Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

[ORIGINAL MSRP $799. Often available used around $300. This pair were inherited from my dad, purchased in October 2018.]

[Tl;dr: Even eight years later, the Elex still deliver one of my favorite listening experiences. While there are certainly more resolving and detailed headphones on my wall, VERY few pairs deliver the fun, vibrant, rich listening experience of the Elex (particularly if you’re willing to spend a little time with EQ). Focal dynamics are hard to beat, and this is a benchmark for full, but well-controlled bass performance for me. I think every person who considers themselves an audiophile (whether or not they admit it in public) should spend some time with the Elex at some point, especially if something like the Focal Clear is out of your price range. Just budget $30 to get better quality of life cables!]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis (at $499; 6 out of 10 at the original MSRP)

	Bass1	Mids	Treble	Soundstage	Comfort/Fit2
Focal Elex	4B	3B	4C	3B	B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Introduction
2. Review notes
   1. Testing rig
   2. EQ
   3. Volume
   4. My torture testing list
3. The Basics
4. Sound
   1. Technicalities
   2. Bass
   3. Mids
   4. Treble
   5. Overall
   6. Gaming
5. Amplifier Compatibility
6. Build Quality & Appearance
   1. Connectivity
   2. Construction
   3. Comfort
   4. Appearance
7. Value & Comparisons
   1. Focal Clear
   2. Focal Hadenys
   3. Arya Stealth
   4. HD 6XX/600/58X/660S/490 Pro [the 6X0s]
   5. Meze 109 Pro
   6. AKG K-701
8. Overall

Introduction

I’ve mentioned a couple of times my reluctance to get around to reviewing the Focal Elex, an old Massdrop (now Drop) collaboration which was, at least at the time, regarded as one of the best value headphones on the market (if a $800 headphone can ever really be considered “value”). When I first got into hifi/headfi back in the halcyon year of 2017, my first real “audiophile” headphones were the Sennheiser x Massdrop HD 6XX. I loved them, and they opened my world. I, of course, immediately began watching reviews and thinking about what was going to be next.³ I immediately latched on to the next big Massdrop release, the Focal Elex (which released in December of 2017). Of course, I was a relatively newly minted lawyer at the time and a public employee, and couldn’t contemplate (or stomach, really) the idea of dropping $800 on a pair of headphones; the $200 6XX and the $150 O2/SDAC I had bought seemed borderline sinfully expensive at the time, so mostly it was just me coveting them and talking about them with my dad; not something I’d seriously thought about getting.

And then, one day in October of 2018, I got a text from my dad: a picture of a beautiful black box with glossy, embossed writing. This box, in fact:

Turns out, in the midst of his cancer treatment, Dad did a little retail therapy. He was spending a lot of time sitting in a chair recovering, and while Mom has always been a good sport about Dad’s love of good music, played reasonably loudly, he mostly didn’t want to inflict music on her all the time so he decided to buy himself a good pair of headphones, and settled on the Elex (probably my fault). While he immediately figured out how to create a foam insert for his desk drawer to store them, it’s not super clear to me how much he ended up using them, and at some point he lent them to me to spend some time with. Towards the end, he asked for them back and I know he got at least a little use out of them, mostly because when I first got them after he died in 2019, they smelled like his shampoo for the first couple of months.

So these are a pair of headphones tied into some pretty big feelings. I mean, he’s why I started this blog. He taught me everything I needed to know about being a person, and a man, and I hope a partner and some day a father.

Beyond that connection, though, the Elex were also the first really, really nice headphones I ever spent a meaningful amount of time listening to. I loved (and love) the 6XX, but putting on the Elex for the first time was a revelation. They were … better, in almost every conceivable way, than anything I’d heard at the time. And they were one of the very first luxury products I ever got my hands on … to the point where they mostly lived in their beautiful cardboard box, and didn’t get a whole lot of use because I worried about damaging them. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over that!

I’ve listened to a lot of headphones in the years since I first got to experience the Elex. A *lot* of headphones. I have been deeply relieved over the last few months as I’ve been listening to the Elex again to discover that while there are things about them that I don’t necessarily love, I still really enjoy them as a headphone.

So, here goes.

Thanks, Dad. For everything.

Review notes

Testing rig

Here’s my basic testing protocol.

Based on my philosophy on the allocation of resources in headfi, except where otherwise noted I’m going to primarily be testing these with a Schiit Jotunheim 2/Mimir stack, running balanced⁴ via the (terrible) OEM cable and connected via USB-C to a custom gaming PC running the Roon client.

EQ

As noted in the Bathys review, I mostly prefer to test headphones with their default tuning, assuming that most people won’t take the time or make the effort necessary to use a third-party EQ. And I’ve historically not felt that the Elex need EQ; they’ve always sounded pretty good to me out of the box, though this go around with them I’ve definitely been playing a little bit with some judicious adjustments.

[Editor’s note: It’s worth mentioning here that as discussed below, the Elex theoretically have the same driver excursion issue that the Focal Clear have, and playing at high volumes or extreme EQ settings MAY result in the drivers striking the baffles, both sounding terrible and potentially damaging the headphone.]

[EQ Update: I’ve been playing with EQ profiles from Amir at Audio Science Review (simple, two-band) EQ profile and Oratory1990’s (complex, ten-band) Harmon tune profile, though I’m not sure either are really needed for the Elex.

After a lot of listening and going back and forth, I’ve found myself gravitating to Amir’s simpler EQ profile though both work pretty well.]

Volume

Here are the volume settings I use with the Focal Elex (unless otherwise noted, running via Roon with no headroom management, playing Daft Punk’s “Face to Face” from Tidal):

• Chord Mojo: white, bright red, bright red, bright red
• Dongles:
  • Apple: 66%
  • Crinear Protocol Max: 90% (balanced, boost) 100% (single-ended, boost, might want a little more volume)
• Holoaudio Bliss (KTE): -38 dB (balanced)
• Mytek Brooklyn Bridge: 59
• Schiit:
  • Mimir/Jotunheim 2 (Mimir has a -15 dB pregain applied via Forkbeard): low gain, 11:00 (balanced); low gain, 12:30 (single-ended)
  • Modi/Magni: low gain, 9:0001
  • Modius/Magnius: low gain, 10:30 (balanced); low gain, 11:00 (single-ended)
• Topping:
  • DX5 II: -35 dB (balanced), -28 dB (single-ended)
  • E30/L30: lowest gain, 10:00

My torture testing list

Apple, Tidal, Spotify.]

The Basics

The Focal Elex are a passive, open-back, dynamic driver headphone from French audiophile manufacturer Focal, produced in collaboration with Massdrop (now Drop). They were initially released in 2017, and were quietly taken out production between 2023 and 2024, though new stock periodically appears at various retailers (most recently, at Headphones.com). It’s unclear if those units are new old stock, or if Focal has periodically quietly started up small batch production again.

They’re a moderately challenging headphone to drive, with an impedance of 80 Ohms and a Sound Pressure Level (SPL) of 104 dB/1Vrms, meaning that while they can be driven by a mobile device or a dongle DAC, you’ll get more flexibility in terms of volume from a dedicated headphone amp (though again, you don’t need a particularly powerful headphone amp; see the volume thresholds above). They are reasonably heavy, weighing in around 450 grams without a cable, and are the older, larger style of Focal headphones like the Elegia and Clear. They use a dual-entry 3.5 mm headphone cable, making them balanced-capable, and they shipped with two woven six-foot cables, one terminating in an XLR jack (my first XLR!) and the other a 6.35 mm jack.⁵

Per Drop, the Elex were “[a] refinement of the $1,000 Elear with elements of the $1,500 Clear, [boasting] several improvements to the sound, build, and aesthetic, too.” Consensus in the community seems to be that the Elex were largely just the Elear with the pads from the well-loved (and MUCH more expensive) Focal Clear⁶, maybe a few slight tuning adjustments, and a swap from the Elear’s silver and black colorway to a pure, mostly-matte black coloration.⁷

Sound

I generally find the Focal Elex a very pleasant listen, basically as much as I did back in 2018 when I heard them for the first time. Other people have had some issues with the treble (and I vaguely remember a tiny bit of sharpness back in the day); but maybe my nearly 43-year-old ears are just less sensitive these days.⁸

Technicalities

The soundstage is only moderately wide, but placement and separation within it are really excellent. On a track like “Chan Chan”, the instruments aren’t too spread out to far but it’s really clear where they are all in relation to each other. They also have some front-to-back staging, with the guitar riff on “Love Can Damage Your Health (Laid Mix)” having a nice bit of rotation to it. The tom patterns throughout “Thunder Lightning” are really well reproduced and track across the channels very well.

The dynamics are solid; starting “It’s All So Incredibly Loud” at a reasonable volume starts being unpleasant around 2:30 or so. The microdynamics are one of the absolute standouts of the Elex (and most Focals); both the bass and treble bell tones on “Angel (Blur Remix)” have very satisfying hits, though the treble is slightly more emphasized without EQ (adding a few dB below 80 Hz fixes that).

Overall, I certainly enjoy the detail and resolution on the Elex, though they’re not up to the level of something like a Hifiman Arya Stealth or HE6se v2, or the Elex’s big brother, the Focal Clear. I rarely feel like anything is missing in casual listening, or even in most critical listening, though I do want a bit more clarity in the warble after the bass notes on “Angel (Blur Remix)”. You can clearly hear Meshelle Ndegeocello’s fingers lifting from the strings on “What Did I Do?”, and the Elex does an effortless and masterful job with complex, layered tracks like “Easy.”

Timbre is generally correct on the Elex; there are people who find them a bit metallic at times but for my purposes, they’re mostly pretty great.

Bass

The bass reproduction on the Elex is one of my favorites; it’s what really made this headphone stand out to me when I first listened to it. It’s not elevated, per se, just full, and rich, and beautifully punchy and dynamic. The stock tuning is great; you don’t get quite the linear bass extension on the Elex that you get on a planar like the Hifiman Arya or even the Sennheiser HD 490 Pro, but it’s pretty impressive for an eight year old dynamic driver design. On a track like “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” you get all of the notes in Q-Tip’s bassline (though the lowest start to roll off a little), you get a very satisfying brain wobble on “Limit to Your Love”, and the bass line in “Remain Nameless” drives you through the song. Add a few dB in a bass shelf and you get one of the genuinely most pleasing bass performances I’ve experience in a headphone.

[Editor’s note: the thing I keep coming back to is how resonant the instruments sound, particularly with a little bit of a bass bump. On lower guitar tones, cellos, basses, etc., especially on a track like “Drawn”, you can feel the instruments vibrating through the Elex in a deeply, deeply pleasing way. They’re not quite the Sundara for guitars timbre, but they’re awfully close.]

Mids

The midrange on the Elex is really good as well. It’s not particularly prominent or forward like the HD 6XX, but it’s really well executed and balanced. Some people have some issues with shoutiness or maybe a tiny bit of metallic timbre, but at least on my head neither of those is a problem. Timbre is very natural, especially for vocals (both Justin Hicks on “What Did I Do?” and Jill Scott on “Calls” are correct and nicely separated from the instruments in the background of their respective tracks), and Christine Hoberg floats over “Clair De Lune”. The guitars in “Garcia Counterpoint” aren’t quite as distinct as they are on something like the HD 600, but that’s an unfairly high bar.

Treble

The treble is probably the weakest portion of the Elex’s frequency response, and it’s … not at all bad. When I was a little younger I thought that it had some spikes in the treble, but after a week of pretty intensive listening I’m just not hearing them much. Every once in a while something will have a little bit of shimmer/metallic shade that I don’t love (some of the synths about halfway through “Hayling”), or something in the treble will stand out a little more than I want it to in an ideal world (one of the guitars in the background on “Lo Moon’s “The Right Thing”, occasionally the bells in “Coffee”), but genuinely nothing so much so that I want to figure out how to address it via EQ. I can happily live with this treble presentation. Even at volumes above my normal listening, the Elex’s presentation is relaxed enough that I don’t have any objections to anything in “2021” or “Will O’ the Wisp”, my go-tos to test treble harshness.

Overall

Overall, these are just an incredibly well-rounded, delightful pair of headphones to listen to. I’ve also more or less talked myself around to thinking that they do come alive with a little bit of EQ; that extra little bit on the bass warms them up just a bit and makes them really great. They’re also pretty flexible and well-balanced overall, with enough mids to offset the bass and just enough treble to make both sound exceptional. Most pairs of headphones, even the ones I love, tend to be good for specific kinds of listening or really excel at certain kinds of music; electronic vs acoustic, complex vs sparse, detailed vs ambient, etc., and there’s just not much I wouldn’t want to listen to with the Elex.

The thing I keep coming back to on the Elex (and a few other pairs) is how rich and resonant they are, particularly for larger stringed instruments. A well-recorded cello or a string bass on the Elex is exceptional. I’ve been listening to a bit of modern jazz with them the last few weeks (I commend Dominique Fils-Aime to your attention, particularly “Birds” and “Good Feeling”), and … it’s really something.

The graphs of the Elex are pretty interesting; they’re an older model headphone and it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of high-quality measurements for them. This *purports* to be Resolve’s B&K 5128 measurements for the Elex:

I don’t hear some of these peaks on a sweep. I do hear a dip around 5.5 kHz and a little bit of a peak around 7 kHz, but nothing like the one above. Folks keep raising the possibility that Focal/Drop might have done a silent revision of the Elex to mellow out the treble, but Dad got this pair of Elex in late 2018 so it’s unlikely that they’re a later revision (if one even exists). So either I have a golden unit, or they just play really well on my head.

Gaming

I probably wouldn’t choose to game with these, mostly, but it’s not that I couldn’t. They’re comfortable enough, precise enough, and detailed enough to be fine for most of the games I play, though I certainly would pick something else for sweaty FPSes. They’ve been pretty good this week for “Death Stranding”, giving mostly pretty good auditory information and excelling for Hideo Kojima’s score and musical choices.

Amplifier Compatibility

The Focal Elex aren’t particularly amplifier sensitive; they sound good with pretty much everything I’ve thrown at them from inexpensive dongles to my Holoaudio Bliss (KTE), from solid state to tube to the hybrid beast that is the Nitsch x Schiit Piety. The impedance curve on them is just non-linear enough to be a genuine delight with a nice tube amp, feeding into their natural warmth, though you can approximate that with a bit of a bass shelf if you don’t have access to a nice pair of tubes. I found myself missing the Apos Gremlin (back at the shop for repairs to the LEDs) this week as I’ve been listening to the Elex a lot.

Interestingly, this is one of a very small number of headphones that I think fully stand up to the Bliss.⁹ I need to do some more dedicated A/B’ing and testing, but listening through some of my test tracks on the Bliss, I’m hearing things that I don’t think I’ve heard before. I’ve listened to “Drawn” more than a hundred times since November, and there are bits of Yukimi’s vocal countermelodies that I’ve never noticed. Same with This is the Kit’s “Hotter Colder”; there’s a whole set of very quiet humming lines pretty far out in the mix around 1:00 that I didn’t know were there until I had “Moonshine Freeze” playing in the background today; it was new and noticeable enough that it pulled me out of the contract I was working on. If I go back on a different amp and listen carefully I can hear them, but nowhere near as strongly.¹⁰ I don’t know if that’s universally a good or bad thing, but it’s something I’ve only really noticed with amplifiers like the truly exceptional Chord Mojo 2.

Needless to say, while these aren’t the most detailed headphones I own, and certainly not the most demanding, these feel like the kind of headphones that will take anything you throw at them.

Build Quality & Appearance

The Elex share most of their physical design with the Elegia, so a lot of this is going to read like copypasta from my Elegia review.¹¹

Connectivity

Like most older-style Focals, the Elex connect to source gear via a (mostly) standard dual-entry 3.5 mm cable. Unlike the Elear, the Elex comes with two six-foot cables, one terminating in a balanced XLR jack and the other in a 6.35 mm single-ended jack. Also like most older Focals, the jacks on the cups are recessed, with a hole that’s slightly less than 10 mm across, making them a solid fit for Focal cables (or something like Hart’s HC-9-THK line), but many aftermarket cables will look a little silly.

For reasons surpassing all understanding, Focal is dedicated to providing the world’s best-built-but-somehow-still-terrible OEM cables: the cables themselves are cased in thick, woven fabric with THICCC barrel connectors at the headphone end. The casing is stiff and inflexible with a lot of memory, making them incredibly annoying to use at a desk. They’re the kind of cable that will resist being routed around a keyboard, mouse, or desk chair arm, and will work their way back into your way when given the slightest opportunity. They’re also, irritatingly, pretty microphonic: it’s much worse on the headphone side of the y-split, but even contact with the cable below the split is annoyingly loud in the ear cups; enough that I can heard it over moderately loud music. It’s also worth noting that it’s really hard to tell the “R” and “L” on the connectors apart without a VERY bright light, at least with my post-LASIK eyes; I’ve added a little blue painters tape to the right connectors just to make it easier to swap in my less-than-brightly-lit office.

The OEM cables aren’t QUITE as bad as the surgical tubing cables Hifiman ships with their higher-end headphones, but I’d put them in second place in the Cable Hall of Shame.

“Solidly made, attractively designed, deeply irritating to use.
Focal Cables: for when you want your listening experience to be ever-so-slightly worse, but still want to look cool.™️”

Fortunately, the dual 3.5 mm is a common enough standard that you can use most cables from manufacturers like like Hifiman, lower-end Mezes, and all Fiios, as well as a robust array of aftermarket cables with the the Elex to get away from their ridiculous cables.¹² The reverse is often not true, though, with the thick Focal connectors working only with headphones whose 3.5 mm jacks are flush with the exterior of the headphone, not recessed, or that also have a relatively wide opening around the jacks.¹³

Construction

These are some of the best built headphones I own; they feel like premium headphones in a way that a lot of the others don’t. They’re solid, feel like they would survive a drop, and don’t move around on my head while listening. The yokes are made of a solid metal, the band has a nicely-strong feeling metal core, and the grills are a solid-feeling mesh that have certainly survived some impacts over the last few years.

Unlike the Elegia and Clear, the Elex don’t come with a case, just the foam-lined cardboard box that Drop shipped them in. It’s pretty nice, as far as cardboard boxes go.¹⁴ Because these are a pretty open open-back, I don’t carry them around with me so I don’t miss the carrying case. If you want one, though, I’ve verified that the cases for the Elegia and Clear both fit the Elex nicely and you might be able to find a spare case on the market for one of them.

In terms of durability, I’ve generally had good luck with Focal products, though that’s not a universal experience. A little bit of Googling will show you a couple common complaints about Focal’s headphones: 1) headbands breaking, 2) drivers dying, and 3) driver excursion issues. I haven’t experienced any of these issues, personally: I’m not like the gentlest person with my belongings and I’ve certainly banged the Elex and Elegia around a bit (though I’ve tried to be more careful with the Clear), and both the Clear and Elegia are second hand with some pretty substantial use by prior owners, but I haven’t personally had an issue with the band or the drivers. It’s one of those things where I wonder how widespread the issue actually is; after all, everyone who experiences the issue will complain about it, loudly, and no one who hasn’t will talk about it not happening to them.

The third issue (driver excursion) seems to be situational; if you listen to VERY bassy music VERY loudly, the drivers can actually physically hit the internal grills, causing both unpleasant sounds and potentially damaging the driver. I do listen to relatively bassy music, but I also listen more on the quiet side (I value protecting my remaining hearing, after going to a lot of live shows in my 20s and 30s), but I would be cautious of applying a super bassy EQ if you listen loudly.

Your mileage may, as always, vary, but I’ve been very pleased with the build quality of the Elex et. al.

It’s also worth noting that one of the downsides of most Focals is the cost of replacement parts, especially earpads. The don’t wear down as quickly as those on the 6X0s and don’t need to be replaced every six to twelve months, but they do wear down eventually and sourcing OEM pads can be pretty challenging and expensive. And because so much of the magic of these headphones come from the pads, it would be frustrating to be unable to replace them. You can use Clear pads on the Elex, but I personally will be ordering a replacement pair just to keep around for the next time I need them.

[Editor’s note: with the new announcement from Corsair that they’re shutting down Drop and likely sunsetting their products, I’m very curious to find out if Headphones.com will continue to stock Elex pads.]

Comfort

I personally find the older, larger form factor Focals like the Elex very comfortable. The cups are large enough to comfortably fit my ears, and when properly fitted the weight is nicely distributed across the top of my head and ears. The padding on top is nicely compliant and plush enough that I don’t get a hotspot, despite my … let’s call it “thinning” hair, and I can even wear them over a hat with a squatchie. That said, the cups have maybe 25 degrees of tilt and almost no swivel, so about the only adjustment you can do to try to get a good seal is lengthening and shortening the headband. It’s the one thing that I like better about the newer Focal design, and though it’s not a problem for me I do know some people who can’t get the Elex/Elegia/Clear comfortable on their heads because of that lack of adjustability.

While I found their sister Elegia a little warm¹⁵ at times, the Elex are pretty well-vented and I haven’t noticed any issues with them over the last couple of weeks, even when my office has gotten a little too warm for comfort.

Appearance

I like Focal’s general aesthetics, whether it’s the Bathys/Azurys/Hadenys or Elex/Elegia/Clear, and I’d love to get my hands on a pair of Utopias; they’re probably my endgame headphone goal at this point now that I have a pair of Meze Empyrean IIs. That said, I know some people who HATE the way they look and refuse to consider them as a result.

I personally don’t love the matte black colorway that Drop seems to favor in their headphone collaborations (if nothing else, it’s really hard to read the lettering on the cups!), but the overall design is nice. Very similar to the Clear, but with black everything instead of silver. The mesh on the outside of the cups is surprisingly microphonic (especially for an open-back), but overall I think these are a striking pair of headphones. Certainly less flashy than the Clear, though I personally wouldn’t likely wear either in public (and I appreciate how much less the Elex shows dirt than the Clear).

Value & Comparisons

It’s a little hard to talk about value for a headphone that doesn’t appear to be in production anymore. Do you use the original MSRP ($799)? The most recent price I’ve seen for them new ($499)? The current going rate for used (~$300¹⁶)?

I’ll say this; I wouldn’t pay $800 for a new pair. But if something happened to my Elex, I’d go buy another used pair for $300 without hesitation, or a new pair for $500 if headphones.com got them back in stock. They’re a really, really good headphones, and more fun to listen to than I’ve given them credit for over the last five or six years.

Focal Clear

The clearest, direct comparison to the Focal Elex is the headphone they were intended to be a bridge to, the Focal Clear.

The Focal Clear are one of the most broadly respected headphones in the audiophile community. While there are certainly people who don’t like them, they’re frequently recommended and end up on a lot of “best of” lists. They get an average of a 6.2/10 on Headphones.com’s ranking list, which doesn’t sound very impressive until you learn that the highest ranking headphone, the Headdphone D1, scores a 7.1, and the Clear are #15 on that list of more than 200 ranked headphones.¹⁷

The Clear had been on my list for a long time, but I could never quite justify the original $1500 MSRP (though it has recently been marked down to $890). A few months ago I was listing a number of pairs of headphones on r/AVExchange for sale, and someone asked me if I’d be interested in a trading for a pair of Clears. Four pairs of headphones shipped later, I ended up with a used pair of Clears. I had pretty low expectations; I thought that I would listen to them, review them, decide that I preferred the Elex (or the 109 Pro, etc.) more and then trade them on to someone else. Instead … yeah, I get why they’re so loved.

In my HD 490 Pro review, I started my comparison to the Clear with this:

“My upgrade pick from the Focal Elex, the Focal Clear, are (not unlike the 109 Pro vs the 105 AER) a clear, substantial upgrade on virtually everything, so if I’m picking the Elex over the 490s for music, I’m definitely picking the Clears over the 490s for music too.”

After spending a couple of weeks with the Elex again, I’d like to amend and extend those remarks.

The biggest tuning difference between the Clear and Elex to me is in the bass;¹⁸ the Clear is a little stronger, and has more dynamic punch on most tracks. It’s not a huge difference, though, and adding a bit of EQ to the Elex makes the playing field pretty even. Interestingly, there are also occasionally bits of treble that are a bit sharper on the Clear than the Elex on my head; for example, one of the sharp guitar hits in one of the rhythm guitars on “Chan Chan” is harsher on the Clear, though still well within my tolerance.

Beyond that, though, at least my perception of detail on the Clear is noticeably better. The Elex are a reasonably resolving headphone, but the Clear are a step up. I also think that the Clear have both a wider soundstage and better separation within it; again, the Elex are a pretty decent headphone for soundstage, but the Clears are, once again, better.

Maybe the most interesting thing is how similar the Elex and Clear are in terms of frequency response. I’ve looked at a couple of these comparisons and the general consensus seems to be that the Clear has slightly more elevated bass and that the Elex gets … weird in the treble, though there’s also a lot of discussion about both unit variation and potential silent revisions.

This isn’t how I hear the Clear and Elex. Listening to music, I hear treble spikes on the Clear far more than the Elex (often on bells, occasionally upper register guitars, etc.). Interestingly, on a frequency sweep with the Elex I do hear the peaks Gadgetry Tech gets around 7 kHz and 11-12 kHz, and a real dip around 5.5 kHz on my head, but while they’re noticeable, they don’t feel that large in magnitude (maybe the 12 kHz one is?). None of them bother me during regular listening. So maybe I have a weird unit, or maybe these just work really well on my head?

Honestly, with these particular units, it’s really six of one, half dozen of the other. I like the Clear’s detail, soundstage, and out of the box bass, but the Elex isn’t far behind. I’d be really curious to try a new unit of the Clear, given how little I know about the provenance of this one, but if offered a choice between a new Elex at $499 or a new Clear at $890, I don’t hear anything that makes that price jump seem like an obvious choice.

Basically, if you can listen to either or both, I highly recommend it. If you want to buy one or the other … well, you can get a new Clear these days, and at least at the moment it doesn’t seem like anyone has new stock of the Elex for sale.

Focal Hadenys

The Focal Hadenys is probably the clearest direct comparison in the modern Focal lineup, with the Clear moving to mostly a product available (at least in the US) primarily from headphones.com. It’s the current gen, smaller-frame Focal open back headphone; the open back sibling to the ANC Bathys and closed back Azurys.

I’ve only had the Hadenys for a few weeks now (review soon!), but so far I’m pretty impressed. It’s definitely a more v-shaped tune than the Elex (the 6XX to to the Elex’s 600, maybe?), but not so much as to be unpleasant. The Hadenys are noticeably bassier, even compared to the Elex running my preferred EQ profile. They’re also a bit more trebly, to the point where occasionally something like a cymbal or a bell edges on harshness, but they’re generally well enough controlled that they’re not a problem on my head.

I’ll be curious to see where I come down after a week or two of dedicated Hadenys listening, but at least for now I prefer the Elex’s bass, mids, and treble performance. I think the soundstage on the Hadenys is slightly narrower, with slightly better separation on in the upper mids and treble, and substantially worse in lower frequencies (as an example, the lead guitars on “Chan Chan” are great and precisely separated, but the rhythm guitar and bass blend together a lot more on the Hadenys). For me, the Elex are also just a lot more comfortable. It’s not that the Hadenys are uncomfortable per se so much as that the larger form factor Focals just fit my head really well, and the larger ear cups are easier for me to get properly and consistently placed.

A quick glance at the graph:

Yeah, that sounds right; the Hadenys (on my head) definitely have a bass and treble bump compared to the Elex, though I don’t think I’m hearing QUITE that peak at 3.5 kHz or 6 kHz; they’re rarely troublesome to me.

Arya Stealth

I talked briefly about this comparison in my review of the Arya Stealth back at the beginning of last year. Here’s what I had to say:

In terms of sound, I think the Arya beat the Elex pretty handily. At $1,600, I think I’d rather have the $600 Elex, but with the Aryas down to $599 it’s not much of a contest anymore. I will say the Elex feel more like a luxury product, in terms of build, comfort, and accessories (the Elex ship with braided single-ended and XLR-terminated balanced cables, in a nice storage box), but as good as the Elex feel and sound (they’re sometimes referred to as a super-6XX), the Aryas are better for everything except maybe midrange and soundstage.

All of that seems more or less still true, though I think my opinion on the Arya has been tamed slightly by my exposure to other high-quality planar magnetics (particularly the HE6se v2, but also the Audeze LCD-2.2pf and the Meze Empyrean II), and I’ve been really enjoying my Elex renaissance.

I’ll take the soundstage and bass on the Arya, the mids, treble, and comfort of the Elex. The Arya Stealth are clearly the better resolving headphone, and the right choice for critical listening. They’re a much more objectively-tuned headphone. For regular, casual listening, though? The Elex are a much more fun tune (especially with a bit of bass EQ), and at least on my head are much more comfortable for long listening sessions and less distracting to have on my head.¹⁹ And I do way more casual listening than critical listening.

Now a quick look at the graphs:

Surprisingly few people have measurements for the Elex on Squig.link, and the few that do AND have some version of the Arya are often … less than clear about which version of the Arya they’ve tested. I figured out above that I don’t hear the Elex the way Gadgetry Tech measures them, so while I always say take the graphs with a grain of salt, that goes double for this graph.

This is another unsatisfying six of one, half a dozen the other pick. I can see why people might prefer the Arya, particularly for something like gaming. But, for me, the Elex is the clear winner for most of my listening.

HD 6XX/600/58X/660S/490 Pro [the 6X0s]

I often joke about the Focal Elex as being “what if the 6XX, but also bass”, and there’s some truth to that. In my recent HD 490 Pro review, I had this to say about the Elex vs. the 6X0 family:

I refer to [the Elex] as a Super 6XX and I stand by that; they have a lot of the best traits of the 6XX (great mids, vocal timbre, and controlled treble) with with the addition of bass (particularly sub bass), build quality, style, and (to me at least) comfort.

As much as it hurts me to say this, my favorite among the 6X0s these days is the HD 490 Pro, a truly exceptional new member of that family (though, of course, developed and owned by Sennheiser while the rest were sold with the Consumer Division to Sonova), and my conclusion in that review was that I was taking the Elex over the 490 for everything except gaming, and after a few weeks of listening to the Elex a lot (and particularly with just a little extra bass), it’s definitely still true. The one place the 490’s out of the box tune beats the Elex is in terms of strength of bass, and with a little EQ the Elex produce a stronger, cleaner bass performance than the 490.

Again, you’re not going to go wrong with either of these. If I had to choose between a used pair of Elex with unknown provenance or a new 490, I might well take the 490. For gaming, I’ll take the 490. And if I were listening to something VERY vocally focused (Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” or Hayley William’s “True Believer”) I might still take the HD 600, but for pretty much all other use cases the Elex is my clear preference. The Elex is also easier to drive than any of the 6X0s, though the 6X0s are all sensitive enough that they’re not *that* hard to drive.

As mentioned above, I don’t hear the treble peaks on the Elex (at least not to the extent they’re measuring on headphone rigs), so that part of the performance doesn’t particularly trouble me. The rest of this looks about right, pre-EQ.

Meze 109 Pro

I pretty quickly disposed of the comparison between the Meze 109 Pro and the Elex in my 109 Pro review. I had this to say:

“Regardless of their original price point, I think [the 109 Pro] are just better than the Elex. The Elex have been described as a super-6XX and I think that’s accurate; they’re really nice headphones with incredible mids, but I think the 109s blow them away in pretty much every other category. Even with regards to pricing, for $799 you’re getting more with the 109s than the Elex with the exception of an included OEM balanced cable. I’d rather buy these and a $30 XLR cable than the Elex.”

More than a year later, I still feel that way. The 109 Pro *might* not be my favorite headphone anymore, but they’re definitely still my favorite headphones under $1,000. As much as I like the Elex, the 109 are more resolving, have better soundstage and separation, and a better bass tune than the Elex. Even though the 109’s treble performance has a few peaks, I’d still take their treble performance over the Elex most of the time. The one area I’ll take the Elex’s performance on is the mids, and the difference isn’t huge; I really like the 109 Pro’s mids, and it’s vocal reproduction in particular. For pretty much every circumstance, I’m taking the 109 Pro.²⁰

That’s about right; the 109 Pro is definitely a more v-shaped tuning than the Elex, though that peak around 16 kHz doesn’t show up quite so strongly on my head.

AKG K-701

I recently picked up a pair of AKG K701s for a song, but AKG is inexplicably still selling these for $599.99 (MSRP is still close to $750), making this feel like a reasonably fair comparison.²¹

Though the first pair that I got had a wild channel imbalance (~5 dB at peak, with the right louder at lower frequencies and the left at higher ones), I’ll admit to liking the K701 a lot more than I thought I would once I got a functional pair.²² They’re definitely a little light on the bass and a tad heavy on the treble, with maybe a hint of metallic tinge on higher-frequency guitar notes (especially sharply accented notes), but they’re incredibly comfortable and pretty good on the midrange. I definitely want to spend some more time with the K701, but my initial read is that they might be a little more resolving and precise than the Elex, particularly when it comes to the bass. They also have better soundstage, both in terms of width and separation within the channels; the Elex are solid on soundstage but the K701 are genuinely excellent. I’m curious to see how that holds up if I do a little EQ on the spicier pieces of the treble.

I’m definitely taking the Elex over the K701 for most of my listening; the mids and comfort on the K701 are such that I’d consider using them as my dedicated conference call headphone the way that I used to use the Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro (250 Ohm), though at this point I have enough headphones that I’m not sure that’s much of a use case for me. I’d definitely consider them if I were mastering or mixing, but those aren’t things I do much of. If you can get them for less than $200, they might well be worth considering, though be warned that the non-detachable cable is 3m long and that’s … really, really long for desktop use.

I still don’t hear the treble wobbles on the Elex (lucky me!) but the rest of this looks more or less pretty accurate.

[Editor’s note: after some additional listening while editing this post, there’s definitely too much treble on the K701 for me for most music. In particular the plucked string notes (violins?) in “Drawn” are sharp, and also have incorrect timbre. Maybe not even for mixing and mastering, after all. Disappointing; there are things about these that I really like. Curious to try them for gaming.]

Overall

Overall, I have come away from this review delighted by how much I still like the Elex. I’ve been putting off this review for more than a year because I didn’t want to realize that they didn’t hold up; in fact, the initial draft of the Introduction section included this gem:

“And the Elex don’t necessarily hold up very well against a lot of those other headphones. As my auditory palate has developed, I’ve also become a lot more aware of the flaws and issues with the Elex.”

I’d been listening to the Clear a lot over the last few months, and every time I put on the Elex I was … disappointed. I’m glad I took the time with the Elex to really listen to them and play around with some light EQ, and I’m happy to have gotten to strike those sentences.

The Focal Elex are a great headphone that hold up well when compared to some substantially more expensive headphones, and even up against some great modern modern models. The only headphones I compared it to that were a clearly better product are the Meze 109 Pro, my favorite headphone under $1000. I came away from my comparison with the Clear pretty torn about which I prefer, particularly with a little bit of EQ applied to the Elex.

In the end, I think I would cautiously recommend the Elex even at their original MSRP of $799 for someone who wants one pair of headphones to do everything. That was, and is, a reasonable price point for what you’re getting. At the more modern MSRP of $499, they’re a pretty good deal. They’re $100 less than the Hifiman Arya Stealth are currently, and for most of my listening I prefer them anyway. I think, ultimately, I very slightly prefer the Clear but not $300 more either.

If you can get a pair of these lightly used for $300-350, you should do it. If you can get a pair new at $499, I’d strongly recommend considering it. They may be an older model, but man do they deliver a fun listening experience.

#reviews #headphones #sennheiser #6XX #anc #spatialaudio #meh #2025 #99noir #meze #sunglasses #overear #cans #hifiman #arya #stealth #editionxs #budget #hahahaha

1. I score bass, mids, and treble on a two part scale: 1-5 for quantity (5 being the highest), and A-E for quality (A being best in class, E being laughably bad). For soundstage its also a two part scale, with the number representing the width and the letter the separation within it. ↩︎
2. For comfort/fit, my scale is A-E with A being disappear entirely into the background and E being I want to tear my ears off to stop feeling these headphones on my head. I’ve had one E: the Koss PortaPro. ↩︎
3. An impulse that has, clearly, not waned. ↩︎
4. I’m a balanced skeptic, but I find XLR just very satisfying to use. So I used it. ↩︎
5. I’ll talk about this a bit later, but Focal’s OEM cables are … awful. To point where I might even prefer the rubberized cables on the new generation of Focals. ↩︎
6. One of my favorite nicknames for a frankenheadphone is the Eclair; the Elear + Clear pads. ↩︎
7. There’s some interesting and reasonably compelling evidence that the Elear, Elex, and the Clear use the same drivers, too, with the biggest difference being the pads. ↩︎
8. Though I’m skeptical of this theory, as some of the Hifimans still break my brain. ↩︎
9. I am, generally, a skeptic of both amplifiers and DACs making a substantial, audible, and consistently identifiable difference in blind, volume-matched testing. I’ve done a lot of blinds on a dozen amps and DACs and to date, the only two that I’ve been able to consistently pick out of a blind are the Chord Mojo 2, and (extraordinarily weirdly!) balanced vs. single-ended on the HD 6XX with the Moondrop Dawn Pro. It’s part of why I bought the Holoaudio Cyan 2 and Bliss (KTE); if there were ever an amp and DAC that would make a difference, it should be them, right? And while I haven’t had time to do a lot of blind A/B, at least sighted I’m consistently noticing things and it’s weirding me out and challenging my current assumptions. ↩︎
10. I don’t think it’s the Cyan 2 R2R that was feeding the Bliss; I have both the Cyan 2 and the Matrix Audio Element i streamer/DAC running into it via XLR and I hear it on both. It’s noticeable enough that for the rest of my testing I’m not going to use the Bliss for any of my comparisons with other headphones. ↩︎
11. Because it is. ↩︎
12. There’s a velvet bag in my closet with all of my Focal cables. The first time I’ve taken the Elex’s cables out in years was this week, as I wanted to review using the stock cables and was reminded how bad they are. If you buy the Elex … I’d budget a little for a more usable cable. ↩︎
13. The Fiio FT1 and FT1 Pro looks like they should work … but they’re just every so slightly too small. ↩︎
14. Which is like, not very far. ↩︎
15. Temperature warm, like while wearing them; the tuning is ALSO warm but I’m talking comfort here. ↩︎
16. Used to see these on r/AVExchange a lot. These days … I’ve only seen a couple in the last month or so. ↩︎
17. The Elex, interestingly, gets a 6.6 and shows up at #6 out of 212. ↩︎
18. To be clear; this difference is so small that I’d be willing to accept it if Focal suddenly announced that the Elex were a prank and they were identical to the Clear; it’s well within the realm of possibility that any differences I hear are just unit variation.
    
    Note: I don’t think this is true, and Focal charges a lot more for Clear pads so I’m pretty sure even those aren’t the same; I just want to make it clear that the differences I hear are pretty marginal! ↩︎
19. The Arya are way too easy to dislodge unless they’re really tightened down. While the Elex are definitely clampier, they don’t move around much and I mostly can ignore that they’re on my head after a little bit. ↩︎
20. The 109 Pro are also easier to drive from a mobile device, and don’t benefit nearly as much from a bit of EQ making them overall easier to use. ↩︎
21. I ordered these from Thomann in Germany, and had my first ever-so-fun experience paying both a tariff and a tariff administration fee to UPS, which recently sent me a bill for the tariff and fee … that I paid in November before they even arrived. Isn’t it great to have nothing but chaos around international commerce? ↩︎
22. I have had less than stellar luck with AKG; the first first time I ordered a pair of the K371, they sent me the wrong version, the second had a similar channel imbalance (to the point where I gave up trying to get a pair), and then these also had a channel imbalance. Not sure I’d recommend AKGs as a result. ↩︎