Review: Focal CMS65 & CMS50

If neutral-sounding, balanced and unflattering nearfield monitors are on your radar at the moment, either for full-time or part-time listening work, a speaker well worth checking out is the new Focal CMS65 – it’s French for “Quality Nearfield”. Designed and manufactured in Saint Etienne, France, this nuggety little, front-ported, two-way active speaker is comprised of a 61/2-inch ‘Polyglass’ driver (as Focal describes it) and an inverted dome aluminum/magnesium tweeter, all wrapped in an elegant charcoal black powder-coated, die-cast aluminum enclosure.

It’s a modest looking speaker with an impressive overall tone, characterised by, well… nothing in particular. For its size and price the tonal balance of the CMS65 is superb, illustrating once again how speaker design worldwide seems unquestionably on the up and up. Technological advances in component manufacturing and testing, and computer-assisted die-cast cabinet modelling have virtually eliminated the simple plywood box from cutting-edge design. This form of speaker construction is now the preserve of ‘experts’ in teenage woodwork class.

Weighing a solid 10.5kg, the Focal CMS65 is the larger of two models recently released by the French speaker manufacturer, the other being the smaller CMS50, which sports a five-inch main driver (see box item for a brief outline of the CMS50’s specs and performance). Designed to cater to the middle ground of the project studio market – and I dare say many a professional studio – the CMS65 in particular, offers a sweet midrange with impressively detailed imaging and a top-end that – according to the published specifications – goes out to frequencies that will have your pets joining you for mixing sessions. It is claimed the speakers drop by only 3dB at an impressively supersonic 28kHz – a compelling spec indeed. The bottom end also stretches the overall width of the listening band, this time down to 45Hz at –3dB. Yet neither of these statistics seems to have produced a sonic imbalance in the speaker; the overall tone of the 65s remaining well controlled and modest in its intention. There are no overbearing super sparkling highs or expansive bass frequencies pushing the limitations of the cones, amps and cabinets as they try too hard to win your favour. The CMS65s just sit there, providing an unflattering, almost nonchalant soundstage that’s perfect for critical listening environments where the source material is the priority, not the speaker.

Focal has gained quite a reputation in Australia in recent years, quietly infiltrating professional mix rooms and bedroom studios in almost equal measure. Having listened to them for some time now, I can finally see why owners of these speakers seem so loyal to the brand, and yet coy about their performance. Owners seem strangely determined to keep the abilities of these speakers secret, as if to maintain an edge over their competition. Focal itself has been manufacturing speaker components for other companies with great success for many a long year, as well as producing more expensive nearfields under its own banner. It’s done this with seemingly little fanfare – well certainly none that I’ve been aware of – but that seems certain to change. The overall design package of the CMS65 is a mature and refined one.

LES COMPOSANTS (THE COMPONENTS)

Physically, the Focal CMS65s stand approximately 141/2 inches tall, spread 91/2 inches wide and nine inches deep. I say ‘approximately’ because the speakers can also be adjusted slightly in both height and angle by a novel combination of a simple rubber mat and plastic ‘legs’. These small legs simply push into holes on the underside of the aluminium base-plate and project downwards into the rubber mat below in a ball-&-socket type arrangement, de-coupling the speakers from whatever they’re resting on. The mat itself features four small raised mounds that accommodate the feet, but should you wish to adjust the speaker’s angle of projection, two additional metal screw-in legs (which are essentially just small bolts with curved hemispherical ‘feet’) are also supplied. These screw into the underside of the cabinets and lock off with a circular nut to ensure the speakers remain at the angle you set.

The main driver in the CMS65 is comprised of a thin 61/2-inch cellulose pulp cone coated in an equally thin layer of glass. The combination of these two materials produces an exceptionally rigid and therefore well-defined, low-distortion driver. Focal claims this composite material offers greater rigidity than Kevlar, and while this can’t be necessarily tested without removing the drivers and physically manhandling them, they certainly provide clarity and impressively low levels of distortion.

The tweeter, as mentioned earlier, is an ‘inverted dome’ design (that looks like a tiny LF driver), which quite literally means the dome is ‘inside out’ compared with conventional forward-protruding tweeters. According to Focal, this is the best way of achieving “optimum movement” of the tweeter. Irrespective of whether this is true, the top-end detail of the CMS65 is most impressive. Tambourines, metal drums and other transient instruments are represented with a speed and fidelity that’s a perfect match for modern digital waveforms (well almost). And although metal domes get a bad wrap in some circles, these tweeters arguably prove that it’s not just the particulars of a material that makes for a certain sound, it’s the way a material is deployed by the designer that makes all the difference. A curious final point about these tweeters: like the LF driver, the tweeter is covered by a protective metal grille that can be removed (with some trepidation, it must be said) with the aid of a hook – that looks like the pin off a grenade – and replaced by what Focal describes as a “phase plug” that fits into the recess by “pushing on the suburbs”. Is this a French translation issue or am I missing something here?

AUTRES CHARACTÉRISTIQUES (OTHER FEATURES)

The Focal CMS65 is powered by two Class-AB amplifiers. The LF driver receives 100W of power while the tweeter is fed 60W, producing a maximum SPL of 108dB at one metre. On the front of the speaker there are two controls to manipulate volume: on the left is an elegant standby (mute) soft-switch with an associated LED (green for ‘on’ and red for ‘standby’); while on the right is a somewhat larger flat-disc attenuator. Full counter-clockwise rotation of this dial turns the speaker off, while full clockwise rotation restores it to maximum gain (0dB), with no meaningful marks or steps in between, which makes me question its value and accuracy. Alongside this volume control is a clip indicator that warns the user of an overdriven signal.

On the rear panel, balanced and unbalanced inputs are provided via XLR and RCA respectively. And in a trend that seems wholly unstoppable at this juncture, the CMS65 also features five small flathead-screwdriver-adjustable controls for ‘customising’ your speaker to suit its position in the room. Input sensitivity can be selected using a three-position switch; a high-pass filter offers attenuation with a 12dB per-octave slope at 45, 60, and 90Hz; a low-frequency shelf kicks off at 450Hz, allowing settings of +2, flat, –2 and –4dB; a ‘desktop’ notch filter counteracts the hump created by your work surface with a bell filter of –2, –4, or –6dB centered around 160Hz (with a ‘Q’ of two); and finally, a high-frequency shelving EQ kicks off at 4.5kHz and offers +2, flat, –2, and –4dB adjustment. But since these speakers sounded so well balanced in my room, I had no cause to adjust any of these controls at any stage, save to test them to ensure they worked and weren’t too difficult to manipulate (which they weren’t).

The Focal CMS65s are an impressive mid-sized and mid-priced monitor. The level of detail and frequency response is, by rights, not something they should be capable of, but capable they indeed are. Their detail and accuracy combines with a sweet overall tone that instills trust in their response. They don’t sound flattering of audio signals, but nor are they mean spirited and difficult to work with, á la the “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen” NS10. If something sounds beautiful, the Focals are more than capable of reproducing this beauty. Feed them a mangled mess of signals, on the other hand, and they’ll portray the full horror story. And that’s exactly what we want from a professional nearfield monitor, isn’t it?