Belated news on the new Focal Chora speakers announced last week that are introduced to serve an AV solution with Dolby Atmos®, the all-immersive cinema solution. The range is interesting for me as a development from the Focal Sib Evo range that I reviewed a while back and I have a pair of Focal Chora 806 bookshelf speakers with a review coming this week (hopefully!).
The range features a 3 way Dolby Atmos® floor standing 826-D, a 2 way center speaker, a 600P sub woofer and rear surround solution.
The Chora 826-D is the new reference product for the range. For the first time, Focal has incorporated Dolby Atmos® technology in a floor standing loudspeaker: a speaker driver installed above the loudspeaker directs the sound towards the ceiling at a carefully calculated angle, so that the audio signal is reflected around the entire room. Focal says the result has the listener wrapped in the sound and immersed in a highly realistic 3D world.
With the Chora Center Focal says voices and dialogues are reproduced with exceptional clarity and remarkable precision. Chora Surround, which can be easily wall-mounted, is ideal for rear- and side-channel action, bringing everything from movie action scenes to music concert performances to life. Focal engineers have brought extra bass to the party with the 600-watt Sub 600P, a 600-watt subwoofer.
The Focal Chora loudspeakers incorporate speaker drivers with a Slatefiber cone. Designed and made in France in Focal’s workshops using cutting-edge equipment, this composite cone combines thermoplastic polymer with recycled non-woven carbon fibres. The result is the optimal balance between damping, rigidity and lightness.
This Slatefiber technology is combined with the Aluminium/Magnesium TNF tweeter, another exclusive technology included in the range to provide silky trebles and increasingly optimised sound spatialisation. The Sub 600P, meanwhile, features a Polyflex cone, heavier and more rigid to offer bass with impact and create an authentic Home Cinema experience.
The Focal signature is not just apparent in the technologies and the quality of French manufacturing, but also in the choice of design and finishes. Chora loudspeakers offer modern shapes and finishes (Black, Light Wood and Dark Wood), complemented by the slate effect of their Slatefiber cones, that suit contemporary homes.
Suggested retail pricing is TBC but will fit with the positioning of the wider Chora range, which launched last year and is available now from £600-£1299.
About Focal
For more than 35 years, Focal has been recognised as a leader on the global stage for its high fidelity products. A French company based in Saint-Étienne (Loire department), Focal manufactures speaker drivers, home audio, CI and multimedia loudspeakers, car audio systems, professional monitoring loudspeakers, and audiophile headphones, with many of the company’s loudspeakers and technologies becoming world-renowned references in the Hi-Fi industry.
All Focal products are designed and developed in France. Benefiting from 35 years of innovation in exclusive and patented acoustic technologies, Focal has chosen to continue manufacturing products ‘Made in France’, where the quality and high standards of French workmanship place the brand above its competitors. A market leader in France, Focal exports more than 80% of its production, mainly to Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.
In 2011, Focal merged with Naim Audio Limited, a leader of high-end electronics in the U.K. Vervent Audio Group, the resulting holding company, has a turnover of over €100 million.
DOLBY ATMOS®
Loudspeakers featuring Dolby Atmos® technology are called ‘enabled speakers’. In addition to their hi-fi speaker drivers on the front, they incorporate a specific speaker driver on the top. This speaker driver directs sound towards the ceiling at a carefully calculated angle so that the sound signal is reflected around the entire listening room. This creates a real impression that the sound is coming simultaneously from the front, back and sides, but also from above.
In addition, Dolby Atmos® technology isolates each sound from the original soundtrack and mix as an independent audio object. Imagine a scene in a house: you hear conservations, but also the sound of footsteps and cutlery in the next room, the sounds coming from an open window, all spatialised in three dimensions, as though you were there… Dolby Atmos® will reveal its power in the scenes where the effects are vertical: a plane zooming overhead, a storm rolling over, wind gusts, etc. With this technology, the emotion of the cinema is recreated in your home.