Sound Review by Kzw

Disclaimer: Focus Audio has graciously provided us with this sample unit in exchange for an honest review. The views discussed below are a reflection of Project A3's thoughts surrounding the product. The sample has been run-in for at least 50 hours prior to reviewing in order to achieve an accurate representation of the product.

Introduction:

On first mention, the name “Focus Audio” doesn’t ring any bells, and that’s because it isn’t a prevalent name in the portable-audio industry. Through the launch of 3 IEM variants with distinct sound-signatures (Vocal, EDM and Rythm), Focus Audio is attempting to test the waters in the hyper-expansive IEM market filled to the brim with value propositions coming out from both East and West. Priced at $169 USD, the Focus Vocal is a reasonably priced product for a start-up.

Today, I’ll be reviewing the “Vocal” variant of their current line-up. Featuring a dual cavity looped dynamic driver, their debut IEM certainly carries both promise and potential. But, will the Vocal be able to distinguish itself as the finest that chi-fi has to offer?

Available for purchase at Taobao.

Specifications:

●        Sensitivity: 105dB

●        Impedance: 16 ohms

●        Driver Configuration: 10.2mm high energy magnetic tesla, double cavity moving coil   element

●        Frequency Range: 5 Hz- 40 kHz

●        Plug Type: 3.5 MM

●        Interface: 0.78mm 2-pin

●        Cable Length: 1.2 m

Gear Used & Tracklist:

Sony NW-A105 | Aune X1S | Periodic Audio Nickel (Ni) | Venture Electronics Odyssey | Google Pixel 2XL

Unboxing:

Unlike its chi-fi counterparts (in the sub $200 USD price range), the Focus Vocal comes packaged in a gorgeous cardboard box, with an outer-sleeve adorned with a high quality “cherry-blossom” print with the Focus logo (which looks like the sharp end of an arrow) centered above it. Upon first glance, one could easily mistake this offering to be substantially more expensive. 

Upon unsheathing its outer sleeve and lifting up its cardboard lid, you’ll be greeted by the IEM shells on the left-hand side, tightly hugged by the surrounding foam-insert. On the right, there’s an instruction manual written in English, detailing Focus Audio’s corporate goals in boilerplate form, what is to be expected in the box and after-sales service.

Below the top foam insert, lies its grey leather case with a magnetic lip and several eartips (S,M,L) in grey and white-silicon variants. The instruction manual doesn’t specify if the color-coded tips alter the sound-signature.

Lastly, the twisted 2-core cable can be found stuffed inside the interior of the grey leather case.

At $169 USD, you’d be hard-pressed to find any faults with what is included in the box. Overall, a complete offering from industry upstarts.

Fit:

The Focus Vocals carry a unique design language that I’ve never across in other chi-fi brands. Oftentimes, the universal adoption of hypo-allergenic acrylic shells while streamlined, lacks any visual flair or distinctiveness. The CNC hexagon-shaped shells with its bead-blasted, satin finish is sure to catch everyone’s attention. That, and the smooth lacquer on the knurled wood faceplates. I have to give praise where praise is due; Focus Audio has carved an aesthetic niche for themselves.

However, comfort trumps outer-appearances, and the Focus Vocal doesn’t fail to deliver in that area either. Its milled shells lie nicely on the outer ear canal. Despite its short nozzles/spouts, the Vocal achieves an excellent seal. The cables are incredibly supple and malleable. It barely retains memory and any kinks are easily unraveled with little to no conscious effort. Because of its flexible sheathing, the cable wraps around the outer ear, its weight barely noticed.

A good old violent head-shake test failed to displace the earphones from my ears. In addition, on my commute to the city, the Vocal’s isolate well enough despite the pinhole-sized vent next to the spout on each shell.

The Vocal’s are not a sight to behold, but the excelling shape and fitment of the Vocal’s make it a great long-listening companion.

Sound Sig:

The Focus Vocal is tuned to focus (no pun intended) on the midrange as the star of the show. The midrange is blanketed by a “warm” veil. Paired that with a sweet treble, and you have an earphone that allows vocals to breathe freely. 

Bass:

Mids:

As mentioned earlier, the midrange is its outstanding feature. Focusing on even-harmonics instead of the coarse and rough edges commonly associated with poorly mastered recordings, the Focus Vocals are forgiving and smooth in its presentation. Instead of incisively replicating what is ascertained to be “accurate”, the Vocals favours dynamism. Its midrange is sweet-sounding, with a slight emphasis on the upper-mids. There is no harsh edges; they taper off early to avoid on-set fatigue.

Vocals are placed at the forefront of the entire mix, being the centerpiece of the frequency response.

On the track, Dispossession by Algiers, the lead vocalist’s raspy voice is quickly smoothened out, masking the obvious imperfections and embellishments in his voice.

Highs:

The Focus Vocals carry ample sonic details. However, do not expect a high section that is overly extended. It has reasonable amounts of air and sparkle without sacrificing tonal balance across the frequency spectrum.

On Chasing Kites by Iamamiwhoami, Jonna Lee’s diffuse sounding voice remains well-extended alongside its throbbing bassline without being suppressed by its punchy low-end.

However, the Focus Vocals sound particularly exciting with several tracks. Beyond the upper-mids, the Focus Vocals starts to show off its capabilities with “My Queen is Harriet Tubman” by Sons of Kemet. The mix of soaring saxophones and booming tubas is easily presented by the Focus Vocals, with the lead saxophone carrying enough high-aggression and bite for it to sound faithful to its original timbre.

Treble:

The treble can be surmised as such; sweet yet detailed. It complements the goals that Focus Audio has set to achieve with this IEM. The “HD650” midrange and treble response makes it a remarkably smooth IEM without contravening on its ability to playback music with verve.

On Down on the Street by the Stooges, the dynamically compressed cymbals are notoriously sibilant. However, the Focus Vocals manage to quell the sharp-ringing effect that reverberates throughout the record without completely suppressing it.

Soundstage:

The soundstage on the Focus Vocals display decent horizontal width. Instruments and vocal placements are well spread out across a flat plane. However, the slightly clouded sub-bass does hamper its sound-staging abilities.

With Santa Esmeralda’s Please don’t let me misunderstood, the snappy interplay between the blaring electric guitars and wobbly basslines muddles the soundstage significantly. While the Focus Vocals do a good job in keeping up, everything starts to sound funneled.

Separation:

Like the soundstage, the same could be said about its imaging prowess; its well-separated on acoustic tracks, but it begins to sound conjoined when the music’s tempo is increased tenfold.

On Amanaguchi’s MEOW (a ridiculous, chiptune track), the enervating treble from the bit-crushed “meows”, led by a mishmash of video game backing tracks again, results in the Focus Vocal sounding alittle congested, making it noticeably harder to pin-point vocals and instruments.

Musicality:

The Focus Vocals are a smooth yet engaging listen, pairing well with acoustic tracks or songs rich in even-harmonic emphasis. Classical and acoustic guitar or female vocals in the soprano range make for a beautiful pairing with the Focus Vocals, which accentuates its characteristic strengths.

Comparison:

The Focus Vocal is a completely new product in the market. To put it in its paces, it is only fair that we selected a few popular chi-fi offerings with dynamic driver configurations for a fair, mono-e-mono battle.

We selected the Moondrop Kxxs and the Tipsy Dunmer; two crowd favorites in the portable-audio community. This is an all out chi-fi brawl.

Sound Conclusion:

The Focus Vocal is a product that reflects Focus Audio’s dedication to their craft. This is an impressive first showing from a fledgling brand with a promising future. While there is certainly room for improvement, I have nothing but high praise for Focus Audio’s design team; they’ve crafted a product that is positively differentiated from the rest of the market.

If the Vocal’s can achieve such a stunning fit and finish at this price point, there’s only telling what they could do if they released a flagship product in the near future. Focus Audio is one to look out for.

Aesthetic talk by Steve ( Focus Audio - Vocal   )

FOCUS Audio is a new company in the Chinese audio industry, I had a chat with their boss and it was interesting seeing that their brand concept seems to be a bit different from how the mainstream is developing especially in China.  Their debut series was 1 IEM separated into 3 different sound which they claimed as a  music genre-oriented system and the one we are looking into will be the Vocal one called FOCUS VOCAL in which is ideally tuned for vocal lovers.  In the following paragraphs, we will be talking about the Aesthetic side which I think it's pretty impressive for a new brand and truly deserves more attention in the near future.

Colour 

By having a quick glimpse at the VOCAL , I think it's a  pretty nice idea by using 2 different materials to form the whole appearance design, especially on the faceplate. However,  the Colour combination is a bit too much by using 3 colors for such a small product  (yellowish stabilized wood + champagne gold faceplate frame + silver bottom shell), which seems to be a bit weird especially on the faceplate frame and the bottom shell part. The Colour of the stabilized wood that they used is a relatively low profile one something more like the Swiss pearwood color tone. It might not for everyone as speaking of stabilized wood, many people from my experience are expecting something more vivid in hues like the purple-blue or the pink color tone instead. So far they used only 1 color option together with all 3 sound design concepts is a bit confusing for customer to define which is which, so I propose focus audio to review their color combination and could possibly produce  1 or 2 more color options in the future like how Final audio did on the B series with a glossy mirror finishing. The satin finish is nice on the current champagne gold but combining with the silver color, it somehow looks kinda raw though, so overall the idea is cool, but could be better and expansive.

Craftmanship

Judging by the sample that  I got, the built is pretty solid, no scratches, dents or paint chip wear off, almost no gaps between the faceplate and bottom shell, the QC process that they have seem to be quiet strict here. Weighting for a full metal built iem is reasonable, quiet an obvious reduction in weight compared with the IKKO OH10 and the MOONDROP KXXS  in which I would call them the heavy ones, also no fatigue for a long time listening as well.

Design details

The biggest thing that  I appreciated on the focus audio vocal is for a new brand they started off with  something, not the typical  CIEM type, insist to design their own shell, making the focus audio looks rather unique comparing with other new brands recently. However, the thing that bothers me or clients that I encounter before with kinera is that the usage of the stabilized wood. If you look at the photo above, you will see there's a slight unevenness in the pattern side by side. the left piece remains a relatively smooth pattern while the other one gives a more artistic wild pattern. this is the major problem of getting this wooden stuff because they get unique patterns due to the nature of wood grain, so it takes quite a bit of time for manufacturers to match all of them to look more even on each pair of iem especially with such a small piece of the faceplate. The recent release of the shozy 1.4 also used the stabilized wood as the faceplate and during the matching process, they did better in pairing the patterns to make the left and right piece look evener. Another minor disadvantage on the iem is that they don't have any signs or fonts for indicating the Left and Right piece. There are always people out there who don't know how to define which is left or right without signs....so for a better presentation, whether you are making a blind dot, a font or red /  blue color Signature, this is quite essential nowadays for mass production.

Silhouette

The overall silhouette is pretty smooth，rounded edge and unique, proportion looks neat and even,  surprisingly the fit is above average, it's a pity for some brands out there with a cool stylish design but poor ergonomic but this vocal fits pretty well in my ear while providing a satisfying degree of isolation as well.

Cable

The cable itself is good considering its price, softness is average, nothing really special here comparing with other competitors in the range. Generally meets the basic requirements of what customer are expecting. Little suggestion is as a brand that cares about much on the product image, they should start considering making their own design for plugs and splitters in advance for future use.

Packaging

The package design is more on the fashionable minimalist style, no commercial product photo or rendering on the cover, definitely not those akg Sennheiser commercial-style you'd normally see, IMO Since they've put much effort on the design of the iem, I think a more commercial package sleeve could assist them in selling and projects a better impression of what's inside the box. The inner presentation is nicely done, reminds me of the MOONDROP KXXS,  the case is also a decent add-on to the whole presentation, overall in the 199usd category range, the focus audio vocal is one of the better ones among all others brand in China and as a new brand, this is more than what I expect.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the focus audio vocal is undoubtedly a big challenger to the $199 USD category, from Sound to Aesthetic, our team thinks they have put much effort on balancing all the aspects to be a good product. And for this certain model, we believe they have successfully achieved what they are aiming for. On Aesthetic side, I m quite impressed by what they have came up  with in general especially for a new brand that still insists in creating their own design with such a decent fit is rarely seen on the market, there are tiny flaws here and there to be adjusted but overall we can see how passionate and confident they are with their product setup even with such numerous of new brands popping up nowadays . So if you are looking for something new and start getting bored with the hyped chi-fi brands out there, the Focus Vocal is one of our recommendations on the list and yet well worth the money in the $199 USD category. Hopefully, we will be seeing something exciting on the mid-tier to flagship coming out from them in the near future.

*All ratings are accurate as of the date of publication. Changes in price, newer models may affect Project A3's views on the performance and value of the reviewed product.