Focal Stellia Sound Check Review
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- Focal Stellia Review
IN THIS EPISODE:
Focal Stellia
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I like how stellia sounds more than all my others headphones (zmf Eikon, senhheiser hd800s, akg k812, hifiman arya). Heavy metal works perfect on stellia!
Anyway, like for honest review!
I totally agree with you, brotha! I love my Stellias! To each, their own though.
I was never impressed with any Sennheiser headphone...HD800S, HD650, HD600. Their IEMs are great through.
Awesome work Michael. Keep it up!
Would love to hear your thoughts on Verite Closed!
By the way very glad I found this channel, your music preferences and hearing seem to align with mine more than other reviewers. Absolutely love my Nanna too!
Thanks for your honest review.
Great review, how would you compare the Stellia’s to something like the Clear MG’s? I’ve heard they are very similar sonically speaking and are obviously better value in terms of price to performance ratio.
Excellent review
Nice review as usual. Curious what amps and DACs you're using for these headphone reviews?
For the over ears, I am always using the Chord M-Scaler / Chord Hugo TT2 combo.
seems you definitely trade it in for a DCA Stealth.... or give the Verite Closed a try?? oh what about DCA Aeon Noir? my problem with closed backs is the disjointedness and reverbs..... so much compromise when i can just get a good IEM instead
Could you have gotten a bad pear of the Stellia, or is it just how it's tuned? Oh, and did you give them a 100 hours brake in?
I spent a lot of time trying to fix that hollow mids. My final solution is using AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt. Somehow Stellia favors low end sources.
What closed back headphones would you actually recommend?
After a few reviews I bought the Stellias, and when listening to it, something produced discomfort, something was wrong.
When I watched this video I thought he was right.
HOWEVER, after some listening hours, now I am loving my Stellias a lot, starting with classical music.
I agree - I found my Stellias needed almost 500 hours of burn-in.
Attempting to go with Stellia, but I felt open back design gave me much more airy and engaging experience.
Already love and own the Utopia.
Got the HE1000SE and loving it too due to complement the Utopia. I guess no closed back for me.....
Make sure you watch the next episode! This Friday, I hope.
Hi Michael, are your findings based on what you heard with the stock pads or the pads as shown in the video? (asking since those in the video are Dekoni Hybrid pads and not the stock pads)
Hi Lucien-- The stock pads sounded worse. They were worn out and had lost much of their spring (ability to keep the headphone off of your ear). I tried 2 pair of Dekoni pads with the Stellia. I noticed mostly a slight change in bass response, but nothing that altered the fundamental tuning of the headphone. All three (including the stock pads -- which I used for the First Impression/What's In The Box video) presented the same mid-range bump that produced the hollow, peaky sound. Thank you for watching!
@@DirectorsGarage Thx for the clarification! :D
Findings??? He isn't doing science here. It is just his opinion.
Kinda late to the party Michael but why did your Stellias have different pads? They have the full leather ones with a leather/fabric combo on the inside part.
I'm an IEM user, Ue Reference Remastered. And a metalhead. The Stellia sounds perfect to me XD
what is the music that kicks in during the transition at 4:24?
It's a track called Paris In The Rain from the Epidemic Sound library. Almost all sound in my videos is from their library.
6 to 8Ks are Highs , not Mids !
sounds like u got broken hearted in audio world, first cuts is the deepest rod steward / sheryl crow?
7:56 I'm bleeding after that hit🤣
Interesting what you say about EQ. Presumably as audio tracks are all mastered differently from track to track, studio to studio and engineer to engineer, many individual songs will also need their own specific EQ nevermind just one EQ tweak for one set of headphones. Takes OCD to a new level!. Thanks for your review. Cheers.
This is a great discussion. There is one standard that everyone goes by-- it's set by the RIAA (or at least it used to be! LOL). So at least manufacturers have a baseline or a starting point. But each EQ has its own flavor. The same settings on two different pieces of software will produce different results (though similar). In video (I'm a video guy first), we'd call that a "chip chart' or what the industry agrees each color means. Every camera sensor and every lens will alter the video around that basic agreed upon standard, producing different looks. So a Sony camera in the same light will look different from a Canon. Similarly, a record engineered by one person will sound different from a record engineered by someone else. When you dive into music and history, you begin to hear pattens or characteristics in how music is recorded-- so for instance, I can identify the difference between a Motown (Detroit) soul record and a Memphis soul record, based on the sound of the recording.
@@DirectorsGarage That's an interesting topic Michael. Different genres are specific too as you mentioned with the Stellia responses. Can you imagine having to EQ and tweak every track differently..... definitely laborious. Looking forward to your Stealth review. I think Alfred may have found a Christmas gift for Batman with the DCA STEALTH!
@@keithb5612 I have to get someone to send me the Stealth. Hoping Audio46 sends one out for review. I can't buy that one new. I'll get killed on the resale and lose at least $1000. This channel can't make deals like that! I need to break even, or at least come close to break even.
After an album is recorded, it gets mastered by a separate engineer. There's a guy who basically makes all the songs on the record have the same loudness-- so you don't get things jumping too much from track to track. Great mastering jobs will cost you extra in the vinyl world. Idiots like me seek out pressings mastered by guys like Bob Ludwig. Finding an original Ludwig mastering job ramps up the cost of the used record-- his work has an RL stamped into the runout groove on the album.
@@DirectorsGarage Would DCA respond if you reached out to them? You have reviewed many TOTL headphones so a comparison to the Stealth would be in Dan Clarks interest too. Hope it works out whichever avenue gets you there.
@@keithb5612 Not likely. I'm too small for most manufacturers to care at this point. With Audio46 I've been able to generate respectable (about $25,000) sales, so they're happy to send me gear, and they're great guys. Abyss declined when I approached them to do something on the show-- this wasn't even a gear donation-- I just wanted an interview. Linsoul has stepped up, so has iFi. Moondrop never responded, even though I've been pushing their gear for almost a year (because it's freaking great and a terrific value.) We may get there at some point, but I need more subscribers. That's why I do the giveaways combined with some more expensive gear. Of course the giveaways cost me a small fortune! LOL.
I was able to scoop this up for just under 2k and can't put them down. I regularly EQ my music but with the Stellia I don't find it necessary. I've run them from a bevy of basically entry level amps so the Zen Can, Zen DAC, Heresy, Liquid Spark, and MT-602, and it has consistently sounded phenomenal. I was so hesitant to pull the trigger on the Stellia based on issues reviewers had with their tonality and timbre, but my experience just doesn't align with those critiques. My main detraction is the thicknesses of the ear pads. While the pads are plenty comfortable they place your ear too close to the driver housing. In swapping to a pair of Dekoni hybrids, while less comfortable, the pads keep my ears from touching the inside of the driver housing.
I listen to a wide range of music, lots of 90s hip hop, alternative, orchestral, electronic, ambient, metal, soul, and R&B. I haven't been able to find a genre that doesn't pair with the Stellia or a reason to switch from the Stellia to my Aeolus or Aeon Noire. Thus far this is the 1 headphone I've owned that can just do it all. As someone who owns an Elegia and was extremely disappointed by its tuning and tonality, the Stellia has absolutely redeemed Focal for me.
I appreciate your review and your honest opinion. I keep an open mind about audio, I don't have a hill I'd be willing to die on, folks need to find what gear will work best for their tastes. But in terms of what the Stellia offers it represents the only piece in my collection I could ubiquitously recommend to people looking for an impactful experience. To chill? Nah, get a Noire.
Hi Das! I REALLY appreciate your take on the Stellia. I completely agree- there is no audio hill worth dying over. Everyone has different hearing. There are frequencies that bother some people, that others simply enjoy. There is nothing wrong with that.
I have tinnitus. I got it while on an airplane 6 years ago. My ears wouldn't pop. I was in agony for 3 hours during the flight and after landing, what remained was a high pitched buzz that is better or worse on certain days. There are frequencies that aggravate it. That upper mid/lower treble range from 6k to 8k is very tricky for me, because it can trigger that tinnitus if the wrong frequency is emphasized. So a headphone that pushes those frequencies is likely going to sound bad to me.
The Stellia fits that profile, so naturally, it left me disappointed, especially after reading such generally positive reviews of the headphone. But if I tell you I enjoyed something when I did not, that doesn't serve anyone. I still try to point out things that I appreciate about a product, because nobody sets out to make a bad product (and the Stellia is far from bad!). There is effort from sometimes hundreds of people to bring a product into existence. There are great things about the Stellia. Speed. Detail retrieval. Build quality. Dynamics. But, for me, the tuning eclipses those positives. This doesn't make the Stellia a bad headphone.
I actually embrace differing opinions on gear (or on any topic for that matter). It makes me consider looking at something from a different point of view. It challenges my own view of things. Life would be a lot more boring if we all agreed on everything.
This channel isn't really about products, it's about stories. How I came to a product, why it appealed to me, where the product came from, the company behind the product, while relating it back to the music, because the music is the most overlooked part of this hobby. I also love telling the stories behind the music. How the music was made, the creative process, the recording process, the gear behind the music. All of this stuff is interesting to me. I don't spend time with graphs because graphs have little narrative value, and they don't tell you everything you need to know about a headphone. Show me the graph of the soundstage? Show me the graph of how a headphone feels on or in your ears? Show me a graph of the imaging? The numbers and graphs can be useful, but only if used in concert with a bigger picture. It has to translate to the experience to have value. I generally avoid using graphs or numbers, unless the story calls for it, or I find something interesting (or entertaining) about them. Anyone can Google these numbers or graphs if they're interested. Taking the time to pour over them in a video is tedious (to my production sensibilities) and wastes time, unless they are an essential part of the story.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opposing view of the Stellia, I genuinely appreciate it, and I hope others do too. Even if a review is different than your opinion, I hope you leave the show feeling entertained. One of the many things I try to do with this show is entertain people, because we don't have enough fun with this stuff. We take ourselves way too seriously. Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
@@DirectorsGarage Absolutely, any time someone takes the time (as you have) to thoroughly catalog their experience with a product it's tremendously valuable to people trying to make informed decisions about these things. I would never dismiss a review or reviewer on the basis of not agreeing with that individual's impressions, especially when the intention is to authentically convey their use case and their findings/feelings.
As a fellow sufferer of tinnitus you have my sympathy. I feel extremely lucky to have retained damn near all of my hearing despite working almost a decade in industrial manufacturing sans hearing protection (the stupidity of youth). I totally understand folks bring their own frequency sensitivities to the table and that is impossible to separate from providing an honest impression of a device. The same is true for our unconscious biases and tendencies right? We may not even fully be able to communicate why something does or doesn't work for us. I would never hold those biases against someone, expressed or otherwise, provided the tone is open-ended meaning -> it conveys the onus on the viewer to make up their own mind or encourages them to have their own experience before making a conclusion.
I actually stumbled onto your channel researching the Stellia and have been really impressed with how much context you provide in your listening impressions for headphones/earphones. I have been entertained but equally informed. I try to avoid hard opinions in audio to counter-balance what I've encountered in the wilds of comment sections, Discords, and forums. I don't understand the antagonism, dismissiveness, and weird brand allegiances and grudges people seem to hold over audio gear. Especially since so many people.. haven't heard the stuff they're bashing or praising - and likely - have no intention of purchasing it either way.
I wish you success Mate! Thank you for taking the time to reply as well. The Stellia honestly shocked me. I really didn't expect them to be as good as advertised especially after owning the tonally wonky Elegia. But at the price I found them, having never been owned but heavily discounted regardless, I just figured if I didn't like them I could probably resale them at a profit. Turns out they apparently just plug into my serotonin receptors. I feel bad for cheating on Zack at ZMF with Focal, but it's apparently very difficult for me to refuse this French mistress :) Take care and enjoy the Susvara!
Could you answer why some measurements (let's say Head-fi) don't show any peak at 5k? Why so different?
Well, what I'm going to say is controversial. Use measurements as a guide. Don't rely on them for detailed analysis-- use your own ears. There are problems with measurements. They get measurements by playing back a source file through the headphone and record the output on a microphone, usually shoved inside a skull with human-shaped ear canals. This in itself is fraught with problems. Microphones have different sensitivities throughout the audio spectrum. One microphone might be sensitive toward picking up, say, a vocal, while another is better suited to record a horn. Playing a tone sweep won't give you anything near accuracy because instruments have harmonic resonances that a tone sweep cannot replicate. I've done enough recording in my life to tell you-- we use different microphones for different applications. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. A tiny mic capsule inside a fake head is going to be an exercise in compromise. Now they may compensate for the mic-- but who is creating that compensation? How are they making the compensation? More variables that will upset a scientific measurement. These folks that do all the measuring-- they're going to try to convince you that THEIR measurement is 100% accurate. Why? Because they're selling them to you through Adsense. The more people that buy into their measurements and click on the site, the more money they make. Just because someone tells you it's perfect, doesn't make it so.
That's not to say that a measurement is all BS and they aren't worth looking at. Just understand that the science behind the measurement is flawed. What you see isn't perfect. It can't be. A $35,000 dollar Neumann U47, widely considered to be the best microphone ever made has compromises. To expect perfection from a tiny mic shoved in a plastic skull isn't realistic. Your ears will tell you more than a graph ever will.
@@DirectorsGarage
Yes, the way you say it is clear, understandable and logic. It makes sense and we may add the human error in the particular application.
About different people using their ears… even more variation. Sometimes people argue opposite impressions, especially people with apparent sensitive capabilities.
I’d argue that a study regarding differences between units (headphones) may show surprising results as well.
As long as your review is honest, unbiased, with no commissioned economic gain, it is a welcome contribution indeed!
Thanks, have a great day.
I don’t hear the midrange weirdness you were referring to. And I’m confused by the 6-8KHz reference as “mids”. Great review anyway.
felt the same way about these headphones.
Hi, do I have the focal clear and worth upgrading to stellia?
My opinion? No.
I agree with Michael. I would keep Focal Clear and get something like a ZMF Verité or an Abyss AB 1266 Phi instead if you doesn't already own other headphones. Don't get it as a negative review of Stellia, it's great (and I own one), but I don't think this is an as good all purpose headphone as those.
@@oizio3879 Like these are you referring to which headphones?
@@user-eb5ri3nf9d Verité and ab 1266 Phi, but also Stax flagships and Susvara.
Michael, good sir, you need some Susvara in your life. Love your channel. Subbed since 100 subs :) time.
Stay tuned! Thanks Adnan-- make sure you're entered in the giveaway, and as always, thanks for watching.
I'm not a fan of the Stellia, so not really defending it that much, but you really need to use stock pads on all Focal headphones as it is part of the tuning process.
I see you're using hybrid pads, and these are really not recommended with the Stellia, it will make them sound stuffy, dipped in the male vocal range and then spike up in the upper mids and low treble.
I still think that the Stellia is a technically more capable and objectively better performing headphone than my recently acquired DCA Stealth - now that's a disappointment for me (besides its fabulous voicing).
Closed back headphones are cursed by nature
In the What's In The Box Stellia episode, I did a first impression out of the box. In that video you can see that I used the stock pads. I also did listening with the Stellia offline. I don't want to bore you, the dedicated viewer, with the tedium of watching me swap pads and sources for hours on end. Call it a creative choice for your enjoyment. The stock pads are badly worn. They compress too much. I did I swap pads (and cleaned the filthy headphone) during testing. Having directly compared the two sets of pads, there's not much difference between them-- the Dekoni pads are more comfortable-- and neither pad addressed or cleared up the main issue I have with the Stellia, the upper mid/lower treble tuning. Thanks for watching!
I have the Focal Elex and experience a 'grating' to all vocals - made it unlistenable - I tried to EQ it out to no avail
all Focals have some sort of give and take try Sennheiser HD600 or step up to a Kennerton Rognir
I have the same headphone, and disagree. Sounds fine.
@@phillipnunya6793 Most people seem to have nothing but good things to say about Focals. I received a replacement Elex and it had the same prob. I tried different dac, amps, cables, eq and music sources. Instrumental music is fine but vocals had a harshness that I couldn't get past. I don't experience this with other headphones - otherwise I'd blame my own ears. This is the first time I've heard someone experience a somewhat similar issue with a higher Focal model.
@@canonlon311 Did you have an Elex before? You said it was a replacement.
I don't have any issues with the Utopia, for some reason. I don't consider the Stellia unlistenable-- and there's a lot about the Stellia I like-- but this particular tuning on the Stellia emphasizes frequencies that I'm highly sensitive toward. I can understand how someone might be sensitive to low bass (a frequency that I really enjoy) and would consider a headphone like the Abyss to be messy or annoying in the same way as I find the Stellia's tuning disappointing. I like these discussions because we hear from all sides-- and I'm comfortable with the idea that someone else has a different and positive experience. Thanks for watching and commenting! It's a good discussion.
all Focals have some sort of give and take try Sennheiser HD600 or step up to a Kennerton Rognir
I'm totally surprised by this review as it's so different from Resolve's review and Max Settings as well. They mention recessed mids but they don't seem nearly as recessed as what you spoke about. Also, I don't recall any of them speaking about a 5-6 peak. As a matter of fact Resolve mentioned that there was a 5-6 k dip on his headphones. I'm really wondering if you just got a bad set of headphones. Maybe you should contact Focal to see if you can get another set for review to compare with what you bought. From what you've described these don't seem to represent how most people describe the Stellia.
Imagine how surprised I was while listening! It's not all bad, and I hope you caught how my review points to the headphone's many strengths. But I expect a premium, nearly unsurpassed experience from a $3000 headphone- it better blow me away at that price. The bump-- you can see the wackiness of what I'm referring to in Crin's graph of the frequency response-- peaks in that 6-8k range. crinacle.com/graphs/headphones/focal-stellia/ -- and googling the graphs on this headphone reveals a variety of upper mid measurements-- which is why I use these graphs as a guide, not gospel. From the comments on the video, it seems like I'm not alone in my overall take. All good though-- That's why there are so many headphones (and reviewers!) to choose from. Hoping for a Stealth experience soon. Thanks for watching!
I share the surprise
Turns out making a high-end Audiophile headphone that only works with the least-audiophile genres doesnt work well