St Etienne-based speaker manufacturer Focal-JMlab is an ambitious company, winning accolades for technologically advanced speaker cones and stretching the imagination in speaker box design.
Jacques Mahul (the JM in JMlab) has formed a joint venture with local distributor Shun Woo, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special, limited-edition Micro Utopia Beryllium speaker.
Beryllium (Be) is a remarkable material for high-frequency domes. It is one of the lowest-density metals, has a very high rigidity and can support high frequencies. Focal-JMlab claims it covers a range of 2kHz to 40kHz, so this is basically a tweeter and supertweeter in one.
The mid/bass driver on this Micro Utopia is also a development. The cone, a sandwich of woven glass tissues on a foam core, is said to have superior stiffness and control of internal damping.
There is no option for bi-wiring, the logic being that the designer has more control over the eventual sound of the speaker.
Focal-JMlab products take a lot of running in before providing peak performance, and audiophiles can expect to play them for at least 400 hours before they start producing the sweet sounds they're famous for.