Focal Aria 905 standmount loudspeaker

I have not always found Focal’s more affordable models to be entirely to my liking. This is partly because metal tweeters are rarely that smooth, and because Focal’s inverted domes seem a little obvious in budget packages. The Utopia range reveals that the French company’s approach works extremely well when executed to the highest standards, so it’s just the compromises that affordability brings were not right for me. But the flax-coned Aria range seems to have changed things in a very positive way. I’ve heard the bigger models sounding very convincing in demonstrations, and getting the entry level bookshelf onto my stands has proved that with this technology, Focal is making truly inspiring, yet affordable loudspeakers.

The 905 is the smallest member of the Aria 900 family, but it combines the glass top, leatherette baffle, and glossy side panels found throughout the range. A slick finish in other words, and one that makes this speaker stand out among the imitation veneers and paint finishes of its competition. But, it’s the main driver that’s the most distinctive element: this is made not of polyproplylene, aluminium, or doped paper as is found on all the alternatives, but flax, or hemp. This material appealed to Focal’s engineers because it has a tubular structure that makes it inherently light and stiff when sandwiched between glass fibre skins in the Focal style. Its other advantage is that it’s self damping; it does not ring because its structure is organic and thus not totally even. Naturally, Focal uses French flax fibre in its drivers and makes these in house at its facility in Lyon, the latter being quite an achievement given European manufacturing costs.

The tweeter is the latest version of Focal’s aluminium/magnesium inverted dome; a combination of metals that was engineered to maximise stiffness to weight, and inverted because the French like to do things differently! The inverted dome is an approach that has found favour among many high profile brands like Wilson Audio, however. Where this particular Al/Mg tweeter differs from those used in earlier ranges is that it has a Poron surround. This material was developed for the Beryllium tweeter of the Utopia range and results in significantly lower measured distortion through the midband compared to conventional rubber surrounds. I suspect that this has as much to do with the success of this loudspeaker as the flax cone, because it allows the tweeter to operate in a more linear fashion at the point where our ears are most sensitive.

The main driver on the 905 has a 130mm cone in a cast aluminium basket, which sits in a front ported enclosure that stands just over 32cm tall. It has a keyhole on the back for wall mounting and, as ever with Focal, just the one pair of cable terminals. I suspect that multiple cable terminals are, like the spike, an idea whose time is passing. You really don’t need multiple runs of cable unless you are a cable manufacturer, for everyone else they muck up phase and make a mess in the room. The tweeter is surrounded by a urethane waveguide, a more absorbent surface than is usually found and one that is claimed to improve imaging. It’s not a million miles from the felt rings used by some speaker makers of yore.

The side cheeks can be high gloss black or faux walnut and the Aria 905 is supplied with magnetic grilles for those not drawn to the distinctive look of flax. The specs suggest a manageable 89dB sensitivity allied to a minimum impedance of four Ohms, so in theory at least you don’t need much power to drive this speaker. But quality and quantity are different things; this is a revealing loudspeaker and the better the amplification the better it sounds. I used the 905 with a number of amplifiers and on each occasion the speaker reflected what it was being fed with uncanny ease.

At heart this is a very good two-way. It has a rightness of timing and coherence that can only be achieved with a near minimum of drive units, and it combines this with a lack of coloration that means you rarely think about the speaker. I put the Aria 905 on 60cm stands, placed them with a 40cm gap to the back wall, hooked up the Townshend Isolda DCT cable and pressed play. The result was positively entrancing for such an affordable loudspeaker, Brendel’s The Complete Beethoven Sonatas [Philips] provided the melody and the speaker made a fine job of the dynamics while revealing the finesse of the player’s timing. Switching to 2L’s recording of Mozart Violin concerto in D major [Marianne Thorsen, Trondheim Solistene] I was struck by how even-handed this speaker is, and how natural the violin sounded, almost as if the naturalness of the cone material is better suited to fine acoustic instruments than man made alternatives. With more bass heavy material from Patricia Barber [‘Constantinople’ from Modern Cool, Premonition], where the double bass is bowed, you get no sense of a reflex port in action. The sound is not subtly thickened as is so often the case, yet it has extension and power. Having used transmission line speakers for so long, I find that ports are very often obvious with some material, undermining the transparency and speed of the overall result, but that is not the case here. I really like the drive that these speakers deliver; it’s greater than you expect for the size, but not perhaps the sensitivity mentioned earlier.

The above results were achieved with the slightly unbalanced combination of Trilogy’s 908 preamp and 992 monoblock power amps; lovely amps, but rather pricey for this speaker. Rega’s Elex-R (£898) integrated is a more sensible partner in budget terms and produces a coarser result by comparison, but before you get used to its balance, you are swept away by the pace that it produces with the Focal. The bass is still well extended and the sound escapes the boxes well, but it’s the voice that grabs you; the combination of integrity of timing and coherence of image makes for very convincing singers indeed. I was however drawn back to the classical repertoire, this time Schubert’s Trout Quintet [Alfred Brendel with the Forellenquintett, Philips]. This revealed the timbre of the cello which is normally masked by the rest of the instruments, perhaps an indication of a slight hump in the response but also of a lack of cabinet coloration which can have a similar effect. Either way, it resulted in a delightful performance that revealed the interplay between musicians in the context of decent image scale and dynamics.

The bouncing beat of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ [Althia & Donna, Virgin] proved to be a little more box-bound, but timing remains tight given the amount of energy being produced. Yello’s ‘The Expert’ [Touch, Polydor] has a similar effect thanks to its low-end antics, but again the sound remains nimble and well extended. The image is not as big as it can be, but it’s big enough and once again there is no hint of port character in the bass. In fact, the speaker remains highly articulate across the board. Some bass lines reveal the inevitable limitations that a small enclosure tends to have; low bass guitar notes can lack differentiation, but at this price there is going to be some compromise. On the plus side, the smaller box is easier to make stiff at the important frequencies, which means it’s less likely to join in and smear the timing, or the voice.

The highlight of this particular review came when I put on a bit of a hi-fi dem track, John Campbell’s ‘Down in the Hole’ [Howlin Mercy, Elektra], something that you hear too often at shows because it’s a very good recording albeit of seemingly yawnsome music. But in the Focal’s hands, it brought forth a genuinely spine-tingling moment, this induced by the harmonies on the chorus. It’s quite a beautiful bit of work that reveals an extremely polished recording that can also communicate on an emotional level. It transcends the medium when the conduit is this good. I will be trying it on every speaker that comes along now, and not just for that velvety bass line.

The more I played on the Aria 905s, the more I enjoyed them. The combination of technologies gels perfectly to produce a sound that is very revealing and coherent for the price. It warrants decent ancillaries but works well with those at its price point. At last I seem to have found an affordable Focal that I like and I think you will too. Highly recommended.

Technical Specifications

• Type: 2-way, two-driver stand-mount monitor with front-ported bass reflex enclosure.
• Driver complement: One Al/Mg 25mm inverted dome tweeter, one 130mm flax mid-bass driver.
• Frequency response (+/- 3dB): 60Hz – 28kHz.
• Crossover frequency: 2.5kHz.
• Impedance: 8 Ohms, min. 4 Ohms.
• Sensitivity: 89dB/W/m
• Dimensions (HxWxD): 334 x 212 x 245mm
• Weight: 5.8kg/each
• Finishes: Walnut, Piano High-Gloss White.
• Price: £600/pair (Black), £699/pair (Walnut).

• Manufacturer:

  Focal-JMLab

URL: www.focal.com

Distributor: Focal-JMlab UK Ltd

Tel: +44(0)845 660 2680