Focal Bathys

All it takes is one mildly successful toe in the water, and suddenly the swimming pool is full to overflowing. Expensive wireless over-ear headphones are only the latest case in point.

For a good while, wireless headphones were purely about convenience, nothing more. Anyone interested in properly listening knows a wired connection is the only way to go, after all – and so wireless headphones had an unspoken, but widely acknowledged, limit to their asking price. But then (not for the first time) came Apple – it smashed the unofficial price barrier with its big-wireless-headphones-for-big-money AirPods Max, and now it’s a free-for-all.

Wireless noise cancellation

We’ve already reviewed the Mark Levinson No. 5909 wireless headphones and found, not without consternation, that they come this close to justifying their £999 asking price. We have the £599 Bowers & Wilkins Px8 on our radar… and now here’s French high-end mover and shaker Focal. We’ve heard and appreciated a number of its expensive wired headphone designs already, and now the company thinks the ground has been laid for it to deliver its first pair of wireless active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones the singularly named Bathys.

(The name, so says Focal, is inspired by those free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersibles called Bathyscaphes – the company says it wants the name to invoke the idea of ‘calm, depth and absolute silence’.)

Imbuing a product as rigorously functional as over-ear headphones will a bit of pizazz, a design flourish or two, is far from easy, of course – not only is the ‘form follows function’ principle hard at work, but prospective owners are almost reflexively mistrustful of headphones that don’t look utterly like headphones. But Focal has given the Bathys a well-judged hint of individuality without messing with anyone’s expectations, and that’s the first thing (but most certainly not the last) it should be congratulated for.

Focal has mostly used a combination of aluminium and magnesium in the construction of the Bathys – and it keeps perceived value high as well as keeping weight down to a manageable 350g. Soft, tactile leather covers the memory foam of the earpads and the outer plane of the headband, while equally pliant microfibre material keeps the inside of the headband comfortable as well as durable. The drilled holes of the ‘shell’ covering the outside of the closed-back earcups make it reminiscent of those Neostyle sunglasses Elvis Presley was so fond of during the ‘jumpsuit’ years, and there’s a further design feature in the earcups’ centre – the company’s stylised ‘flame’ logo, which has defeatable illumination. The Bathys are a coherent, mildly individual design, which puts them quite a distance ahead of their nominal competition where this sort of thing is concerned.

They’re equally, and rather more measurably, competitive where specification is concerned too. Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.1, with SBC, AAC, aptX and aptX Adaptive codec compatibility. Active noise-cancellation is an ‘always on’ system, from which you can select ‘silent’ (full on), ‘soft’ (a much more mild effect that Focal seems to think is an aid to concentration) or ‘transparent’ (giving a gentle boost to external sounds in the name of both safety and sociability). The actual business of delivering sound is taken care of by a couple of 40mm aluminium/magnesium ‘M’-shaped dome drivers – Focal is claiming a frequency response of 15Hz to 22kHz, which seems a little more grounded in reality than the claims made by some of the more excitable competing brands.

It’s possible to hard-wire the Bathys to a source using either USB-C or analogue 3.5mm connections – cables for each application are provided in the semi-rigid carry case – but the headphones must always be powered up no matter how they’re connected. So it’s just as well that battery life is anywhere between 30 hours (ANC set to ‘silent’, volume level set to ‘respectable’) and 42 hours (hard-wired) from a single charge. Just a quarter of an hour’s-worth of charging equates to another five hours of playback.

The bottom of the right earcup is where you’ll find the USB-C and 3.5mm inputs. Connect the Bathys via USB-C to, say, a laptop and it will serve as a DAC with the ability to deal with digital audio files up to 24bit/192kHz resolution natively. Or, at least, it will once you select ‘DAC’ using the little ‘power on/off/DAC’ slider on the same earcup. You’ll also find the classic three-button strip nearby, covering ‘volume up/down’, ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards/backwards’ and Bluetooth pairing, as well as a button to wake your source player’s native voice assistant (as long as it’s one of the Big Three). Over on the left, meanwhile, there’s just one button – it’s where you get to cycle through your trio of ANC options. It’s worth noting that the physical controls are rather at odds with the rest of the design – they’re on the plasticky side and don’t feel anything special.

Control, up to a point, is also available in the Naim/Focal app. It’s been recently fettled, and without a doubt looks good – but it doesn’t include a whole lot of options. The five-band EQ adjuster is welcome, as is the ability to save some custom settings… but other than that, the ability to choose your preferred level of ANC and an indication of remaining battery power, it’s short of functionality.

Bluetooth stream

When using wireless headphones wirelessly, of course, their performance is profoundly affected by the standard of the Bluetooth stream from the player they’re wirelessly connected to – and when we’re talking about wireless headphones at this sort of money, with this sort of specification, it’s safe to say it’s more important still. Despite the fact that the Apple iPhone only streams using the SBC or AAC codecs, neither of which are particularly high quality, it seems only right to use an iPhone 13 as a source for at least some of this test – this is a successful series of smartphones, after all. But in an effort to allow the Bathys to properly demonstrate what they’re made of, they’re also wirelessly connect to a Nothing Phone (1) that supports Qualcomm’s aptX codec, and a FiiO M17 PMP that’s aptX-HD enabled. And then it’s connected using a USB-C / USB-C cable to a 2020 Apple MacBook Pro, where it functions as a DAC.

No matter the specifics of how the Focal are receiving their digital audio information, though, their overriding sonic characteristics alter very little. No matter if they’re playing a poverty-spec Apple Music file of Ride’s Time Machine [Creation], an aptX-assisted TIDAL stream of Isaac Hayes’ scandalous cover of By the Time I Get to Phoenix [Enterprise] or a 24bit/192kHz file of Falaise by Floating Points [Ninja Tune] from the MacBook’s local memory, they’re a spacious, expansive listen. Clarity and heft are available in equal measure, the soundstage they establish is big and orderly, and they offer separation and individualisation just as readily as they create a sensation of commonality and unity. The sense of performance they create, of togetherness and affinity, is tangible.

Attention to detail is considerable throughout the frequency range, and the Bathys have no problem giving appropriate weighting and prominence to even the most fleeting, most deeply buried, aspects of a recording. The bottom end is full-figured in the manner of a power-lifer, with bass sounds given texture and solidity. Control is absolute, which has a gratifying knock-on effect when it comes to rhythmic positivity and expression. The top end, meanwhile, is similarly assertive and similarly well judged – there’s bite and attack to treble sounds, but even lo-res files and/or considerable volume can’t provoke them into hardness or coarseness.

And in the midrange, the Focal dish the details as readily as any soap opera gossip. Singers get plenty of well-defined space in which to do their thing, and detail levels are such that vocalists of all levels of talent and technical ability are able to communicate in the torrential manner. If there’s attitude or emotion to be teased out of a singer’s performance, you can be sure the Bathys will do so.

Nuance meets Drama

Integration of the frequency range is smooth and assured, and the dynamic differential that’s as apparent in small harmonic variations as it is in big gain changes is made absolutely plain. ‘Nuance’ is every bit as available here as ‘drama’. The Focal don’t impress quite as much when it comes to active noise-cancellation, though. ‘Silent’ is more a hope than a guarantee, although they do deal with external sounds sufficiently to allow proper enjoyment of their prodigious music-making talents.

Sure, £699 spent on a pair of wired headphones will buy you a little more fidelity and a little more sonic assurance than the Focal Bathys are capable of delivering. But it won’t be a whole lot more – so you can consider these headphones as much for their sonic talent as for their overarching convenience. Which, in turn, means convincing high-end wireless headphones are most definitely A Thing.

Technical specifications

• Type wireless closed-back over-ear
• Drivers 40mm aluminium/magnesium ‘M’-shaped dome full‑range dynamic
• Frequency response 15Hz–22kHz
• Impedance
• Sensitivity
• Distortion <0.2% @ 1kHz
• Wireless connectivity Bluetooth 5.1
• Codec support SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX Adaptive
• Accessories USB-C to USB-C (1.2m); 3.5mm to 3.5mm (1.2m); USB-C to Lightning adapter; semi-hard carry-case
• Weight 350g
• Price £699

Manufacturer

Focal

www.focal.com

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