, a player or a portable DAC.

The headphones are beautiful and expressly aesthetic, even foppish.

It seems that there’s a lot of metal in the structure, but it’s not true. The vast majority of the elements, including the external grids with hexagonal cutouts, are made of plastic. The cups themselves, the outer parts of the arms and the headband overlay are all plastic.

In respect of the external elements, metal is used for making rings with the model name, as well as grids.

Of course, all the bearing elements, such as screws, inner arches, etc. are metal.

The cups, as can be seen from the picture above, can rotate around the vertical axis within the limits sufficient for comfortable placement of headphones on almost any head.

The cable with a 3.5mm connector is connected on one side, to the left headphone. Respectively, it goes to the right one through the yokes and the headband, which, in its turn, is trimmed on top with leather (or faux leather? I didn’t get it) and is adjacent to the head with a woven bottom.

The earpads are covered with exactly the same fabric from the outside.

The inner parts of the earpads are partially trimmed with a fabric-like material, almost a net, largely woven. The earpads are attached to the headphones on latches, which are different from those used in older models: the earpads from Utopia can’t be put on here.

Dynamic drivers are slightly (when compared, for example, with Aune AR5000) turned to the normal of the auricle. Internal damping is implemented using some kind of synthetic material, similar to a fine plastic mesh.

The cable is plastic-sheathed and therefore doesn’t bend very well. A 3.5→6.3mm threaded adapter is included.

In terms of comfort, there are no problems: the pressure is confident so you can safely shake your head, and the headphones won’t fall off. There is a very soft memory foam inside the earpads, so the pressure is the same around their entire perimeter. There’s just a tiny lack of space inside for my ears, but a really tiny one. That’s not a complaint anyway. The weight of the headphones is 300 g, so the neck doesn’t strain at all.

The only doubt I have is the choice of fabric for the earpads: even my copy, which hasn’t been in use for a long time, shows that the fabric is starting to puff and fluff, and thin fibers are sticking out of the earpads. It seems (it seems!) that with active use, the earpads will be shopworn in about a year. On the other hand, the memory foam will become unusable during this time, too, so the earpads will have to be changed anyway.

The sound

The Hadenys resistance is only 28 Ohms, and the sensitivity is 105 dB, so I won’t dwell on the required source power: anything will do.

Frequency response of Focal Hadenys:

We can see the following:

• a small subbass shortage;
• a neat boost on bass, about 150 Hz;
• a pronounced emphasis at 3.6 and 6.3 kHz;
• a peak at 12,7 kHz.

The frequency response practically doesn’t change when the headphones are rotated around the horizontal axis, and there is simply no wiggle room for shifts for the ears inside the earcups.

Hadenys sound in accordance with the measurements: quite ‘warm’, slightly bassy; the voices are positioned openly, close to the listener. The emphasis around 6.3 kHz is significant, and it increases the feeling of ‘detail’ in some tracks, while in others it makes distinguishable those track nuances that you don’t want to distinguish: extraneous noises, crackling, rasping and just recording defects. That is why manufacturers usually try, if not to ‘depress’ this range, then at least not to stick it out. But Hadenys have not just an accent here, but as many as +6 dB, that is, the sound is twice as loud.

Is this feature annoying all the time? No, it’s not.

Is it possible to find tracks that are becoming unpleasant to listen to with Hadenys? Yes, and there are quite a lot of such tracks in my collection.

I’d also like to draw your attention to the fact that the first resonance of Hadenys, which should be at 2.8-3.3 kHz, is shifted to the right, higher, to the 3.6 kHz area. Therefore, the headphones sound a little ‘thinner’ and ‘sharper’ than I like.

As a result, Hadenys have kind of a comfortable, lukewarm sound, generally consistent with the Harman curve, but seasoned with increased energy of voices, as well as prone to pulling out all the details from the tracks, which easily turn out to be absolute trash. And it’s precisely this feature that I’m inclined to consider a tuning error rather than a feature.

Nonlinear distortion at 94 dB with the ‘Use harmonic frequency as ref’ option turned off and on:

Phase response:

Group-delay distortion:

Spectrogram:

There’s nothing really improper here, but it becomes clear that an attempt to raise the subbass ‘tail’ to the Harman standard (by +5 dB at 20 Hz) can lead to unacceptable distortions because there’s already a little more than 2% there.

Comparisons

Let’s compare Hadenys with the much cheaper Fiio FT3 320Ω. Both are classic open-back dynamic headphones.

300 g of Hadenys weight vs. 411 g of FT3, Hadenys earpads are more comfortable – in general, Hadenys are slightly ahead in terms of comfort. The sets: a case and a cable with an adapter for Hadenys vs. a case, replaceable earpads, as well as a cable with a system of replaceable connectors (balanced 4.4 and XLR ones are also present) for FT3 – it’s an absolute win of FT3. 28Ω of resistance and 105 dB of sensitivity of Hadenys vs. 320Ω /110 dB of FT3 – the latter will require a higher power source.

And, well, the frequency response:

• FT3 have a more full-fledged subbass;
• Hadenys have a better separated and whippier bass;
• the middle is an approximate parity;
• to my hearing, the top is more pleasant when played by FT3, although it has an emphasized area at about 5 kHz;
• the ultra-high frequencies are almost the same in terms of quality. It’s up to every listener to decide what is better – a dip or a peak at the same frequency.

Being terminally ill with incurable audiophilia, I’d say that Hadenys and FT3 320Ω play ‘in the same class’. The sound delivery is generally similar, although FT3 sound weightier, sharper and more neutral, while Hadenys are warmer, more dynamic, and, to my taste, more boring. And, by the way, don’t forget about that unpleasant peak at 6.3 kHz.

As for the price, it’s some $645 for Hadenys vs. $280 ($270 + customs duty) for FT3 320Ω. And they can be even cheaper sometimes.

And yes, I’d personally choose FT3 320Ω. And what about the sound source? Moondrop DAWN Pro is already enough to stir up FT3 to an obscene volume when connected to a PC, let alone more serious options.

Summary

Focal Hadenys are clearly built on the basis of a portable platform: low weight, low self-impedance, and a cable that connects on one side. With this in mind, these are open-back headphones, that is, they are targeted at home use. And home use means a stationary system, which, in fact, has no power restrictions, implies experimenting with cables and a sitting position where the weight of the headphones is not so important in the sense that we can go far beyond 300 g while maintaining decent ergonomics.

In short, I understand the positioning of this model as follows: ‘hotel’ headphones for ‘mid-level managers’ that you can take along on a business trip and relax listening to music at the end of the working day. Besides, you can also show them to your colleagues in touch-and-go business who don’t understand anything about headphones anyway, but appreciate beautiful and expensive things.

In terms of sound, Hadenys didn’t become a revelation: the peak at 6.3 kHz spoils the sound picture as a whole and makes you either get used to this sound delivery or be very selective about the musical content. From my point of view, the aforementioned Fiio FT3 320Ω easily outperform Hadenys, although they’re more demanding of the sound source. But even FT3 + any DAC with an amplifier in the aggregate turn out to be cheaper than Hadenys. For $700, Focal had to do something good with the sound – taste-based or ‘right’, it doesn’t matter.

As it seems to me, they failed. Of $700, too much was spent on design and brand.

And then there are Meze 105 AER, Kennerton Nota Bene, Sennheiser HD650, Aune AR5000, and the new HD505 will be right over, too… They all are cheaper, and even if they don’t sound kind of ‘better’, at least they don’t hurt your ears playing up at 6 kilohertz.

All in all, the result is beautiful, expensive and convenient. But, unfortunately, it’s generally unremarkable for audiophiles.