[Crinnotes] Focal Clear Mg Quick Review: Padgate?

So by taking pad variation out of the equation here, some things become even clearer:

1. Indeed, the Clear and the Clear Mg are, at least driver-wise, tuned extremely similarly.
2. Because there are reports that both headphones also measure similar with their own respective pads, this also shows some level of pad variation going on.
3. The technical differences between the two headphones are made even more apparent. More on this later.

There are some major caveats of course, for instance the Clears that I was testing with had very worn pads and so may not even be representative of what a Clear with fresh pads would be like. But it is also to be noted that I actually liked the Clears that I was using with the worn Clear pads and not so much with the fresh Clear Mg pads, so if the latter is supposedly more representative of what a true Clear is supposed to sound like then some downranking is in order. Certainly a lose-lose situation here.

But let’s talk a little more about the whole Clear vs Clear Mg debacle. With the two on Clear Mg pads thereby putting both on equal ground in a tonal sense, the technical differences get a lot more obvious. That is to say, the Clear Mg sounds noticeably mushier and “slower” than the original Clear, and a tad bit less resolving too. 

If I had to put it in more comparative terms, let’s just add in the Utopia into the mix. The Utopia is one of the most resolving headphones out there with a timbre that is just as finicky to deal with due to its notoriously hard transients and what some would call “overly-textured notes”. As such, the Clear is often regarded as the easier-going headphone wherein one sacrifices some of that top-class resolution for a timbre that is easier to manage for more people.

Then you have the Clear Mg, which is one more step down from the two in terms of both resolution and note attack, resulting in a smoother but also less detailed presentation all around. In many cases this would still be fine, after all the Clear Mg is still a very dynamic headphone and not too bad technically when compared to the rest of the market, but this is one of the few cases where I would actually recommend an Audeze for those looking for a similar smoothed-over, upper-mid-dulled presentation without that hit in resolution.

But at the end of the day I’m still left with more questions than answers. Are the pads different from the original Clear? Whose Clear Mgs are representative, mine or the others who received sets that measured almost exactly like the originals without a pads swap? Did I just get a dud set? If so, is there a chance that you, the buyer, would also get a set like this?

If anything else one thing is Clear: I prefer the Clear.