Focal offers the perfect movies and music mix with new Chora speakers for Dolby Atmos®

It is CES time and Focal have some super duper new DOLBY ATMOS speakers that Dolby themselves are using in their show room. read on…

CES, Las Vegas – Monday 6th January – French speaker specialist, Focal, has added three new models to its recently launched Chora range, including its first Dolby Atmos® designs. Made in France, the Chora 826-D, Chora Centre and Chora Surround combine design, technology and performance for a genuine home cinema experience – plus excellent musicality – at great prices. The new Sub 600p subwoofer completes the launch line-up.

Chora 826-D is the new reference product for the range. For the first time, Focal has incorporated Dolby Atmos® technology in a floorstanding loudspeaker: a speaker driver installed above the loudspeaker directs the sound towards the ceiling at a carefully calculated angle, so that the audio signal is reflected around the entire room. The result has the listener wrapped in the sound and immersed in a highly realistic 3D world.

With the Chora Center – available with an optional stand, but also at home on an AV unit – voices and dialogue are reproduced with exceptional clarity and remarkable precision. Chora Surround, which can be easily wall-mounted, is ideal for rear- and side-channel action, bringing everything from movie action scenes to music concert performances to life.  Focal engineers have brought extra bass to the party with the 600-watt Sub 600P, a 600-watt subwoofer.

Slatefiber technology

All Chora loudspeakers incorporate speaker drivers with a Slatefiber cone. Designed and made in France in Focal’s workshops using cutting-edge equipment, this composite cone combines thermoplastic polymer with recycled non-woven carbon fibres. The result is the optimal balance between damping, rigidity and lightness. The sound rendering is characterised by incredible richness, balance and dynamics.

This Slatefiber technology is combined with the Aluminium/Magnesium TNF tweeter, another exclusive technology included in the range to provide silky trebles and increasingly optimised sound spatialisation. The Sub 600P, meanwhile, features a Polyflex cone, heavier and more rigid to offer bass with impact and create an authentic Home Cinema experience.

The Focal signature is not just apparent in the technologies and the quality of French manufacturing, but also in the choice of design and finishes. Chora loudspeakers offer modern shapes and finishes (Black, Light Wood and Dark Wood), complemented by the slate effect of their Slatefiber cones, that suit contemporary homes.

Suggested retail pricing is TBC but will fit with the positioning of the wider Chora range, which launched last year and is available now from £600-£1299.

Full tech specs of the new models, plus lifestyle and product pictures, can be found at: http://bit.ly/FocalCES20

Technology backgrounders

FOCAL SLATEFIBER

After more than four years of Research & Development, in 2019 Focal unveiled a new exclusive technology: the Slatefiber cone. Manufactured in France in Focal’s workshops, this composite cone is built from recycled non-woven carbon fibres –Focal being the first audio brand to use these fibres for a speaker driver cone– and thermoplastic polymer.

These two materials combined, along with the lightness of carbon fibres, result in excellent acoustic performance both in terms of sound velocity and rigidity, damping and lightness, the ‘essentials’ of a good speaker driver. The defining features of this cone are therefore its dynamic, rich and highly balanced sound, particularly in the midranges, in addition to a specific aesthetic in the products with its unique “slate” effect.

DOLBY ATMOS®

Loudspeakers featuring Dolby Atmos® technology are called ‘enabled speakers’. In addition to their hi-fi speaker drivers on the front, they incorporate a specific speaker driver on the top. This speaker driver directs sound towards the ceiling at a carefully calculated angle so that the sound signal is reflected around the entire listening room. This creates a real impression that the sound is coming simultaneously from the front, back and sides, but also from above.

In addition, Dolby Atmos® technology isolates each sound from the original soundtrack and mix as an independent audio object. Imagine a scene in a house: you hear conservations, but also the sound of footsteps and cutlery in the next room, the sounds coming from an open window, all spatialised in three dimensions, as though you were there… Dolby Atmos® will reveal its power in the scenes where the effects are vertical: a plane zooming overhead, a storm rolling over, wind gusts, etc. With this technology, the emotion of the cinema is recreated in your home.