[Listening test] Floor-standing tower speakers Focal Aria Evo X N°2

Focal Aria Evo X N°2

Expressive and accessible HiFi

Prodotto: Floor-standing Tower Speakers Focal Aria Evo X N°2
Manufacturer: Focal - France
Sample supplied by the Italian distributor: Green Sounds
Cost: 3060€ (Currency conversion) - (YMMV)
Reviewer: Piero Canova - TNT-Audio Italy
Reviewed: June, 2025

Premise

Today we are talking about a speaker manufacturer that began its activity in 1979 and has 47 years of excellence in music reproduction behind it: Focal . It was founded in 1979 in Saint-Etienne, France, from the passion of engineer Jacques Mahul for music reproduction on the basis of a precision engineering company and over time has become an undisputed world leader in the speaker sector. On their website you will find many details about their history and the innovations they have introduced in these almost fifty years of activity; for me, in addition to being a fascinating story, it is the guarantee of a product developed with the utmost professionalism and that, if I were to need assistance in the future, would still be there to support me.

Focal's offering is truly extensive: among the high-fidelity speakers alone I counted 37 references to which we must add the pro audio, car audio, integrated systems and headphones families. If you have a couple of hours free, take a look around the site and you will see from how many different angles Focal approaches audio reproduction.

The model on test today is the Aria Evo X N°2: the Aria Evo X series is the third from the bottom in the Focal range and therefore is quite central among the entry level series Theva and the top of the range Utopia III Evo. In the same family there are two other floor-standing towers, a bookshelf speaker, a centre channel speaker, a sub-woofer and a bipolar surround speaker. Let's see how they are made and what's inside.

How they are made

I'll start with the first thing that struck me once unpacked: they are simply beautiful. I have never seen such a high level of finish. The cabinet is made of high-density MDF but is completely hidden by side panels that in the sample I tested were sage green (very elegant); the top is made of glass, and the front panel has a leather effect. The speaker membranes have a beige colour due to the construction that uses flax fibre in the sandwich; in my ranking of the most beautiful and representative speakers, if the white woofers of the JBL monitors remain in first place, here we are on par with the yellow Kevlar mid-ranges by B&W. Yes, I know that all this doesn't sound right, but if you want to put two towers over a meter high and almost 40 cm deep in a room where other people live you will guarantee yourself a few less discussions or negative comments if they are beautiful. The speakers rest on an aluminium alloy base that screws to the base of the tower. They are equipped with four screws that end with a metal tip on which you can screw a rubber cover. The screws allow for height adjustment and perfect levelling of the speaker. The side walls are not parallel and the speaker tapers at the back. I would like to make an additional note to the user manual: finally a manual that is not a photocopied and difficult to read sheet but a booklet that clearly explains how to unpack the speakers, how to mount the base and how to position them in the room. Yes, I know that many of you already know these things but not all those who approach this world are aware of them. I took a couple of photographs that I attach and as you can see, in a clear and understandable way, they show you that if you place the speakers in the corners you inflate the bass by 6dB or that the tweeter has a dispersion angle of 30° so if you sit too low or high the highs are muffled. Believe me, such obsessive attention to detail is very rare in any industry and makes you think that those who designed them spent a lot of time thinking about the needs of the user in everyday reality.

The specifications speak of a three-way floor tower, 103.5cm high, 29.4cm wide and 37.1cm deep; the weight is 25Kg. The speaker equipment includes two 16.5cm woofers, a 16.5cm midrange and a tweeter; the two woofers have a reflex loading with two ports: one on the front and one on the bottom. The frequency response is 45 Hz - 30 KHz ±3dB. The recommended power is between 40 and 250W. The connections are made via a pair of screw terminals on the rear face of excellent quality. There are tons of technical content here; I'll try to summarize it quickly:

Magnesium tweeter with an inverted dome in the shape of an "M" to allow precision but also softness of sound. The tweeter is equipped with a wave guide and the panel around the tweeter is made of soft polyurethane to improve the directionality of the sound and therefore the image.
The midrange has a membrane in a composite called FLAX, made of a layer of flax fibres between two very thin layers of glass fibre. The flax fibre is rigid but hollow and therefore very light to allow the membrane rigidity and reduced mass. The construction allows for better integration between midrange and tweeter and the presence effect of reproduction.
The two woofers also have FLAX membranes to increase their rigidity and therefore improve bass precision.
The two bass reflex ports help improve bass impact (front) and depth (bottom).

If you agree, I say we should move on to listening.

How do they sound?

The installation was very simple as were the connections. The two examples I tested had already been opened but to be safe I ran them in for a couple of days. The first impression was of a very precise, detailed sound, I would almost say monitor-like. As expected in a product of this lineage and technical base there are no obvious defects or shortcomings so I will try to focus on the differences compared to my usual listening.

The efficiency is better than my current speakers (Thiel CS 3.6). Equivalent sound pressures are achieved with significantly less power and this for me means that even with few watts they sound good and this definitely widens the choice of amplifiers.
The highs are really precise, detailed. They remind me a lot of studio monitors but less sharp.
The mids are excellent; the three-dimensionality of the sound is of the highest level. Compared to my usual listening, the instruments are a little smaller but more defined.
The bass is very present; for me exuberant. The configuration that in my setup sounded best was with the metal spikes completely screwed in to distance the reflex ports from the floor as much as possible. Nothing critical, on the contrary, with some components that tend to be a bit dry, it is actually a welcome correction but the upstream components must be chosen carefully.
Width and depth of the scene at the maximum levels; they like enough air around them to best express how much they can do.
Dynamically they are extremely fast; transients are lightning fast and full of impact but at low frequencies they struggle a bit to slow them down.

The amplifiers used for the review are two NuPrime ST10M monoblocks and I wanted to see if a different amplification could lead to a different result so I did borrow a first class integrated valve amplifier and the result was excellent. That bit of softness in the highs and roll-off in the lows married magnificently with the Aria X and the result was top-notch. I also did a test by raising them about thirty cm from the floor and the sound improved in the lows but this is a recurring effect in almost all floor-standing towers with woofers or reflex ports positioned low down. Reflections from the floor dirty the sound and if the woofer is too low the reflections become perceptible and annoying. This is a historical problem if you think about stands for B&W 801s; my Thiels are raised 35cm from the floor and if you position the Aria X in the same position they sound decidedly better. I was also tempted to try closing the lower channel of the bass reflex but I risked doing damage. Looking at the Aria Evo series you can see how there is also a central channel and a corner speaker for the rear channels. The suspicion that in designing the Aria Evo X N°2 a compromise was sought between multichannel and Hi-Fi use came to me. At first impact they are truly pyrotechnic but if compared to my 3.6 you can feel that the low frequencies are simply too much. To be honest, you also have to consider that a speaker like the Thiel 3.6 today would probably have a price around €20,000 and therefore let's say six times that of the Aria but other speakers that I have tested recently had a more correct setting in the bass registers.

Conclusions

The Aria Evo X N°2 are a splendid pair of speakers that can be for many the point of arrival in the construction of a serious Hi-Fi system. They are beautiful, simple to install, connect and sound very good. They have their own well-defined character and therefore you will have to try to find the right components upstream; it is a bit of work but believe me, it is worth it.

A heartfelt thanks to the Italian distributor Green Sounds Green Sounds for their availability in sending me the samples to test. Truly very kind, competent and helpful in managing the logistics that for a pair of speakers of this size is not exactly trivial.

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