#REC 07-2009 COVER:#REC 4/2005 COVER
5/28/09
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®
JULY 2009
VOL. TWENTY TWO
NUMBER TEN
JULY 2009
USA $5.99
CANADA $5.99
© RECORDING - 07/2009 - REF: PRO0709CMS65FP17.PDF-1
Sélectionné par / Selected by Focal-JMlab - Tel. (+33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Fax: (+33) 04 77 37 65 87 - www.focal-fr.com
REC 07-09 new: REC mag 04/05
5/28/09
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Page 24
B Y M I K E M E T L AY
amplification, 105 dB peak SPL, and is 3
dB down at 55 Hz. All other features and
specs are identical to its big brother.
Out of the box, and—oof!—onto the
stands
If you need convincing that the Focals
aren’t your ordinary monitors, the supposedly simple act of getting them out of their
packaging and setting them up properly,
with the help of the well-illustrated owner’s
manual, should do the job. Focal treats
these less expensive monitors with all the
care and diligence due much more costly
speakers, and provides a fair number of
electronic and physical tweaks to get the
best possible sound for your room.
First off, let my nagging lower-back pain be
your fair warning: when you pick up the CMS
65, lift with your legs! They’re fairly small
(roughly 14" x 91/2" by 9") but weigh almost
24 pounds each. That’s due to the cabinet,
which is made of die-cast aluminum. That’s
right: solid metal, with reinforcement and
damping to assure absolute rigidity.
Focal CMS 65 Monitors
French speaker maker Focal’s Twin6 Be
studio monitors made an impression in
our July 2008 issue, when reviewer Justin
Peacock called them a “kick in the pants”
that forced him to work harder than ever
to make his mixes the best they could be.
He ended up purchasing a pair. At well
over $3000 per pair, that wasn’t a decision to be taken lightly, but it’s one he
hasn’t regretted.
Not long after the Twin6 Be review period, we got word that Focal was putting out
a new series of speakers called the CMS
line, designed for smaller rooms and smaller budgets. These still aren’t inexpensive
speakers by any means: the smaller CMS
50 streets for $1100 a pair, and the larger CMS 65 for $1700/pair. There are
many very good speakers available in this
price range, so I was eager to see how
much of the magic Focal accuracy was
delivered by the CMS speakers.
Specs
We evaluated the CMS 65, which offers
a 6.5" woofer with Polyglass cone and the
classic inverted-dome tweeter seen on other
Focal monitors (although this one’s made of
aluminum/magnesium alloy, not beryllium).
24
The small studio monitor grows up in a hurry
These are the manufacturer’s specs: It’s
biamplified, with 100 Watts RMS to the
woofer and 60 Watts RMS to the tweeter;
the speakers get plenty loud, with a 108 dB
peak SPL at 1 meter, and they are flat (±3
dB) from 28 kHz all the way down to 45 Hz.
Rear panel connections include a standard IEC power cable input, balanced
XLR input, and unbalanced input on RCA.
I missed having a 1/4" TRS or TS input,
considering how common such hookups
are in small studios, but a pair of highquality TRS-to-XLR cables won’t break your
budget if you can afford these speakers.
Rear panel controls include recessed
switches for input sensitivity, highpass filter, LF Shelving, HF Shelving, and
Desktop Notch. There’s also a hard-wired
power switch on the rear panel, with a
second “On/Standby” button on the front
panel to simplify powering up or down
once the speakers are installed. The
Volume knob is a recessed, rubberized
dial on the front fascia below the woofer
and above the large forward-firing port.
By comparison, the CMS 50 has a 5"
woofer, 80 Watts and 50 Watts RMS of
The second thing you’ll discover if you go
on trying to set up the speakers without
reading the manual is that, well, they won’t
stand up by themselves. The beautifully engineered, rounded cabinet has no flat surfaces, not even on the base! Focal provides
a rubber mat, a set of four rubber push-in
plugs with feet that insert into the holes on
the bottom of the cabinet (and mate with
cups on the surface of the mat), and a set of
two threaded metal plugs that can substitute
for either the front or rear feet so you can
angle the speakers slightly up or down.
Note that the mat is squishy enough to
hold the speakers steady even without
feet. Focal feels strongly enough about
having the tweeters at ear height that they
recommend horizontal placement, or
even putting the speakers upside down, if
that’s what it takes to aim the tweeters
properly at your ears.
So, once you’ve got them out of the
box, attached the feet and/or spikes, gotten them up on stands, and hooked up
power and audio, are you done? Not
quite. The beautiful coated-metal grilles
over the woofer and tweeter actually serve
RECORDING JULY 2009
© RECORDING - 07/2009 - REF: PRO0709CMS65FP17.PDF-2
Sélectionné par / Selected by Focal-JMlab - Tel. (+33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Fax: (+33) 04 77 37 65 87 - www.focal-fr.com
only one purpose: to protect the drivers
while you’re manhandling the CMS 65
into place. Once they’re up, use the supplied hook to gently pry the grilles off the
drivers and set them aside. Then pop on
the tiny plastic tweeter phase plug (the vertical piece of plastic seen in the photo),
and you’re ready to dial in your sound.
The CMS 65 is set up so that you can
optimize your sound to your room and
your preferred tone. (For example, Justin
Peacock set the Twin6 Be’s high-frequency
contour to –2 dB to force him to mix a little
brighter.) Set the input sensitivity to match
what your speaker or monitor controller
delivers: –10 dBV, 0 dB, or +4 dBu. The
highpass filter has a 12 dB/octave slope
and a corner frequency of 45, 60, or 90
Hz. Bypass it if you’re using the CMS 65
alone, or tailor it to match your subwoofer.
There are three built-in eq settings as
well. The LF Shelving (–4/–2/0/+2 dB,
corner frequency of 450 Hz) and HF
Shelving (–4/–2/0/+2 dB, corner frequency of 4500 Hz) work as expected to help
you control low-end buildup from placement near walls or corners or to tame highend peakiness. The third eq control,
though, offers an interesting added twist.
It’s called Desktop Notch, and offers
–6/–4/–2/0 dB, center frequency of 160
Hz and a Q of 2. The idea is to compensate for low-frequency buildup that comes
from the speakers’ sound bouncing up from
your mixer or desktop control surface.
As you can imagine, tweaking placement, angling, and eq/filter settings is a
fairly long process that requires a good bit
of care and fresh ears, but it makes a significant difference in the end. I strongly recommend taking that time as soon as possible, because once you hear these speakers, you’ll be tempted not to bother, considering how good they sound.
On test
My primary tests took place in
Subterranean Scumbarge Studios, my
personal tracking/composition room. I
set up the CMS 65 speakers in place
of my trusty Mackie HR824 monitors,
with a small adjustment for their different height, in the appropriate equilateral triangle arrangement above my
mixer.
Focal recommends a 20-hour burn-in
for these monitors. I let them run
overnight on bass-heavy program from
my iTunes collection, and the next day I
spent a couple of hours messing with the
eq settings to get what I felt was an optimal sound. In the end, I left them flat
aside from a –2 dB setting on the
Desktop Notch. I then went to work on
my own music, listening to tracks and
mixes I knew well.
Working with these speakers was a revelation. I produce pretty good mixes with
my big old Mackies—I like their extended
and relatively tight bass extension, and am
aware of the places where they hype or
scoop a little. They were a good value for
$1500/pair in 1999, and still sound good
ten years later. But when the Focals went up,
I experienced firsthand the uncompromising
nature of the Focal experience.
If I had to choose one word for these
speakers, it would be “merciless”. Is there a
tiny hum or crackle in one of your cables?
There it is, right in your face, screaming,
“You can’t ignore me any longer!” Is your
choice of eq for a drum loop wrong, making it tubby or indistinct? Splat, there it is,
grinding at you until you fix it. Incompletely
controlled plosives or sibilance on a vocal,
messy or indistinct panning in a mix, poor
choice of bass tone when mixed with the
drums—forget it. There’s nowhere to hide.
You will hate, hate, hate these speakers for
how hard they make you work.... and you
will love, love, love how they make your
music sound when you finally get it right.
I did some final listening tests at the
Recording offices, and had mixed feelings
about the results. The CMS 65 is not a
desktop-audio speaker, and I’m not sure
the CMS 50 would be either, even with its
slightly smaller size. It took some LF rolloff
to control buildup of bass from being near
the walls, and the CMS 65 was frankly
too much speaker for the room... not to
mention the fact that it was a poster-child
for the people who say, “If you listen to
MP3s on good speakers, heck yes you
can hear the difference!” I spent more
time noting tiny codec artifacts than enjoying the music. As I said: merciless.
So
These are not fun speakers, they are not
pretty speakers, they are not forgiving
speakers, and they are not cheap speakers.
They give you a taste (make that a very
strong shot) of Focal’s much-vaunted accuracy, and they make you work hard to clean
up your act and create music that works well
when played back anywhere from an iPod
to a car to a high-end home stereo system.
If that’s what you’re looking for—a speaker
that will partner with you to make your
music the best it can be—audition these
speakers, preferably with music you thought
was as good as it could get... and prepare
to be rocked back on your heels.
Price: CMS 65, $1700/pair (street);
CMS 50, $1100/pair (street)
More from: Focal Professional, 156
Lawrence Paquette Industrial Dr.,
Champlain, NY 12919. 800/6639352, www.focalprofessional.com.
RECORDING JULY 2009
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© RECORDING - 07/2009 - REF: PRO0709CMS65FP17.PDF-3
Sélectionné par / Selected by Focal-JMlab - Tel. (+33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Fax: (+33) 04 77 37 65 87 - www.focal-fr.com