Focal Shape 50 2-Way Powered Studio Monitor - EACH

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Shape 50 can be used from 30″ away, and it has very extended low end frequency response (50Hz) considering its compact design. Thanks to this design and to the numerous settings, this monitor is ideal for rooms measuring less than 130ft2.

The bass register is articulated and controlled. The lower mid-range and mid-range benefit from extreme neutrality, and without any masking effects, making equalization of these essential registers much easier. The new tweeter is what’s at the source of the very high definition. It efficiently reveals any hissing, and it’s also very precise in the very high end.

Flax Sandwich Cone

Flax cones are characterized by their natural sound, with low coloration, their richness of reproduction in the midrange register and their tighter bass.

Flax cones are made of high-quality flax fibers core enclosed by two thin layers of glass fiber. They satisfy the key criteria of a high performance diaphragm: high internal damping, high velocity of sound and high flexural rigidity.

Flax is twice as light as fiberglass, because the fiber is hollow. It also has very low elasticity which makes it ideal to increase the flexural rigidity of a sandwich structure.

Stabilizing The Magnetic Field

The magnetic field is not stable because it is modulated by three factors:

• The movement of the voice coil (lenz's law),
• The current passing through it (foucault current),
• The frequency.

Consequently, the voice coil, and all the moving part including the cone, is in the magnetic field which becomes too variable, and this leads to loss of precision.

Neutral Inductance Circuit Technology

NIC technology, lies in a Faraday ring whose dimensions, materials and positioning were optimized to make the magnetic field no longer affected by the position of the voice coil, by the amperage or the frequency of the current passing through it.

The obsession with the midrange

The midrange register is no doubt the most complicated to control in a sound system. On one hand, there must be a smooth transition with the bass. On the other hand, it must be tuned to the tweeter in terms of dispersion and acceleration. This determines the homogeneity of the timbre and spatialization.

For the past 20 years, Focal has been working on mastering the "break up" (the frequency at which the cone becomes deformed, leading to distortion) of our 3rd generation "W" cones and on drastically reducing the resonance of the tweeter with the IAL 2.

Tuned Mass Damper

The solutions already known for increasing the damping properties of the suspension all result in an increase of the mass which consequently alters definition. The answer came from a technology used in earthquake-resistant skyscrapers and which is also used for the suspension on racing cars! This technology is called a "Tuned Mass Damper": an additional mass oscillate in opposition to the resonance frequency to control it.

Applied to the speaker driver, the solution consists of simply two tubular rings on the suspension whose dimensions and position have been judiciously determined. They form our Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) and they stabilize the dynamic behavior of the surround according to resonance, thus avoiding deformation of the cone without afflicting the dynamics.