We Tried the World’s Most Expensive Wireless Speakers

How do you put a price on good sound? If you’re French hi-fi manufacturer Focal designing the company’s first active wireless speaker, you don’t, really. The sound comes first, and the price—well, that’s whatever it is once you’ve created the speaker you set out to. That speaker? The Focal Utopia Diva. The price? One dollar shy of $40,000.

For most people, to even consider spending that kind of money on a pair of speakers is ludicrous. But in the world of high-end hi-fi separates, this is not an unusual figure. Considering this is an entirely self-sufficient setup, with amplification and wireless streaming functionality all built in—not to mention the reputation to back that up—some circles (with significantly more cash than I) would actually consider this a very reasonable price, actually.

Even so, there’s no getting away from the fact that these are the most expensive wireless speakers in the world, by our calculations, so we are in somewhat uncharted territory for what you might expect this level of engineering to sound like.

(What’s that? B&O’s $150,000 BeoLab 90 speakers are technically capable of wireless sound? Yes, yes—but B&O actually recommends you use wired inputs “to get all the features included.” The company even goes so far as to call the multichannel WiSA wireless audio a “supplement” to the wired offering, whereas the Utopia Diva is built from the ground up to be wireless first and foremost—with a spec list of capabilities to back that up.)

A New Path

It’s not been straightforward to get here by any means. It’s a project that has been five years in the making, and one that has overcome a number of technical hurdles to come into existence—and some internal hurdles, too. “Creating a speaker like this was a new path for the company,” Cedrick Boutonet, Focal’s CEO, tells me. “And there was some reluctance initially about whether we should do it. But we knew there were people out there who wanted great hi-fi sound, without all the wires and the boxes, and we wanted to make it for them.”

The goal from the get-go, Boutonet says, was to create the very best sound possible, entirely without compromise—which is what landed the speaker in Focal’s high-end Utopia range. Engineers were given free rein to do what they needed to ensure the speakers sounded as good as they possibly could. “The target was not to make the most compact speaker. The focus was completely on the sound,” adds Boutonet.

The former is certainly clear. The Focal Utopia Diva loom large in the Parisian listening room where I encounter them, with each speaker measuring 47 x 16 x 22 inches and weighing 141 pounds, or 64 kilograms. They make quite the statement, sitting on a chunky aluminium base and adopting the familiar backwards lean of the Utopia range that makes their footprint all the larger.

While there’s something distinctly space age about them, there’s a softness to them, too—quite literally. The panelling that wraps around each speaker, which is both floating and removable for future customization, is made from a light-gray felt material. At the front, the panels come together but don’t meet, leaving a space down the middle that accommodates Focal’s backlit logo and gives you a peek of the molded polymer cabinet underneath.

Naim Check

The Utopia Diva bring together the acoustic expertise of the team at Focal with the electronic know-how of its sister brand Naim, for the first time ever. Each speaker features a 1-inch beryllium tweeter, a 6.5-inch midbass driver, and four side-mounted 6.5-inch woofers, with a sizable 400 watts of Naim Class AB amplification on the inside. That’s per speaker, remember, meaning this setup is capable of 800 watts of power.

Getting the Utopia Diva up and running is as simple as with any other wireless speaker. Simply plug each speaker into power, fire up Naim’s excellent control app (there’s also a remote included, but the app will be more straightforward for most), and stream directly to them via Apple AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast, Tidal Connect, Qobuz, or Spotify Connect—plus there’s Bluetooth 5.3 onboard with aptX Adaptive support.

The Utopia Diva are also UPnP compatible, meaning you can stream from connected NAS drives and computers, and access internet radio. They’re even capable of multiroom—whether that be with other Naim products via the Naim app, or via the built-in capabilities of AirPlay 2 or Chromecast. Sonos, eat your heart out.

The two speakers don’t even have to be physically connected to each other if you really want to keep wires to a minimum. Naim has used UWB (ultrawideband) tech in the Utopia Diva, to ensure latency between the two speakers is negligible—though you should connect them for the very best sound quality. When wireless, the resolution maxes out at 24-bit/96-kHz, but this ramps up to 24-bit/192-kHz by hardwiring them together.

As you might expect, there are physical connections as well, including optical, HDMI, USB-A, and line-level RCA inputs. I didn’t get to hear any of these in action, though, which shows the backseat they’re really being given here, but they’re there if you want them—and it means the Utopia Diva can hook up to your TV and any hi-fi separates you might have, without the need for an amplifier.

What Does $40K Sound Like?

Now sat in front of the speakers, I get the chance to hear what all this really means in practice, and Raoul Bauer, acoustics systems designer at Focal and Naim, is in charge of the playlist that will show us just what these speakers are made of.

Spoiler alert—they sound superb. It’s tricky to really imagine what $40,000 of engineering sounds like until you’re sitting in front of it, and if you hazard a guess, you’ll likely still underestimate the impact. Perhaps most importantly for a system like this, you’d never know you were listening to wireless speakers and not hi-fi separates unless you were told, which in itself is a huge accomplishment (and exactly the goal).

What’s the difference? Generally speaking, squeezing everything you need for good sound into one box is a path to audio compromises—what that means can vary, but you might hear less detail, or there could be timing issues, squashed dynamics, or a poor stereo image. Any number of sonic inaccuracies that ultimately take the sound away from a true reproduction of what was recorded. The lack of any such compromise in the Utopia Diva is clear.

While it might be tempting to turn these speakers up to 11 and demonstrate the pure power and volume they’re capable of (which is exactly why I’m not in charge of the iPad), I am eased in with several airy acoustic tracks that demonstrate a frankly jaw-dropping level of detail and insight. There’s a meticulous approach to accuracy here, but without the stiff upper lip to go with it. So while there’s precision, there’s also plenty of drive and dynamism that shows the Utopia Diva know how to have fun.

To demonstrate further their commitment to delivering the artist’s intentions, Raoul plays two different versions of A Thousand Kisses Deep with different instrumental arrangements. So subtle are the Utopia Diva in their handling of detail that I can hear the instrument placement and musician’s style of playing shift right in front of me as we switch recordings. It might be a cliché to say it’s as if we were really there, but that’s undoubtedly the feeling I got the longer I listened.

Power Struggle

Of course, give the Utopia Diva the chance to show the scale they’re capable of, and they’ll waste no time in blowing your socks off. These are immensely powerful speakers, and will need a room that won’t hamper that.

In the listening room I’m in, the speakers are several meters apart from one another, and then again from a side wall, plus at least a meter from the back of the room. Small rooms need not apply, then (but if you have $40,000 going spare for a wireless speaker system, we’re assuming that won’t be an issue).

Even with all this space, bass is suitably substantial, yet never overpowering—enforcing its authority only ever as far as it should. There’s tons of texture, depth and body to the near visceral bass vocal intro of Change On the Rise by Avi Kaplan, and this helps to build a confident and upfront character that seems to work well with all the music you can throw at it.

From flowing orchestral pieces to spiky electronic music, the Utopia Diva are completely at home with it all—and the space, poise, and dynamic handling that they are capable of ensures they are never anything less than utterly engaging.

But for all the drive and enthusiasm, there is also nuance and focus; for all the times they turn their hand to big and bold, there is also calm and consideration. While nine test tracks is far from enough to cast a full judgement of these speakers, it’s enough to leave me wanting to listen to more. A lot more.

There’s no getting away from their price, of course, which is inconceivable for all but the most committed (and wealthy) audiophiles. Not to mention the fact that for a lot of people, the sound that something like a Sonos speaker offers will be more than enough. But just like any kind of “luxury” product, the allure, the aspiration that comes with it—it’s all part of the appeal. It’s a different world, but it’s certainly fun to be part of it for a while.