Focal Aria K2 936

LOUDSPEAKER

- ROBERT SCHRYER

The first image that pops into my mind when I think of Focal is of the iconic Grande Utopias and how at one Montreal audio show I couldn’t believe that the gentlest, sweetest music I’d heard all day was coming out of those massive speakers. I saw it as a paradox of sorts.

Founded in the City of Lights, Focal has been around since 1979, the year Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now received the Palme d’Or at Cannes and when the average annual income in America was $17,500. Focal started as a twinkle in the eye of engineer and technology journalist Jacques Mahul, who believed he’d built a speaker that would appeal to hi-fi enthusiasts: the DB13. Fast-forward half a century, and Focal, designated “entreprise du patrimoine vivant” (living heritage company) by the French government, employs some 230 people at its large, stylish, multilevel digs.

Those digs, like commercial buildings across much of the world today, are less than fully occupied. Wendy Knowles, head of PR for Focal Naim America and my point person at the company, told me in an email, “COVID has affected everyone within Focal. Initially, our manufacturing was on hold for roughly 6 weeks, until staff were brought back in segmented shifts. Management and sales staff were encouraged to work from home as much as possible.” Focal managed to keep making speakers, and things have since become a bit more routine.