FOCAL: Red alert !!! FOCAL: Red alert !!! - FOCAL: Red alert !!!

[phase_accurate]

To all your focal fans out there:

According to the editorial of the German mag "Klang & Ton" Focal will cease to deliver raw drivers to DIYers and small manufacturers.
Only delivery for orders placed until end of July could be guaranteed. After that date only repair exchange will still be available.

This statement was due to a letter that they received from Focal. I did however not find any info about that on their homepage: www.focal.tm.fr

regards

Charles

[Geenius]

I have heard the same information from the dutch distributor, so that means this week is the last possibility to order Focal drivers ever!

[amo]

This was in one of the US HiFi mags as well. You could almost see it coming - they were so overprotective of their production-used drivers, and insisted over and over how different they were from the DIY stuff.

[phase_accurate]

I think it is the same attitude as with Dynaudio. If one part of your business has a decreasing gain/cost ratio you simply drop it.

Another similarity to Dynaudio: Focal's car driver line will still be available.

Regards

Charles

[BobEllis]

this has been discussed here before, IIRC, but for sure it has been beaten to death on the bass list (diyspeakers.net)

Focal will still sell to large distributors who will provide diy support. The drivers will be available, but the distributor will have to buy in OEM quantities. This means only the most popular drivers are likely to be available to the DIY community, but at least we'll have some. Search teh bas list archives for more detail.

[phase_accurate]

As far as I understood it they will discontinue the production of many driver types.

Regards

Charles

[ekaerin]

Yeah,
That really sucks. I have made nice things with both Dynaudio and Focal.
If there is a place to save money it is on DIY high-end speakers, and of
course Dunaudio for example makes more money in selling complete products.

However, Norwegian SEAS makes nice stuff. I have just completed
a nice little 2 way (attached pic) and I have a prototype on a smaller
one that begins to sound really nice.

The world is getting more commercialized and uniform.

/ Mattias

[phase_accurate]

One of the causes you can't get Dynaudio drivers for DIY anymore is a Swedish company: Volvo !!!!

They buy quite large quantities of drivers from them which has a better ratio of gain/effort than selling very small quantities to DIYers.

OTOH I don't understand why one uses high-end drivers in a low-end encvironment like a car !

Regards

Charles

[ekaerin]

Yes that is a good question.
I wouldn't even dream of putting anything like that in my car.
But I bet if you rip one out of a Volvo car it doesn't look like the
ones we used to see.

/ Mattias

[Leeuwarden]

Originally posted by phase_accurate
One of the causes you can't get Dynaudio drivers for DIY anymore is a Swedish company: Volvo !!!!


Regards

Charles

Dynaudio drivers are for sale over here in the Netherlands. They have been for sale in the Netherlands for many years by Remo (www.remo.nl)
Other stores in the Netherlands have started selling Dynaudio drivers since a couple of months now.