MESSE13: New Flagship SM9 Monitor From Focal

In a small sound-proofed room away from the bustle of the show floor, we caught up with Nicolas Debard of Focal showing their latest flagship monitor, the SM9.

It's an interesting design - the single cabinet houses essentially two separate speaker systems;

• one is a twin driver 'small' monitor with a response of 90-20kHz;
• the second configuration combines it with an additional bass driver and passive sub unit to produce a 3-driver full-range monitor which covers from 30-40kHz.

There's a switch on the side to select configuration, and another to bypass all EQ circuitry completely.

Seems a pretty neat idea - way better to have a single cabinet handling the duties of two individual monitors, with all the issues of interference and alignment that 2 sets of speakers both trying to take up the optimum position can bring.

And yes, in that little room they did sound pretty good ;-]

• More info can be found at the Focal website

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Andy McCreeth

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