I bought my old man (dad) a pair of Focal Elear headphones recently, so he can listen late at night without waking anybody up.
We demo’ed the entire Focal range. They all shared the same sense of dynamics (subjectively, to my ears) that I’d not heard with headphones before.
Frequency response is (subjectively, to my ears) very different to what I’ve been used to and enjoying with planar magnetic cans.
But I’m a sucker for great speaker dynamics and the Focal lineup really got my attention. The only other dynamic driver cans I’ve owned before were Sennn HD800S…
So I got myself the sexy and stealth all-black Focal Elex… And now I’m pretty keen on getting the Utopia’s!
Driven here very easily by the little iFi xDSD which is fed DSD256 via @jussi_laako’s incredible HQPlayer software.
No, on the contrary. Music playback outside sounds usually a whole lot better then indoors. The problem is that there is no room gain and the average way too small audiophile speakers are totally not up to the task.
If it sounds better it’s because of the sound engineer.
As I said, all things being equal.
I.e. If your take your setup and move it outdoors and keep the same speakers and speaker geometry, then it will not sound as good as indoors, because there is no reflected sound.
My main point was about reflected sound, rather than whether or not one can have good sound outdoors.
My point is abiut the loudspeakers that are not up to the task. Take some kef ls50’s outside and the will sound like toys, no room gain, no moving area, no power to deliver, it will not sound good. Last weeks I worked for a festival in a forest where I had set up a set of speakers with dual 18"subs, 12"mids and horns and music has never sounded so detailed, so fresh, lush, with perfect imaging. A pair of monitors with 6’5inch woofers sounded dreadfull, no body, no mass, no dynamics, no detail, no imaging and lots of distortion. They where simply not up to the task. Most if not all home audio speakers are not sutable for outdoor playback, they will sound lifeless. It’s not only about the reflection.
I know you’re mostly joking, but notice that there is a surface behind the ‘audience’ and the site seems to be surrounding by other buildings, i.e. reflecting surfaces.
