Focal Stellia and Arche (Hands-on) Review: Sound That is Good Enough to Touch

Who are the Focal Stellia and Arche for?

• If realism is your ultimate pursuit in music, the texture, soundstage and balance of the Focal Stellia and Arche combo provides an almost tactile realistic sound that makes you feel you're in the room with your favorite musicians
• For those who seek for premium build in their headphones, the Focal Stellia has one of the most luscious leather and metal construction possible that is both classy and beautiful to look at
• For people who wants to enjoy amazing sound but do not want to shop around and experiment with different headphone/amplifier/DAC combinations, the Arche was designed and tuned to match the Stellia perfectly to maximize its sound capability

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A worthy investment is judged by more than how much it costs to be built. As a consumer, other than bragging rights, a product's worth should be judged by its pursuit of excellence - more importantly it's excellence in the eye of the beholder.

So before I answer the question about whether a headphone system that can cost up to $5,000 is worth it, I must first answer the question with another question: What do you pursue in your listening experience?

Having the Focal Stellia and Arche in the office, it has been a great learning experience in the pursuit of the excellence of sound, and here are some of what we learned after spending many tens of hours with one of the market leading setup, and whom we believe this product is for.

Excellence starts from unboxing

At a premium price, Focal makes sure that its customers have nothing to complain about from the get-go by providing a very indulgent unboxing experience.

Starting from the leatherette outer box that contains both the softshell headphone carrier and another leatherette jewellery box of both the balanced XLR cable and the unbalanced 1/8" cable. I say indulgent because even the paperwork is contained in a locket that seems good enough for a leather wallet. Make no mistake about it, these are boxes worth keeping to store the headphones when not in use, and will probably last as long as the headphones do.

Top-notch construction

Focal did not take shortcuts in their products and constructed the Stellia as excellent as it sounds. The headband and ear cups are made of premium full-grain leather that look like they belong on expensive handbags, making the Stellia both beautiful to behold and comfortable to wear.

The extendable arms are a simple and robust metal 'Y' bracket that holds the ear cups in place. It goes into the metallic slot in the headband and can be adjusted for the right tension. The cups themselves only swivel in one axis and are spring loaded, but because of the thick ear cup cushions, any angles on the side of the head can be taken up and a good, comfortable seal can be made.

Getting the Best out of the Stellia

Before getting into how the Stellia sounds, I have to say that after testing them under various situations, there are two critical conditions that need to be met before you can do these headphones justice and get them to perform in the way they were made to perform.

Firstly - and this is a big one: You need the Focal Arche DAC/Amp. I have tried the Stellia with quite a few sources: from the RME ADI-2 FS, to FiiO's M11 Pro, to Audioquest's Dragonfly Cobalt, and I almost closed the book on deciding the Stellia to be a well-built, above average performer. It wasn't until I hooked it up with the Arche that I heard what the Stellia was truly made to do, and it was incomparable to anything else I've ever heard. So it is my unabashedly strong recommendation that if you get the Stellia, it's only right to also get the Arche to go with it. (And it's a good time to get it, because Focal is doing a promotion now where Focal Utopia, Stellia or Clear headphone owners can get a $1,000 off in buying an Arche. Details after the article)

Secondly - because of how detailed and realistic the reproduction of the Focal set up is, your music source needs to be equally good. Having this setup means it's time to gather all your lossless files and do them justice. Furthermore I found that having the properly encoded files is one thing, it's original production is also of critical importance. Because of the detailed sound, songs with lower quality production immediately pale in depth and richness when compared with well produced music. Simply said, if well-crafted details are not there in the original music, there's nothing for the Stellia to reproduce in its output.

So how good does the Stellia and Arche combo sound?

To test the Focal set up, I went to the songs that I've listened to for more than two decades, songs where I remember minute details, and one of the albums I tested was Coldplay's Parachute. I was stunned by a range of sounds that I did not notice - or rather not 'felt' in the past. From the squeak of the piano stool, to the haunting but faint cello in the background, to some tiny lick on the piano - all these suddenly audible details gave each song a new layer of dimension, and brings the listening experience significantly closer to listening to a live performance.

Describing the Stellia and Arche sound as accurate is an understatement. The sound that it produces is about feeling not just the music, but feeling the presence of the source of the sound. From the flick of the guitar pick, to the papery rattle of the drum head, to the unique shimmer of Zildjian cymbals that differs from Sabian: for the first time all of these details became alive in my favorite tracks. And this is actually the difference between using the Arche against other sound sources. While other sound sources produce all the details and covers the frequencies, the Arche brings out the realism of the sound and makes each of the instruments sound like they are in the room with you.

It's really something that needs to be heard to be understood, because it's quite a different experience than the normal listening experience. There is so much detail in the sound reproduction that I feel one of these setups can be placed in the living room and replace the television because of the rich experience it gives, even without watching anything visually.

Another thing that I noticed while listening to the Stellia and Arche combo is that the volume does not need to be turned up very high. The balance of the sound, together with the wide soundstage and clean separation of sounds, even at low volumes provides the listener all the details that is needed to fully appreciate the music.

Final remarks

I can go on and on about how good the Focal Stellia and Arche combo sounds, but I will try to describe it with an anecdotal experience I had once in a Nashville Guitar Center. On that particular visit I picked up one of the most expensive guitars I've seen/touched in my life: an 50 year-old $15,000 Taylor acoustic guitar. After playing on it for a while, my less-musical friend asked me: "So, how does it sound?", my answer was: "Exactly how guitar is supposed to sound." The Focal Stellia and Arche's sound production can't be described with individual statements like 'sweet bass', 'warm mids','crisp highs' or 'huge soundstage', but rather, they are: 'exactly how the original music is supposed to sound.'

Focal is currently offering a $4000 for the Arche and the Stellia, which cuts the cost of the amp down to $1000 with the Stellia headphones ($1490 savings) on Amazon.

Focal is also offering a $1000 voucher on purchase of the Arche to all current Utopia, Stellia and Clear owners through the end of 2020. You can find out how to get the voucher here.

David is a tech enthusiast/writer who is often on the move, but since the lock-down is on a mission to explore gadgets to improve his 'home work'. This is a contribution to an ongoing IBTimes review series on gadgets for Home Productivity.