ij - Focalcorner of his father’s engineering works where the availability of precision tools meant he could ensure ﬁrst class consistency, and he soon began to build a reputation

© HIFINEWS - 09/2009 - REF: JM0909UTOPIA3GB2.PDF-1Sélectionné par / Selected by Focal-JMlab - Tel. (+33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Fax: (+33) 04 77 37 65 87 - www.focal-fr.com

ON LOCATION

F A C T O R Y T O U R W I T H J A C Q U E S M A H U L • J M L A B • F R A N C E

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it... John Bamford travels to the Rhône-Alpes region of southern France, where he visits a company dedicated to sound engineering that’s run by enthusiasts with considerable audiophile heritage

where Focal in-car drive units are considered top dogs.

More recently, in its luxurious Utopia high-end loudspeakers, and some of its more affordable Electra models too (those with ‘Be’ nomenclature), Focal has been employing esoteric inverted dome tweeters formed of beryllium. These are not bought in from some high-tech OEM supplier. No sir, Focal designs and manufactures everything itself. Clearly, then, there’s more to this French speaker company than a casual observer of hi-fi matters might give it credit for.

L’AUDIOPHILE HERITAGE Combining it’s home hi-fi, professional studio monitor and automative speaker divisions Focal employs over 130 local people. But as with so many large, successful companies its roots were from

W hile it would be easy for us Brits, living as we do in the home of ‘the Great

British Loudspeaker Industry’, to consider Focal as just another producer of speakers like so many others, observant followers of audio engineering can’t help but have noticed that this French manufacturer has been ‘pushing boundaries’ in recent years.

It was back in 1996 that Focal-JMlab (as the company called itself then) put its awe-inspiring Grande Utopia flagship model on the world stage, causing more than a few eyebrows to be raised among the hi-fi cognescenti. Here was a monster of a high-end speaker that could shoot it out with the big guns of audio esoterica from the UK, USA, Germany, you name it.

But then truth be told this self-effacing French company already knew a thing or two about shoot-outs, having been a major player for many years in the business of specialist aftermarket car audio speakers. In the peculiar world of the pimp-my-ride community, Focal drivers have long been winning automotive sound competition ‘shoot-outs’, even in the US

humble beginnings. Company founder Jacques Mahul was a senior design engineer working for the famous French Audax drive unit company during the 1970s. After leaving Audax in ’77 he became a freelance technical journalist, becoming a regular contributor of technical articles for the highly respected L’Audiophile magazine based in Paris. Jacques penned many seminal articles such as ‘Matériaux et enceintes acoustiques’ [materials and speakers] and ‘Vibrations des cônes de haut-parleurs’ [vibration of cone speakers].

ABOVE: Focal’s HQ building in Saint-Étienne, France, is a monument to high-tech engineering

LEFT: A Brit living abroad, Dominic Baker is Focal’s Director of Sales and Marketing. His first job in the audio industry was as a writer on a hi-fi magazine in London. He moved to France ten years ago

RIGHT: Jacques Mahul, one-time technical journalist, founder of the company and the ‘JM’ in JMlab

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suffered from a lot of drive unit failures. I thought, if I’m ever going to do this professionally and make a business of my own, I’m going to need to make proper drive units.

HAZARDOUS ADVENTUREJacques’ father’s business encompassed tooling and manufacturing of bicycle parts as well as cutlery using locally produced steels. Jacques began making drive units in earnest in a corner of his father’s engineering works where the availability of precision tools meant he could ensure first class consistency, and he soon began to build a reputation for the excellent quality of his drivers – branded Focal – among the loudspeaker manufacturing industry.

‘One of my first UK customers was Jim Rogers who had received great acclaim for his cylindrical JR149 speaker,’ remembers Jacques. ‘I also remember visiting England to try to sell my drive units to Monitor Audio. Mo Iqbal, the owner of Monitor Audio back then... he was a great character but a really tough businessman.’ Jacques laughs.

‘Of course, during this time [early 1980s] the audio industry was quite different to how it is today. Hi-fi was much more of a hands-on hobby than it is now, and there was a huge market for DIY loudspeaker building – especially in the UK and Germany. The business for my Focal drive units for speaker kits grew remarkably during a few short years, as well as sales of my finished loudspeaker models that were separately branded JMlab. It’s only in recent years that we’ve dropped the JMlab

name and use the Focal brand name for everything that we make.’

As we take a tour of Focal’s impressive drive unit engineering plant, on the site of Jacques’ father’s original engineering works, our host is Dominic Baker, Focal’s Director of export sales and marketing. HFN was privileged to have access to Focal’s HazMat (hazardous materials) clean room that represented a massive financial investment for the company when it determined to first begin producing pure beryllium tweeters for its premium speakers.

‘The superior mechanical qualities of beryllium are well known. It’s two-and-a-half times lighter than titanium and seven times more rigid given the equivalent mass, so it’s absolutely the ideal material for making a tweeter diaphragm. Beryllium is

the only metal that can scratch glass! Of course, in a volatile state beryllium is an extremely hazardous element, so working with it is strictly controlled and the development of our beryllium tweeter was a huge undertaking, both in terms of engineering and financial commitment,’ explains Dominic. ‘As well as being immensely light and strong beryllium dissipates heat three times better than aluminium and it has fabulous self-damping properties. If you were to make a bell out of beryllium it wouldn’t ring, it would simply ‘thunk’.

‘Trouble is, as well as being a highly hazardous material – which makes it expensive to work with

It was during this time that he became closely acquainted with Gérard Chrétien who had become Editor of L’Audiophile in ’77. Gérard remained Editor for 13 years – until he hung up his journalist’s hat to join Jacques’ growing Focal-JMlab company in 1990.

‘I was experimenting and working on my own loudspeaker designs in my Paris apartment, determined to establish my own brand of speakers,’ Jacques Mahul recalls. ‘I called myself JMlab. So I didn’t write product reviews for L’Audiophile – it would have been a conflict of interests – I contributed technical articles about pertinent issues that enquiring audiophiles were discussing during those times.

‘My specialist expertise was drive unit design, of course. Then I found I was creating a lot of interest in a mini monitor I’d designed and made for several fellow music enthusiast friends. I called it the JMlab DB13; it was an alternative to the diminutive LS3/5A, using my new design of 5in (13cm) bass/mid driver that employed a unique double voice coil. Certainly it produced a big, musical sound that belied the speaker’s small dimensions.

‘It was around 1980 that an acquaintance who was the distributor of Rega and Nytech at the time said, “Jacques, these sound fantastic; If you make a few of these I’m sure I can sell them” – and so that’s how my business first started!

‘But while I was really proud of the drive unit’s performance in the DB13 I didn’t have the facilities in which to make it reliably and consistently, and consequently

BELOW: Strictly controlled ‘clean room’ conditions are required in which to form Focal’s beryllium tweeter domes

LEFT: Focal’s impressive anechoic chamber is thought to be the largest in Europe

‘My first customer was Jim Rogers who was making his famous JR149 speaker’



ON LOCATION

due to the special manufacturing plant required – it is also expensive to procure. Currently the only active mine for beryllium is in Ohio and total world quantity is just 100kg annually. It’s used for making brake calipers for F18 fighter jets that require reduced braking distances, NASA uses it, and it is used in X-ray machines because it’s invisible to X-rays. It’s approximately 50 times more expensive than titanium!’

We watched one of the inverted domes being formed in the HazMat laboratory. In order to form the tweeter’s 1in (27mm) diaphragm into its inverted dome shape the pure beryllium foil material is heated to over 1000 degrees centigrade.

The world of specialist audio is replete with independently-owned loudspeaker makers situated all over the globe. What sets Focal apart, in addition to its unique pure beryllium tweeter diaphragms, is the fact that it makes everything itself. Since the early days of building JMlab speakers 30 years ago Jacques Mahul formed a close working relationship with

Jean-Paul Guy of cabinet makers Guy.HF. A family business situated in the historic town of Bourbon-Lancy in western Burgundy, around two hours drive from Focal’s main premises in Saint-Étienne, Guy.HF is a high-tech woodworking and cabinet making facility founded by Jean-Paul’s furniture-maker father, Emile Guy, in 1945. Focal-JMlab’s cabinets have been made there since Jacques founded Focal/JMlab in 1980.

As speaker sales expanded to overseas territories and the company grew, Focal-JMlab invested financially in Guy.HF to help Jean-Paul expand. And as Jean-Paul approached retirement age he and Jacques came to an agreement for Focal to take over ownership of the cabinet making business in 2007.

FASCINATING HERITAGEWhile Bourbon-Lancy, a most picturesque rural town on the Loire river, is steeped in history dating back to medieval times, Guy.HF also has a fascinating heritage that has been carefully preserved. Inspired and influenced by Art Deco designs of the 1920s Emile Guy was a renowned designer of high quality bespoke furniture, becoming famous for his talents thanks to publicity caused by his contemporary pieces crafted for the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1937.

Travel down the ‘high street’ of the town today and you can still see the original woodworking and furniture shop that Guy’s father Emile founded in 1945, retained as a local museum housing some original (and priceless!) furniture pieces.

Jean-Paul joined his father’s cabinet making firm in 1955, by which time the company was not only crafting high quality furniture for wealthy clientele but also cabinets for television sets. He was

an audio enthusiast from an early age and within ten years had helped his father expand the cabinet works to include manufacturing of loudspeaker cabinets including three of Jean-Paul’s own speaker designs marketed under the Guy.HF brand. It was eventually to find itself designing and manufacturing cabinets for numerous companies in the electronics business.

Jean-Paul’s highly skilled team of cabinet makers has been instrumental in developing innovative designs during the growth of Focal. Today the cabinet factory employs around 50 workers

and uses a combination of high-tech milling machines alongside skilled labour from the local community. Indeed, many of the older employees have worked there for so long that they’ve long since stopped counting the years.

The factory uses only a few CNC machines, preferring to employ individual work stations and hand assembly so that everybody in the company is responsible for the quality of finished cabinets. One cutting machine we are shown, a

LEFT: Jean-Paul Guy, whose father was a furniture craftsman, was designing cabinets for TV sets during the 1960s

‘The factory buys in 280 tonnes of MDF per annum’

BELOW LEFT & RIGHT: Dating back to 1945, Guy.HF cabinet works is a major employer in the historic town of Bourbon-Lancy



Reichenbach dating from 1988, machines medium and high density fibreboard to zero tolerance – less than the variation in the material due to humidity. Jean-Paul maintains that ‘high-tech machines have their place, but working with wood isn’t like machining metal or synthetics. Touch and sight are hugely important in ensuring consistency and the highest quality of finish.’

Due to continued growth of Focal-JMlab during the ’90s Guy.HF began reducing supply of OEM cabinets to other firms, 95% of its production being dedicated to Focal-JMlab. The factory currently buys in 280 tonnes of MDF per annum. With cutting and routing there is a staggering amount of waste: 120 tonnes no less. Yet throughout the factory there is barely any dust to be seen, all waste being carefully ducted away to be compacted into ‘bricks’ for winter fuel for the local community’s wood-burning heating systems.

HAND MADE DRIVERSPride of workmanship extends to the high-tech manufacturing of Focal’s drive units in its main Saint-Étienne production facility. Again, precision machining combines with hand labour, the workforce multi-tasking and taking responsibility for the consistency of all drive unit production. Manufacturing of inexpensive drivers for budget models utilises a semi-automated production line that Focal designed and built itself, ensuring that even its entry-level speakers are made in-house where the majority of other ‘volume’ producers have resorted to manufacturing in China.

Meanwhile many drivers are assembled almost entirely by hand, especially Focal’s proprietary ‘W’ composite sandwich cones first developed for its prestige speakers a decade ago. The W cone comprises a stiff, extremely light foam material called Rocacell that’s used extensively in the aerospace industry (inside helicopter blades, for example). This is stretched over a mould by hand and then gently heated. The process requires extreme care as there is only a temperature ‘window’ of eight degrees in which to form the material without altering its cellular structure.

LASER CUTTERSThe Rocacell foam is sandwiched between layers of adhesive-impregnated glass-fibre material. Depending on the driver’s purpose, different amounts of glass fibre layers are employed. Once the proper number of layers has been ‘relaxed’ and built up, the cones are placed within gently heated moulds to be finished and precision-trimmed with a laser jet cutter.

As Dominic explains, ‘our philosophy is to ensure we’ve got the mechanical issues of the driver correct first. By variously controlling the thickness of the foam and the layers of glass fibre tissue, we can dial in the characteristics we require for a given design. This extends to our use of multi-ferrites, ever since Jacques found that it was more precise to use multiple magnets than it is to rely on finding huge magnets that are truly uniform.’

As we prepare to retire to Focal’s listening room, where a surprise lays in store for us, we muse on the scale of the operation that began three decades ago with Jacques Mahul

designing drivers and speakers in his Paris apartment. It was in 1990 that Jacques persuaded his long-standing audiophile friend Gerard Chretien, then 40 years old, to vacate the editor’s chair at L’Audiophile magazine and join the company to help manage its growth. Both Jacques and Gerard remember

vividly the enterprising and enquiring days of ‘audio discovery’ during the 1970s, with fellow scribe Jean Haraga writing his first articles in which he dared to suggest that connecting cables could actually alter a system’s sonic performance.

‘Back then there was a different kind of spirit in audio’, Gerard remembers. High-end audio was a hands-on hobby, which led to us

ABOVE & RIGHT: Precision wood-working in the cabinet plant combines high-tech machinery with skilled labour. ‘Touch and sight are hugely important’

‘Focal’s latest ‘new toy’ is the 120kg Maestro Utopia...’

LEFT: Intricate marquetry in Emile Guy’s furniture from 70 years ago is carefully preserved



MOVERS &

1945Emile Guy founds the Guy.HF cabinet works

I1955

Jean-Paul Guy joins his father’s company; branches into cabinet

making for TV sets and audio systems

I1977

Ex-Audax engineer Jacques Mahul

becomes a writer for L’Audiophile magazine; starts

designing his own speakers

I1978/9

Jacques founds JMlab and produces the

DB13 mini-monitor with a dual voice coil

I1980

Begins manufacturing of Focal drivers in

father’s engineering factory in St Etienne

ILate ’80s

As demand for drivers for DIY speaker

market decreases, drivers for high-end car audio takes off

I1990

Gerard Chretien, editor of L’Audiophile,

joins Focal-JMlabI

1995The first Grande

Utopia featuring a ‘W’ cone is unveiled

I2002

Beryllium tweeters introduced

I2008

Grande Utopia gains ‘EM’ woofer and

adjustable focus timeI

2009Maestro Utopia is

launched

TIMELINE

creating the famous La Maison de l’Audiophile store in Paris where hobbyists could buy component parts for kit amplifiers and suchlike. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that we are still passionate about music, still passionate about sound – and when we develop a new speaker in many ways we are still like teenagers playing with our toys.’

Focal’s latest ‘new toy’ is the 120kg Maestro Utopia, a baby brother to the gargantuan Grande Utopia EM flagship. Likely to cost around £28,000, the new Maestro still a mighty monitor, albeit a little more ‘real world’ for enthusiasts’ living rooms.

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWHi-Fi News was privileged to an exclusive preview of the new floorstander. Turn back to page 116 and if you look closely at the photo of Dominic leaning on the black and white speaker you might just be able to tell that the lacquered cabinet is still covered in shrink rap. The great news is that they’ve got our name on them and, once run in for a couple of weeks at the factory, will be shipped to HFN forthwith. Watch out for a full report soon!

Then for a grand finale – or should that be a Grande finale. We listened in awe as the Grande Utopias conjured up images of Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan and a host of others performing a private concert, just for us, at the end of Focal’s listening room. The lifelike scale, power and effortlessness of

the sound leaves us lost for words. As we travel homeward we dwell on the experience. The Grande Utopias, with their electromagnetic woofer motors and meticulously crafted cabinets incorporating self-supporting spines, the articulated blocks adjustable to focus on the optimal sweet spot in the listening position. You couldn’t imagine making it. Which is clearly what gives the Focal team such a buzz: pushing boundaries in imagining the unimaginable.

ABOVE: Where production is semi-automated, Focal has designed the plant itself. Here, lines of Kevlar cones wait to be used for automotive drivers

BELOW: Now that’s a real speaker! The author sizes up a mighty Grande Utopia EM with its electromagnetic woofer; this particular design weighs 260kg

ABOVE: Populating the cabinet of an Electra SR 1000 S surround model

ABOVE: Focal’s ‘W’ cone, a composite of foam and glass fibre, is accurately cut by laser


Documents

ij - Focalcorner of his father’s engineering works where the availability of precision tools meant he could ensure ﬁrst class consistency, and he soon began to build a reputation