French speaker designer Focal Professional, with their North American Distributor Audio Plus Services, have announced that their latest Alpha monitors are now shipping in the US and Canada. The new monitors are available in 3 sizes, Alpha 50, Alpha 65, and Alpha 80, with 5", 6.5" and 8" woofers respectively. The company says that the new monitors offer legendary Focal sound at an affordable price for home studio musicians and DJs creating and listening to their own music and remixes.

A spokesperson told us, "The monitors are easily integrated into many types of music environments; even small untreated home studios. Focal Alpha monitors are very natural sounding, yet highly revealing and present a very even tonal balance from low to high volumes. In addition, the new monitors were designed to have a 'wide sweet spot' to help mixing in challenging, smaller studio environments."

Simon Cote, National Pro Audio Sales Manager at Audio Plus Services, had this to say, "Focal is famous for great sounding monitors that professionals around the world in many types of music production rely on daily. Previously the realm of mastering engineers, top mix and recording engineers, and high-end post production studios, now everyone can afford the Focal quality sound and unique monitor design in their own home music studios with the new Alpha monitor series. These new monitors use many of the same technologies in our CMS series such as the polyglass woofers, but are available at a lower cost. We did not compromise the amplifiers in the Alpha series and use the traditional Focal bi-amped Class AB models."

Here's more details direct from Focal:

Key ingredients in the success of previous Focal monitors such as the Solo6 be, Twin6 be and SM9 models are also used in the new Alpha series including custom made Focal inverted dome tweeters which offer more dynamics and less directivity, manufactured in rigid aluminum for lower distortion. The Focal-designed polyglass cones in each woofer reveal a neutral sound with less distortion in the low mid and mid frequencies. And Focal has voiced each model the same regardless of the woofer size, even with the increase in mid and low mid output with the size of the woofer, the monitor's character is designed to remain the same. The 8-inch model is specifically designed not to create a 'scooped' mid range sound (like many other comparably-sized monitors), but to balance the mids and add more punch.

As commonly found on all Focal monitors is a bass-reflex front-ported cabinet allowing placement of monitors nearer to walls while still projecting correct imaging and low-end. The speaker drivers are paired with powerful bi-amped Class AB amplifiers allowing increased dynamics, high SPL, and also include thermal protection and electronic protection with a built-in limiter and compressor. Alpha monitors include a unique 'Auto-Standby Mode' where if no audio signal is present for 30 minutes, the speaker automatically goes into power standby, while 'Auto-Power On' is activated in the monitor by audio signal detection. The monitors have balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs, 6dB of gain sensitivity, and Low Frequency and High Frequency variable shelving to help match the monitor's output to their studio environment.

About Focal
Since its foundation, Focal has grown to become one of the world's leading Hi-Fi and professional loudspeaker companies. Headquartered in Saint-Etienne, France, it is now internationally recognized as a world leader in the design and manufacture of drivers for Hi-Fi and professional loudspeakers. Focal is also a pre-eminent designer and manufacturer of for car-audio and pro-audio. The company's key strength is its complete integration and quality control of the loudspeaker manufacturing process, from the design of speaker driver units, cabinets and crossovers, to the assembly of the finished product. Focal maintains an intense, continual research program and development in speaker driver technologies.

Pricing and Availability:
The new Alpha series monitors are available now from dealers in the US and Canada. Priced per monitor, the Alpha series ranges from $349 for Alpha 50, $449 for Alpha 65 to $599 for Alpha 80. 

More information:

• Alpha Monitors

• NAMM 22: Focal Release New Solo 6 and Twin 6 05-Jun-22
• New Studio headphones 03-Sep-13
• MESSE13: New Flagship SM9 Monitor From Focal 17-Apr-13