Here’s my original post from earlier in another thread "Well, that was short-lived. Mine arrived today and the right driver is DOA. No sound whatsoever, yes I tried both cables, multiple sources, A/B with all my other known good headphones. The headband makes an awful scraping / clicking / popping noise intermittently when adjusting it as well. Overall I’m extremely disappointed in the build quality.
I bet Massdrop / Drop is not getting good QC due to shopping a price point, Focal is likely slapping these together and out the door with zero testing or QA / QC.
I doubt I will try another pair. I’ll send my money to a US builder such as Audeze. At this level build quality matters, and these don’t have it. They’re floppy loose, noisy (mechanically) and a dead driver straight out of the box. Focal fail."
My question now is do I give them another shot, waiting who knows how long for them to ship another pair, or get a refund and try something else?
No, the right side never made a sound at all. Not for a nanosecond. That said, what I can hear from the left side is very bright for my tastes. I had to turn the volume down significantly from where I run the 58X due to it sounding bright. I know I can’t begin to judge them without hearing a properly-working pair, but it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have went toward a darker unit afterall.
Well I would say they have a more accurate treble then the 58x, but it might be brighter at first. You could go with a darker headphone in that price range, but for technicalities, I would say it would be hard to beat the elex in it’s price range if you are after that
I had a working pair of Elex (Elexes?) for a week before I had a painful pop in the right driver, after which they didn’t play at even half the volume of the left. The sound was muffled and had a lot of static. I was able to return them and have had zero issues with the second set. That doesn’t mean you’ll like them, but they are one of my favorite headphones. Keep in mind that Audezes are known to have drivers just fail as well, so making the switch won’t 100% guarantee a quality improvement
I got mine back in May. I loved them until the driver crapped out on me, and have had zero issues with the replacement. The only noise the headband makes on mine is when the cups snap back into their natural orientation, so maybe there are issues with the latest batch. I own the Clears as well, and I think the build quality is really similar despite the price difference
I’ve taken apart a broken pair with the driver issue and it was a result of the small piece of the driver coil being completely burnt out that makes the connection from the main coil body to the first small pcb. Seems unrepairable to me without replacing the whole driver unit.
Meh I’m gonna try LCD 1s for nearly half the cost. Go search the discussion section on drop and you see way too many of these QC issues and dead drivers specifically.
I also picked up the iBasso DX160 to try. Just 100 more for both of these items than the Focal cost.
The LCD actually come with a signed QC / Warranty card so they’re testing each one before it leaves. Merica.
