The Focal monitor range has been welcomed with open arms by those looking for accurate, powerful and fairly-priced monitors, and since they first arrived from France we’ve had nothing but good to say about them.
It’s all thanks to products like the Solo BE 6 active nearfield monitor, which although tiny and with a listening range of 1-3 metres, is capable of pushing out massive amounts of bass at clear, accurate levels. Great, great care has been taken to ensure that absolutely nothing colours or distorts the true playback, and certainly Focal seem to achieved that here.
The Focal Monitors that will appeal to all shapes and sizes of studio, though, are the CMS range – the CMS 40, CMS 50 and CMS 65 (with an optional Focal sub) all providing excellent energy and punch without affecting the sound with unwanted nuance. They deliver excellent separation even when the mix threatens to get complicated, and also push a stereo image that’s easy to work with.
For the bigger setups it’ll be worth looking into the Focal Twin, which has in recent years caused studios’ jaws to drop with its crystal clarity, doubling up on the BE 6 model and letting the Beryllium tweeters sing out wonderfully. Whether you’re mixing album, score or broadcast audio, there’s little to fault here.