Try Bladerunner 2049, main theme or mesa. Both sound good to me on my Sundaras, but I have not heard on an Elex.
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Maybe thatās my problemā¦ I am 49 years behind!
Hee hee hee! Good one! 
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Is this sound similar to when dynamic headphones get too much bass and have that housing rattle? If so, that would make sense with dynamic drivers having more distortion, and the focal drivers being the size they are, with all that slam.
No thatās not the case with the Elex. The driver itself actual clips and makes a clipping noise. Honestly though, you wonāt notice it with like 90% of music. The Elegia do not have this issue but they sound worse overall compared to the Elex.
I donāt think itās quite the same as that. But regardless, clipping shouldnāt be an issue unless you boost the bass and listen to bass heavy music at highish volumes. I ran into the issue on my clear while listening to certain EDM songs with ifi bass boost on.
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@LANDWALKER000 @marcgii: Okay itās the actual driver, and not to do with the housingā¦got it. I listen to music in the upper 60ās to lower 70ās in dbās so I aināt gotta worry about a 85db clip.
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My Elex had a very noticeable channel imbalance. Iām really late in replying to you, but drop will send you a replacementā¦
Well I woke up to the sight of this video today. Channel imbalance issues galore:
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I donāt know that there are channel imbalances āgalore.ā My pair will be a year old next month and I have had no issues. I think that there will always be small percentage of any product that fails and that those who get them basically scream about it anywhere they can online and inflate the issue. I just think that Oluv got very unlucky with his pairs. I bet if we could see the failure rate of the Elex that it would be somewhere in the single digits.
Okay sure āgaloreā was the wrong term I guess. But manufacturing can always change. Oluv (and the friend he mentioned in the video) just reported 3/3 Elexs they received had channel imbalance issues. Even if thatās anecdotal, thatās a noteworthy rate that Iām just reporting.
Iām more worth mentioning to folks like @NoName and @luige06 or whoever else had similar experiences in this thread.
For someone who canāt really tell the difference between headphones driven off an iphone vs off multiple different headphone amps, I donāt know if I would trust them to accurately identify channel imbalance lol. Anyways lol the elex does have this known issue in some batches
Well he did show a measurement graph in the video. Thatās definitely an imbalance if Iāve ever seen one.
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For me it was always noticable but I thought I was crazy. One day was listing to a mono track and it just became too painful so I contacted Drop and even though Iād had it for a while they let me have a refund and I moved on. Thereās still a part of me that wonders if the slight channel imbalance added to the experience of 3D sound I got from the Elex though.
I still havenāt ever finished getting all the way through EQing my pair, but I pretty much got up to 8k hertz and found that it wasnāt really an issue anymore once I adopted not striving for perfection on EQing it and instead just went for āgood enoughā. I also just EQed by the graph instead of purely the numbers this time. I was being way too meticulous last time and that ended up hurting me.
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Hi. How would the Elegia compare to these for someone hunting in this price range but concerned about the QC (and import costs) of the Elex?
One AV shop mentioned that Focals are the most RMAād headphones for warranty service out of the ones that they sell (many of the notable brands that you typically see)ā¦ and that they are the best-selling headphone brand there as well. Take that for what you will.
My few months old Focal Elegia is still going strongā¦ with barely any use (thinking of selling them after the current stock is sold out).
@murphtones
For the Elegiaās, I donāt really see as many complaints of out-of-the-box QC issues as I do with Elexās, the latter of which seems to be Focalās shit job of securing the voice coil next to the solder pad:
It seems that the voice coil of the Elexās is not properly secured, which means any changes in tension may cause the voice coil to snap = dead driver.
Hi all. I got my Focal Elex from Drop more than a week ago. Iām trying so hard to like these headphones so as to not return or exchange them. I love these headphones, the sound, detail, etc, but unfortunately thereās a treble peak somewhere, and for the past few days, itās given me slight headaches. Today after 20min I couldnāt wear them anymore. Too bad as I love them. Now, Metal571 said thereās lots of variance on these, so, does that involve the treble peak issue as well? Would it make a difference if I exchange them, or should I just return them once and for all?
Picking up from where this left off on your original threadā¦
If youāre using the Exlcusive mode with the Qobuz app it will bypass any Windows equalization (like Equalizer APO). The Qobuz desktop app does have an option to not be in exclusive mode, IIRC. If you disable that then Equalizer APO should work.
It also may not be the sound but the pressure. Even if you donāt feel the pain, the clamp might be pusing on a sensitive spot for you. I donāt know how likely this one is, but I suppose itās possible.
Thereās a bug in the Exclusive mode of the Windows Qobuz app it selects the sampling rate of the next queued song instead of the currently playing one.