> Because it sounds good.

-- FangBianMan

I saw that post too. Fingers crossed because I love my Utopia despite disliking most of the other Focal headphones that I've encountered (Elex, Elegia, Radiance, and Clear Mg, with the Clear Mg not being in my dislike bucket).

Yeah, I own 7 Hifiman headphones. The only QC issue that I experienced was with a brand new HE-5XX. Its headband yolk holder already started to separate. I didn't want the HE-5XX anyways, so ended up returning the headphone (it didn't hold a candle to my HE-500).

HE-6 (4S and 6S), HE-500, HEKv1, HEXv2, Arya v2, HE-X4*

Yeah, Focal headbands have a chintzy internal construction.

Remember the goo that leaked from Utopia stock pads and got into the driver chamber? This caused a number of driver deaths.

I'm also a Utopia owner (2020 edition).

Bad design. Yeah, some who end up in the situation as shown in OP's image separated the connector housing from the headphone by attempting to yank it out with too much force. The lemo-type connector used for the HD800 series has a locking mechanism when inserted into its housing.

To release, one needs to twist the connector back and forth while gently pulling it out. One finds that doing so doesn't require that much force. I much prefer the Focal Utopia's more sensible approach, which requires pulling down on the top of the connector to cause this top to slide down slightly and release the connector from its housing, so one can release the connector and pull the headphone cable out from the earcup all in one motion.

But yeah, this aspect of HD800 series design is pretty awful, especially for the uninitiated.

Interesting. With the SR-009/S running off a Blue Hawaii, they fell flat on their faces I played some drum and bass tracks. On the other hand, the SR-X9000 was far more competent than the 009/S in the bass dept (not to mention far better built) but still fell short of the high-end planars of the world. From your impressions, it seems that you were listening to the X9000's.

With its use of metals, the build quality of the X9000 is a clear step above the SR-009 and SR-007. The build of the X9000 makes the others look like Fisher Price plastic toys.

Those cans crave current and I wonder if speaker amps not being as current-limited as a lot of headphone amps plays a part.

Then again, my recently-acquired Cavalli Liquid Gold (OG) (LAu) puts out 8-9W at 50ohms and my HE-6's sound pretty good on it when comparing the LAu against my Bryston 3B-ST. However, the Bryston 3B-ST (120W at 8ohms) is a far better value proposition for an HE-6 setup at the $500 used price I paid for it.

Other than a scratchy volume pot that developed after one year of ownership, and after the one year warranty expired, I didn't have any other problems. The scratchy volume pot was easy enough to fix. Just slide out the amp by pulling it out via its faceplate after removing the back screws. Applying deoxit to the volume pot shaft was all it took to fix the issue and it has been running fine ever since. There could be one or screws underneath that needs to be removed too, but I could mistaken for the MCTH whose scratchy volume pot I fixed the same way.

Mine came from the third drop, which was before Massdrop's rebranding to Drop, and has been sitting boxed up in my garage for the past year.

Bandcamp, Qobuz, Beatport (they only sell lossless wavs or aiff).