The Focal Diva Utopia speakers will raise your musical standards
These reassuringly hefty Focal Diva Utopia active speakers are the first from the French hi-fi brand
Ask AI what a diva utopia looks like and it’ll probably spit out an image of Elton John surrounded by perfectly chilled pink champagne, a dozen white kittens, and an unlimited supply of strawberry-scented toilet paper. But Focal has other ideas.
Focal’s Diva Utopia looks like a pair of active Wi-Fi speakers that stand slightly taller than R2-D2 (the biggest robotic diva in the galaxy) but should make much sweeter music. There are nine A/B amps inside each speaker, with 75W dedicated to the 27mm tweeter, another 75W for the 16.5cm midrange driver, and 250W for the four 16.5cm woofers. That’s a total of 800W, which will easily fill any climate-controlled room (a pleasant 21.6º at all times, please).
Spotify Connect, AirPlay, Google Cast, Tidal Connect and Bluetooth 5.3 are all onboard to please even the most demanding streaming fan, but you get plenty of physical connections as well, with optical, USB, RCA and HDMI eARC sockets allowing you to connect everything from turntables and TVs to NAS drives. You can control it all via app, remote or your phone’s voice assistant – or just get your £9500-a-year PA to do it for you.
The two 32kg speakers communicate with each other using Ultra Wideband tech, which means they can play your tunes wirelessly at 96kHz/24bit, or 192kHz/24bit if you’re willing to lower your aesthetic standards and connect them together with the supplied RJ45 cable.
At £29,999 a pair you’ll need a salary equivalent to Elton’s monthly flower budget to afford them, but with just this grey felt finish to choose from they’ll be nowhere near as colourful.
Tom Wiggins
Contributor