Prices listed in CA$.

Focal has been making waves in recent months with the official launch of its new Diva Utopia speaker—a bass-reflex, three-way, wireless active system priced at $49,999/pair. And with good reason: it’s a technological marvel that delivers stellar sound.

The Diva also marks the French company’s first foray into the all-in-one, wireless active speaker market for consumers. But while it may be uncharted territory for the brand, it seems a logical extension of where the brand was headed, considering Focal’s legacy of innovation and its partnership with British electronics pioneer Naim Audio. Developed over five years and part of Focal’s cutting-edge Utopia line, the Diva is just that: a pinnacle of modern audio engineering.

The Diva features a high-excursion inverted beryllium tweeter, a mid-bass driver, and two 6.5” long-throw woofers on either side of the cabinet, concealed under black fabric panels. The woofers are configured to move in unison and fire downward into a tuned port, to produce more powerful bass and prevent cancellation between low frequencies.

Powering each speaker are Naim-designed Class A/B amplifiers: 250 watts drive the woofers, while separate 75-watt amplifiers power the midrange and tweeter. Naim also developed the system’s digital signal processing (DSP) feature, which handles tasks such as dynamic loudness control, room correction, and driver optimization. The Diva is also equipped with Focal’s patented ADAPT (Adaptive Acoustic Personal Tuning) technology, which allows the speakers to be adapted to the acoustics of the room they’re in.

The Diva’s internal DAC employs Naim’s PULSE streaming platform, the same used in the company’s $13,999 NSS 333 streamer, which supports resolutions up to 192kHz/24-bit and DSD128 (converted to PCM), thanks to Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology.

Unlike Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, UWB excels at delivering spatial and directional data, allowing the Diva to produce exceptionally accurate imaging and distance cues. Either the left or right speaker can act as the primary speaker, serving as the central hub for external components—including analogue sources—while maintaining seamless communication with the secondary speaker via UWB. This eliminates the need for signal wires between the speakers, although each Diva still requires a power cable connected to an AC outlet.

To mark its new status as official Focal resellers, Audiophile Experts—owned by Stacy and Mathieu—hosted one its signature cocktail soirées to launch the Diva. Focal representative Guillaume was on hand to introduce the speaker and answer preliminary questions from attendees.

Guests were then guided in small groups of six into the store’s state-of-the-art listening room for an intimate encounter with the Diva, whose side panels, both floating and removable, are finished in felt and shaped to offer a distinctive front-facing cutout that frames the backlit Focal logo at the foot of the speaker. Weighing in at 141lbs and standing just under 4′-tall with a depth of 22”, with cabinets made of high-density polymer, the Diva looks substantial. It also sounded substantial.

A couple of preliminary observations: During my audition, these speakers emitted no detectable background noise. They were dead silent—free of any mechanical hum or buzz. This was no doubt abetted by the meticulous care Audiophile Experts put into their listening room’s electrical setup. Still, I heard no evidence the Focals were “on”—until the sound sprang from the stillness, painting a dimensional, vividly-coloured, unveiled view into a well-delineated soundstage.

The second thing that stood out was the speakers’ sense of effortless flow. With a rated sensitivity of 116dB @ 1m, I doubt Stacy had to turn up the volume much. The speaker’s dynamic range was wide, instrumental separation and imaging were incisive but never sterile or etched. No matter how dynamic the drums, or deep the bass, or busy the musical passage, it was all there—the big dynamic, whopping stuff alongside the small timbral, detailed stuff, living side by side in harmony. The Divas never sounded flustered.

On two Qobuz-streamed 16/44 tracks—”Le temps passé (Live à la Cigale, 1988)” by Michel Jonasz and “Danse macabre, Op. 40” by Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra—the sound came through clean, tonally rich, and full-bodied. Instruments moved and reflected light like real ones, with natural color and sinuous fluidity. Timbres—piano, strings, percussion, vocals—all sounded authentic. A notable moment came from the male vocal in the folk track, where I could hear the subtle shifts in air pressure guiding his syllables, lending the performance a striking sense of intimacy.

Dynamics could startle with their sudden impact, but there was also a wealth of micro-information that filled in the soundscape and gave a lifelike realism to images. And the bass? Rich, rousing, bombastic, room-filling, agile, and always musical. Altogether, it was a convincing high-end showcase.

The Divas reminded me of top-tier integrated amps, in the sense of not sounding compromised compared to separates. I think most of us have accepted the fact that separates don’t always mean better, and oftentimes can mean worse. Our hobby, and specifically its upgrade aspect, has always focused on trying to find optimal synergy between components. While this can be part of the fun, it can also lead to more compromises than gains. I won’t rehash the usual arguments in favour of integrated gear, but they’re worth considering.

The Diva shows what’s possible with today’s technology and the all-in-one digital audio concept. If you want things simpler but don’t want to give up on sound quality, the Diva could be your ticket to nirvana.