Questions & Answers for Focal Professional CMS50 Studio Monitors

Focal Professional CMS50 Studio Monitors

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5 Questions from the Community

  • The product does not include cables to connect to a Mac! Power cables are the only cables mentioned in the description. What cables do I need to buy

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    A very late reply, but it might help other people out. These are professional studio monitors, and very good entry ones at that, they're not cheap PC speakers or designed to make dodgy recordings sound great. To get the best out of them, you will want your Mac to be connected to an external DAC (digital to analog converter), either via USB or the headphone-out which doubles as a digital out; spdif/optical toslink to be precise. You would then connect the Focals either via unbalanced RCA cables, or balanced XLR if your DAC supports it. Some examples would be the Apogee Duet or DAC Magic for entry level. You don't need amplification because these are active not passive speakers.

    If you're going to have a decent desktop set up, then you need to go all the way (this includes high-bitrate AAC, or ideally ALAC files, turning off iTunes EQ in order to avoid upsampling or the audio, and isolating the Focals from the desk they are sitting on, otherwise why pay all this money and not use them properly?

    Hope that helps someone.

  • True range capacity of these speakers?

    I can't listen to these locally, unfortunately. I want to hear some user-based opinions on the range of these speakers. My home set up doesn't lend itself to a separate sub-woofer, so ideally I'm looking for full range satellites (dreaming?).

    What are some opinions on tight highs and distortion-free lows on these monitors? I listen to music with deep and dark bass, and want the speakers to accurately represent low tones beyond what my ears can pick up.

    Thanks in advance.

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    The frequency response is listed on the Focal website. I think these go down to 45hz, and 90% of music, let alone clubs and places like that never go below 40hz. There's no way a 2.0 set up will match a 2.1's sub for low bass, because the speakers are simply too small to move the air like that; if they were, then who would need a sub?

    The Focals have clean, accurate bass but don't try and reproduce what they're incapable of doing well. They will faithfully give you low frequency response within the realm of nearly all music, and I've heard several people comment that it feels like they go lower than the stated response anyway.

    As far as desktop solutions go, you'd want 8"+ monitors if you're after the lowest bass (the CMS 65's go lower than the 50s), but even then, bass is bass and if you don't want to annoy the neighbours, then a sub doing 30hz or a bookshelf speaker doing 30hz is still going to travel through the wall the same way. Remember, anything lower than 40hz is really where you start feeling the physical effects of bass rather than hearing it anyway, and this is more the preserve of movies than music. These monitors are among the best in their price point and have won awards, which should tell you enough about how good they sound with well-recorded music!

  • Can I connect these to the 30' Cinema Display?

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  • Can i connect my ipod and iPhone to these speakers?

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    You could connect these with a stereo miniplug to RCA conversion cable.

  • Can I use a sub with this set up?

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