- Oh, ho ho!
Oh, bonjour, je m'appelle Adam.
Bienvenue au Short Circuit.
Where we're re--
The Focal Bathys or if you are French, the "Focal Bathys"
which is actually how they're pronounced
because they are a French company known
for making all sorts of wonderful
expensive audio equipment and this is their first attempt
at making it big in the truly wireless space.
And they've come in with the Bathys.
What is that?
Well, it was named after the bathysphere
which is a predecessor to the submarine
that basically just went down and up.
A lot of people died in it.
A lot of French people too because they were pretty popular.
Lots of scientists there.
And it's named after the Bathysphere
because they that it represents silence and being cut off
from the world because these are noise canceling headphones
with hi-fi sound and French design.
Take a look at the box you got here, home collection
your motorities collection and professional collection.
Cool, don't know what those mean.
Features.
Finally, active noise canceling, SBC, AAC, Qualcomm Apdex
and Apdex Adaptive, that's a little misleading.
SBC is the default Bluetooth codec for any sort of audio
and Apdex Adaptive is backwards compatible with Apdex.
So really it just has SBC, and SBC's not really
a feature, it just says AAC and Qualcomm Apdex.
We don't have LDAC which is a great high-fi
proprietary audio codec and apparently they
didn't want to pay Sony the licensing money,
which is too bad.
One thing interesting about these headphones is
that they have a USB DAC included.
A DAC is a digital analog converter
which takes a digital signal like the one
from your USBC port or your computer and converts it
into an analog signal so that it can be played
through speakers, back and forth.
They claim 30 hours
of battery life and speaker drivers handcrafted in France.
Opening the box right here we have the first steps.
There's a QR code to scan for a quick start guide
and a QR code to scan for an application.
So downloading the app.
These are the headphones in a, oh, nice case.
We'll get to that in a second and some paperwork.
Neat, this is a nice hard shell case.
The zipper feels good.
This is like just very premium.
It's also not too thick.
It's pretty good, which inspires confidence.
I hate when you have a travel focused headphone
that has a very thick case.
It kind of defeats the purpose.
Ooh, and look at those.
Those are just beautiful.
You got this kind of like spiraling
almost like fibonacci sequence kind of thing.
Coming out from the middle.
You have their logo right in the middle.
Inside we get a three pole headphone connector
so 3.5 millimeter so that means no microphone
in this and kind of a less than exceptional cable.
It is just made of like soft plastic
which is a little disappointing
from this brand and this price point.
I'd expect something a little bit more premium feeling
but as long as it's not like a loud cable
and there's no cable noise introduced, that's a-ok.
We also get a USBC to C cable.
Again, similar quality.
It looks like it's about the length.
I think they're both four feet.
I do appreciate the cable ties
so that makes it easy to keep things nice and neat
and I also like how they have this little section
for your cables that are relevant
to the headphones just to keep 'em right in there.
And I really like this.
There's a mesh pocket
at the top which allows me to store a bunch
of extra stuff and let's take a look at the headphones.
Again, as I said, I am just smitten with the design.
I think they're beautiful.
Very striking too.
The top is, I believe it's real leather.
This is almost like an alcantara
or something on the headband.
Very soft.
It's more of a firm kind of foam there.
It seems like it's gonna be very comfortable.
You have metal for the headband.
This feels like there's metal construction
on these hinges here.
Might just be plastic, but it's a nice firm feeling plastic
or it's plastic with like a metal.
They're not too heavy.
So I'd be surprised if there's too much metal in here.
Nice deep ear cups.
These ear cups are removable, which is great
'cause they're usually the first thing that goes
I believe they're also leather, real leather ear cups.
And inside you can see the drivers.
They're angled towards your ears
which typically tends to help with the sound stage.
So you can kind see how there's like a little lip
there's a little up here, but it's not totally flat.
Focal has this proprietary tech where they have
an M shaped speaker.
So basically it's like the cone goes like this
and then down in the middle as opposed
to just being a straight cone and they credit that to why
they have such a unique and distinct and incredible sound.
So they put those same kind of drivers in here.
These are similar drivers to what you'd find
on their high end audiophile headphones.
Speaking of which, high end.
So these are relatively cheap and when I say relatively
I mean relative to the rest of Focal's lineup.
These are $800.
This is a company that sells like $5,000 headphones
and even more expensive speakers.
So for anything this is, this is kind of mainstream
which means that it's not competing
in a similar space than what most shoppers are looking at.
This is competing against the Mark Levinson's number 5909
which is a thousand dollars headphone and the Bowers
and Wilkins PX8 which is like a $700 headphone.
You're competing with lots of audiophiles
which means I have very high expectations for one
audio quality, two ANC, and three usability.
If I'm spending this much money on a wireless headphone
something that's supposed to be about convenience
probably more so than audio, I need to make sure that
these companies need to nail it.
When you buy something
like AirPods Max Apple has such a great user experience
they have great noise canceling that you can forgive
the less than perfect audio that's on them,
they're not, don't worry.
AirPods Max users, you guys have good audio.
The headphones are ugly as (beep).
So you have to be able to compete with the heavy hitters
and the if I'm having a better experience
on my $400 Sony headphones or my $600 Apple headphones,
that's a problem.
Unless these sound somehow way more immaculately
better than other headphones.
But let's talk about the user experience.
On the headphones themselves
we have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack
a USB type C, a button.
There's no label.
This is for your voice assistant.
We have the off DAC and on setting.
So the DAC again is
for that USBC DAC that we talked about earlier.
We have volume up and volume
down as well as your multiuse button
so that'll be your pause play, skip ahead, skip back.
We also have a button on the left ear cup specifically
for controlling your noise canceling, which is great.
Having lots of physical buttons
makes things really easy to use.
I know what buttons I'm pressing
I know what they're gonna do.
It's a lot nicer than gestures
or many different combinations of taps.
You'll be using the DAC whether you are listening
through the USBC cable
or the three and a half millimeter jack.
One thing to note that is
that that means that these are active headphones
which means that they will be using battery.
Even when you're listening to the 3.5 millimeter jack.
I think they charge at the same time as you're listening
if you're using the USBC DAC, if they do die on you
it's just a 15 minute plug
for five hours of battery, which is great.
Love fast charging.
When you are using the 3.5 millimeter jack,
it's important to note that you cannot charge these
at the same time.
It doesn't matter if you have the USBC plugged
in and the headphone jack plugged in, you just
can't charge because it's using the active amplifier.
Oh, you can't use a microphone with the 3.5 millimeter jack
even the microphones that are included in here.
Why, because when you're listening through
the 3.5 millimeter jack
you can't be connected to another Bluetooth device.
Well, it would've been nice is
if they made this a four pole, a combo headphone
and microphone jack, but sadly they didn't.
This isn't the biggest problem
but it's a convenience thing.
And when you're paying this much money for something
I want every part of this experience to be smooth.
I don't wanna have to think about anything.
It should all just work.
And also I found virtually no difference between listening
to any of the inputs, whether it was Bluetooth, the DAC
or the 3.5 millimeter jack.
It was all sounding great.
Now let's turn them on.
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One thing I find that's really nice
about these is that these are really nice big ear cups.
So they go all the way around your ears.
They're very spacious, they're not the the deepest.
So if you have ears that stick out a lot to the sides
you might find them kind of uncomfortable.
I think they are amazing.
I've worn these just for hours and hours
at a time and have not had any issues with comfort.
I also haven't had had any issues with getting a good seal
which keeps the sound consistent
and the automatic noise canceling working well.
Like they articulate blah ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba and they
tilt ba-ba-ba-ba like they got everything you need
for a really comfy pair of headphones.
And because they're not too heavy, they're not exhausting
and like if you're moving around a lot
they stay on your head pretty well.
I mean doing that
you're gonna knock off any pair of headphones.
I wouldn't work out in these cuz they're way too expensive.
Could you imagine dropping
like a 20 pound weight on this thing?
You'd be very, very sad.
But feasibly, if you're like in a hustle
you're gonna be able to move.
The clamping force is great.
The foam on the side is plush.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful experience.
These guys have been doing it
for a long time in the luxury space
and you can tell everything that they've learned
over the many years they've been making luxury
products has been put into this and it's just
an impeccable feeling experience.
And that carries over to sound.
Full disclosure,
I've been listening to these for a little while.
I took them on a trip with me and then I left them
in another province, which was stressful
because they weren't mine and they are $800.
Luckily they made it here.
Shout out to my mom for getting them
in the mail and I have some thoughts about them.
They sound really, really freaking good.
These are very much tied to the Harman target curve.
What the heck does that mean?
The Harman target is a research based target curve
for how to tune your headphones.
So that's how loud they should be at any given frequency.
The Harman target will sound relatively neutral to 60%
of people and just sound good to like 90% of people.
And when we look
at the response curves that we got labs to do
we can see that this is a very accurate reproduction
of the Harman target.
On the y axis is a normalized volume.
So if you're playing a tone across the whole frequency
everything should and it's totally flat
you should see a very flat line.
That means that nowhere on the frequencies
whether it's 400 hertz or 1000 hertz
is anything louder than anything else.
We can see there's a base shelf
there's a pronounced increase in the base
then it follows with a dip in the mids
and then a spike kind of in the higher treble area.
And we fall off towards the really, really high notes.
So things like around like 16,000 kilohertz
and stuff that dips right off.
A lot of people can't hear those kind
of sounds because most people have hearing loss
from just existing.
And as you can see, this headphone
the orange line matches that curve very, very nicely.
There's a lot of wavering and stuff in the high end.
A lot of that is due to just the effects of high frequencies
and how they don't really go through stuff.
And because measuring those high frequencies
is kind of imprecise.
Now this doesn't mean
that this is gonna sound great to your ears.
This is based on headphones plugged
into a robot, specifically the headphones.com offices.
Shout out to headphones.com
for letting us use their head simulator
because ours hasn't come in yet.
We're gonna look back
at another graph later when we talk about noise canceling.
But let's just talk about how they sound to my ears.
They sound great.
They have a beautiful sound stage to me.
Things are located beautifully around me when I'm listening
to these headphones, especially for closed backs.
They have great base reproduction
and I think vocals really, really shine on this
especially some of the higher female vocals I listen to.
Think like singers in the higher range like Whitney Houston,
artists like St. Vincent who kind of earned
that like soprano like meso soprano kind of area.
Just wonderful.
It is really nothing I can fault about it.
Maybe it's a little laid back because
in the high end frequencies it's not quite so raised.
So to some people who are used to that
it might sound a little imprecise or warm.
To me.
Sounds right on the money.
In terms of noise canceling though, it's kind of mid.
It's not as good as the Sonys
it's not as good as the AirPods.
When you have the ANC on
you do hear a little bit of a noise floor increase.
So there's kind of a static that's always kind of playing.
However, they do an admirable job.
It blocks out sounds like on the airplane they were fine
blocked out a lot of the airplane noise.
You can see in this image
this is in comparison to the AirPods Pro.
Now I get that that's a pretty different set of headphones.
One, they're in ears.
The green line is the Focal Bathys
and the blue line is the AirPods Pro.
What you can see is that on the low end
these block out less noise.
The line, the line is closer to zero.
What we wanna see is maximum noise reduction.
And you can see really in the mids kind of
around the 1000 hertz area or lots of human voices are
we really do not do as well as the apple AirPods.
These tend to win out in the higher frequencies
because they're over ears because they're just bigger.
Higher frequencies are easily blocked
just by general mass.
So these having ear cups and
like plastic at the back and stuff
like that makes things cancel a lot easier in the high end.
So like your fricatives, you're talking about, like your S's
your T's, your (puffs out air),
all of those high pitched sounds like.
(hissing sounds with mouth)
So a little bit disappointing there
and just because of the price point these are at
but they probably are as good
as the Sennheiser momentum threes if you
if you want kind of like a baseline
if you know how those sound.
I've had some opinions from around the office saying
that these are a little bit lacking in bass.
Luckily you can fix that
with the equalizer that's in the app.
The app is called Focal and NAIM.
N A I M.
They're like another company that makes
like receivers and other digital audio products.
They've teamed up with Focal to create this app and it works
with some of their speakers and other things like that.
So in the app there are three main things you can adjust.
You can adjust the EQ, the noise cancellation and the LED.
The the LED's a good one.
I remember I took these
on a flight and when the cabin lights turned off
my girlfriend who was sitting beside me
she just stared at me like this.
She was like, because these things, they don't seem
that bright right now in the studio, but they're really
really bright in the dark room.
Luckily there's settings between dim and off.
They're not RGB though.
Noise cancellation.
You can choose between silent, soft and transparent.
There's no way to turn it completely off.
I wish that you could because sometimes I like to
be able to hear a little bit more
than even what soft will do
but I don't want to have transparency mode where
it's actively blasting noises into my ears.
If you didn't like the sound signature
you can fix it in the EQ.
Thankfully they include one.
However, it's just a five band EQ
which I think is not enough.
I would rather have eight or even twelve to really
be able to dial in exactly the sound that I want.
But some is better than none.
They come with a couple
of presets and you can customize your own preset.
You just drag them to where you want them to be.
You click save as new preset, type it in.
Badabing, badaboom, (making noises with mouth).
So the app is very bare bones.
You can configure your voice assistant,
auto standby settings.
Whether or not you want that to happen, you do want it.
You, you're gonna forget to hit this switch sometimes.
You want auto standby to be a thing.
It gets the job done.
One interesting thing is that if you set the EQ in the app
it adjusts the EQ
of the headphones no matter where you're listening to them.
So say I go, I set the EQ to loudness and then I disconnect
from this phone and go listen somewhere else.
Those EQ settings will actually be maintained
which is great because then you know how it's gonna sound
with any device, you can dial it in exactly how you want it
and it's stored on the headphones.
That's a great feature.
I don't need to be like, oh, it sounds amazing
on my Android phone where I have my dialed in EQ but
like garbage on my Windows device where I don't have an EQ
or on my Apple device where there's no system wide EQ Apple.
Just let me ha-- just, just make one.
At the end of the day,
where does that leave us with the Focal?
With the Focal Bathys, they're very expensive.
They're out of the price range of most people.
Lots of people can buy cars for $800.
Not good cars mind you, but cars,
which makes these hard to recommend.
However, these are a truly high-fi pair of headphones and
if you're in the market for something that's high fidelity
and versatile and you don't mind traveling
with $800 of merchandise on your head at any given moment
these are an excellent solution, especially
if you're not in need of massive amounts of noise canceling.
But if you're everyone else, consider something
like the $400 Sony XM5's.
Those have solid sound, better noise canceling.
And Sony has years of experience in the market
making high quality headphones.
They also have a better app in my opinion.
Or you could go with the Sennheiser Momentum 4's for $350,
which will give you a sound signature that's closer
to these, but at less than half the price.
I know that those are completely different price
categories, but you are really getting 80 to
90% of the performance of these at like half the price.
But if you want the best of the best
this is not a bad place to start.
And if you want the best of the best YouTube content
get subscribed to Short Circuit where we talk
about tech all the time, always and forever.
And check out a video
about another expensive pair of headphones
like the Master and Dynamic MW75s, 65s?
I don't know, I still use those at my desk.
I think they sound pretty okay.
Also very expensive.
- [Offscreen Man] Wait, you still have those?
I do.