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The Short Form
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| $2,595 (as tested) / AUDIOPLUSSERVICES.COM |
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Snapshot
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| Focal’s diminutive speaker system can deliver high-performance sound to style- conscious homes |
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Plus
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| • Satellites are beautifully built, using top-notch components • Vivid and transparent sound with fine imaging • Lots of mounting options for satellites |
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Minus
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| • Limited dynamics as compared with larger speaker setups • Requires careful sub and crossover adjustment • Speaker connections only accept skinny wires |
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Key Features
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• Dôme satellite: 1-in metal-dome tweeter, 4-in woofer; 6¾ in high, 4¼ lb • Dôme subwoofer: 8-inch woofer, 100-watt amp; 15 in high, 18 lb |
The problem with most so-called lifestyle speakers is that they sacrifice performance in order to perform their disappearing act. A typical lifestyle-friendly combo shifts deep-bass production to a single discreetly placed subwoofer, with the remainder of the sound divided between a few inconspicuous satellite speakers. But along with the potential minuses, there’s an advantage to this approach: Freed from their bass-production duties, the satellites are easier to position for optimum stereo and surround imaging.
Focal isn’t new to the satellite/subwoofer world, having introduced its Sib & Cub combo a few years back. Now, with the Dôme system, the company has ramped the performance level up a few notches by incorporating many of the same components used in its more exotic speaker offerings. Unlike the Asian-built Sib & Cub, the Dômes are manufactured at Focal’s factory in Saint-Étienne, France, giving the company a tighter rein over production.
The Dôme 5.1 package is more compact than its Sib & Cub brand mates, making it the smallest Focal home speaker system yet. Despite its diminutive size, the Dôme satellite is no lightweight: The cast-aluminum enclosure feels solid enough to withstand being run over by a small car. Each of the five satellites is about the size of a large grapefruit with a slice taken off the front. This flat area forms a baffle where the two drivers are squeezed in. While I would hesitate to use the word “woofer” to describe any 4-inch driver, it’s hard to deny the quality of this baby-size edition of Focal’s Polyglass design — the same type used in its much larger Chorus series. The tweeter is a top-drawer affair, too, its aluminum/magnesium inverted dome very similar to the one used in Focal’s pricey Profile and Electra S models.
Following the dome theme, the system’s cylindrical, rounded-top subwoofer looks a bit like one of those concrete stanchions used to block cars from entering a pedestrian street. With a single downward-firing 8-inch woofer, the ported Dôme sub is also exceptionally compact, consuming less than a 1-foot-diameter circular patch of your precious floor space. Rear-panel connections include both line- and speaker-level inputs, while the built-in 100-watt amp can be set to turn on automatically when it senses a signal.
SETUP
The Dôme satellite’s built-in pedestal can swivel 90°, and a supplied mounting plate lets you mount the speaker on a wall or ceiling. Optional stands are available if you want to position the satellites on the floor, although I found that they sounded better when I kept them near a room boundary. Speaker-wire connections are by way of a small screw terminal recessed into the base. The terminal can handle stripped bare wires up to around 14 gauge, but it’s tight enough in there to rule out any fancy, audiophile-type cables.
Achieving a smooth bass blend is tricky with any sub/sat system, and it only gets harder as the satellites shrink in size and the crossover point moves up in frequency. As I mentioned above, keeping the Dôme satellites near a wall or ceiling helps to flesh out their low-frequency extension a bit, and this in turn makes it easier to achieve a good blend with the subwoofer. I spread the three front-channel Dômes evenly just under my 8-foot-wide projection screen, with the two surround channels up high on the side walls, just behind the listening chair. The sub worked best when pushed into my room’s front-left corner, as this helped to bolster its output a bit.
Running the Audyssey MultEQ XT automated setup on my Integra receiver resulted in a too-high subwoofer level, with the receiver attempting to squeeze out bass that simply wasn’t available with the system. After experimentation with lots of familiar CDs, I found that setting the sub level some 5 dB lower provided a much better blend, although this meant that the bass could sound a tad lightweight at times. Focal claims that the Dôme satellites can go down to as low as 80 Hz, but in practice, a 120- to 130 Hz crossover point worked much better. Getting these adjustments just right proved critical in avoiding a noticeable peakiness in the upper bass.
MOVIE & MUSIC PERFORMANCE
With very compact systems like the Dôme, the emphasis tends to be on quality more than quantity, and once optimized, the Focals were able to deliver fine sound within their dynamic limitations. The tweeter in particular sounded exceptionally smooth and relaxed, providing a clean, transparent window on any music performance. On the title track from Chris Thomas King’s Red Mud, the contrast in timbres between King’s Dobro, the drums, and the maracas was vividly defined, while the plunging bass line nicely anchored the sound.
The surround mix of “Amoreena” from Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection SACD sounded solid, with John’s vocal anchored firmly front and center. But this disc highlighted the Focal system’s dynamic limits: The presentation lacked some of the snap and kick I’m accustomed to hearing with my much larger PSB Synchrony rig. Bass was tuneful and clear, although the very lowest octave was missing in action. With five identical satellites, the channel-to-channel timbral match was, of course, excellent, allowing the system to generate an impressively seamless sound field.
As long as you’re not expecting plaster-cracking volume levels and dynamics, the Dôme system works surprisingly well with movies. We all like to use huge explosions and shoot-’em-ups to test the limits of our home theater, but in truth movie sound is mostly about dialogue clarity and subtle surround effects — areas where the Dôme excels.
Even when the going got loud, such as the plane-crash scene in Flight of the Phoenix (2004), the Dôme system never distorted or sounded like it was reaching its limits. On the contrary, the sound remained clear and immersive, just minus some of the wallop and thunder of a bigger setup. Dialogue clarity was a strong point, with voices sounding smooth and natural. And the constant surround effect of sand hitting the plane in the crash scene put me right in the center of the action.
BOTTOM LINE
People who want invisible speakers will often choose in-wall models, but I would argue that a high-quality free-standing system like Focal’s Dôme can deliver better results in a more flexible — and, for the most part, unobtrusive — package. With the Dôme, Focal’s expertise in developing both drivers and complete speakers has allowed the company to create a system that maximizes performance while working within the limitations of small satellite speakers. If physical size weren’t a factor, I expect you could find a speaker package that packs a bigger punch for the same money — but then again, your better half might not let it through the door.
TEST BENCH
The Dôme satellite has quite uniform directivity, and the averaged measurements for the front, center, and surround positions are very similar. The speaker has a 2-dB elevation from 800 Hz to 2.3 kHz centered at 1.3 kHz. This is followed by a 2.8-dB depression between 2.6 and 4.3 kHz centered at 3 kHz, followed by raggedness at higher frequencies. Imped- ance is on the low side, falling at or under 4 ohms from 100 Hz to 1.4 kHz. The sub has enough upper-frequency bandwidth to successfully mate with the smaller satellite speakers. But it also showed limited low-frequency dynamic capability, along with a tendency to blat and grunt when overdriven. The sub’s crossover turnover frequencies relate closely to the markings on its control dial, ranging from within 10 to 20 Hz of the indicated setting from 60 to 160 Hz. — Tom Nousaine