Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada’s National Research Council can be found through this link.

When striving to comprehend and assess abstruse things, we tend to resort to simplifications. Our general view of a company and its products, for instance, is often based on our impression of some representative sample from its offerings: a favorite crossover SUV from a car manufacturer, the flagship cellphone or TV from an electronics manufacturer. Likewise, we often perceive the top model from a loudspeaker manufacturer as indicative of the kind of quality that can be expected from other models from that brand and form our view of it accordingly. But an entry-level floorstander can also be a measure of a speaker maker’s competence. The Theva N°2 loudspeaker ($899 each; all prices in USD), from the French hi-fi audio equipment manufacturer Focal, a highly respected brand, exemplifies this correspondence perfectly.

The Theva series replaced Focal’s Chora series as its entry-level line of speakers. Designed to serve in a dual role, for either stereo or home-theater listening, the Theva line consists of seven models: three three-way floorstanding speakers—the N°2 ($899 each), the larger N°3 ($1199 each), and its Dolby Atmos version, the N°3-D ($1499 each)—a two-way standmount, the N°1 ($998/pair); a center-channel speaker ($649); surround speakers ($649 each); and a subwoofer, the Sub 600P ($1399). All except the powered Sub 600P are passive loudspeakers.

While stereo playback may be the intended role of a pair of Theva N°2 speakers—the only role they played in my audition—it’s always nice to have the option to supplement a pair of stereo speakers with other speakers from the same hi-fi ecosystem for a fully fleshed-out home-theater setup.

Physical properties

Measuring 36.7″H × 7.6″W × 13.9″D, the Theva N°2’s cabinet, though rectilinear in form and rather plain, is quite attractive, I found. Three finishes are offered: dark wood, a vintage-walnut-like shade, with a steely blue baffle (which perfectly matches the color of the driver cones); light wood, a paler, oak-like shade, with a whitish baffle; and dark gray, with a high-gloss black baffle. My sample pair had the dark-wood finish. The Theva N°2’s wood finishes are in fact vinyl, not wood veneer, but the material is of high quality. I liked its look and feel.

The cabinet is built of MDF stock 16mm thick and feels solid. Its walls are not as thick as those of some other loudspeakers in this price class, but a knuckle-rap test elicited no ringing and revealed no problems. Thoughtful design and construction techniques allow the Theva N°2’s cabinet to be made with thinner walls, which are lighter, cheaper, and more eco-friendly, but still be largely inert sonically. Each loudspeaker weighs in at around 37 pounds.

The Theva N°2 is a vented design, with a rear port that is flared on both ends. Below the port are a pair of binding posts that will accept spades, bananas, or (my preference) bare wire. It employs a tweeter, a midrange driver, and two woofers and offers a magnetic cloth grille. The dark wood and black versions come with a black grille, the light wood model with an off-white grille. I thought my dark wood Theva N°2s looked and sounded better without the grilles and left them off.

A small stand accompanies each loudspeaker, which is secured to the cabinet with screws (included). It is made of lightweight molded plastic but is solid. Grippy pads are provided for placement on a hard surface; screw-in spikes are included for placement on a carpet. Most important, the stand tilts the loudspeaker back by a few degrees, physically time-aligning the drivers’ acoustic centers with respect to the listener’s ear position. For the Theva N°2 to sound as its designers intended, its stand must be used.

The Theva N°2’s twin 5″ woofers and 5″ midrange driver feature proprietary cones, a design Focal calls Slatefiber membrane, developed by Focal and manufactured in-house. This cone technology was also used in the outgoing Chora line. A composite of recycled carbon fiber and thermoplastic polymer, where the carbon fiber is laid in a generally uniform orientation but is not woven, this lightweight material has exceptional rigidity and excellent damping characteristics, key to the cones’ acoustic performance. Unlike the crosshatch pattern seen in typical carbon-fiber products, Slatefiber cones’ irregular carbon-fiber layout gives it a unique, organic appearance. The midrange driver also features an integrated phase plug, which improves the driver’s high-frequency characteristics as well as its aesthetics.

Up top is Focal’s signature TNF tweeter, a 1″ inverted dome made of aluminum and magnesium with a surround derived from the company’s flagship Utopia speaker. Focal claims this surround, which is formed of Poron, a shape-memory material, reduces distortion by a factor of three in the critical range between 2kHz and 3kHz. The TNF tweeter in the Theva line features a new waveguide, designed to improve the tweeter’s already low directionality. This dark gray elliptical waveguide is quite shallow and seems to be there for fine tuning, not to radically reshape the tweeter’s dispersion. Working in concert, the inverted dome and waveguide are said to yield a frequency response that remains within ±0.5dB off-axis, in the horizontal plane. This provides some latitude in the listening position and ensures a stable soundstage and proper stereo imaging. This behavior, in my experience, also improves timbral accuracy. Would I in fact experience these qualities when listening to the Theva N°2 pair? I was eager to find out.

The Theva N°2 has a stated frequency response of 53Hz–28kHz (±3dB). The −6dB point is specified at 44Hz, which is respectable considering the compact cabinet and smallish woofer-cone area. The nominal impedance is specified at 8 ohms, with a minimum of 2.9 ohms. The N°2’s claimed sensitivity of 90dB should present a relatively easy load to most solid-state amplifiers and receivers, but that dip in impedance means it isn’t well suited to most tube amps. The recommended minimum amplifier power of 40W reflects that.

System and setup

Driving the N°2s was a 150Wpc Hegel H190v ($4200, review forthcoming), which also served as a DAC, streamer, and phono preamp. My analog source was a Micro Seiki DQ-3 turntable, equipped with a Micro Seiki MA-707 tonearm and an Audio-Technica AT95SA cartridge and fitted with a Michell record clamp and a Little Fwend tonearm lifter. My Oppo BDP-105 served as a disc transport feeding the Hegel’s onboard DAC via coaxial S/PDIF, but I also used analog RCA and XLR connections. My LG C1 OLED television served as a streaming endpoint, mostly for TV and movies, with either the Oppo or the Hegel handling digital conversion.

AmazonBasics 14AWG OFC speaker cables ferried power from the H190v to the N°2s, while Have Inc. RCA cables and Blue Jeans DA202 XLR cables made single-ended and balanced analog connections, respectively. A Tributaries Delta 75-ohm coaxial cable served as the digital link between the Oppo and Hegel. My Netgear R6080 router, powered by a Jameco 170245 linear regulated 12V supply, connected to the Hegel via a generic Cat6 cable for streaming duties. I used the stock power cable provided with each component.

After some experimentation, I ended up with the N°2s about 8.5′ each from my listening position, just shy of 7′ apart. This left about 2.5′ from the backs of the speakers to the front wall and roughly 4′ between each speaker and the near side wall. I played around with the toe-in quite a bit, initially settling on 15 degrees or so, with the speakers pointing almost directly at my listening position. I could just see a sliver of the inside edge of each cabinet. A much shallower angle, I found out later, yielded better results. Nailing the N°2s’ toe-in was a fiddly but ultimately an enlightening process.

Sound

My reference speakers are a pair of Amiga towers, designed by Paul Carmody, that I built from a kit from Parts Express. I’ve wrung every last bit of sonic goodness from these speakers, and I’m quite proud of them—they sound at least as good as many, possibly most, other pairs of speakers under $2500. Admittedly, though, as reference speakers, the Amigas aren’t ideal: only a small clique of builders and those with whom they share their music can be familiar with their sound.

Naturally, I placed the Theva N°2s right on the footprints of my Amigas at first. It quickly became evident, however, that this was the wrong place for them. The treble sounded brittle and harsh, everything was pushed in a big jumble to the front of the soundstage, and the overall sound was grainy and unrefined. On “Fade into You,” the opening track of Mazzy Star’s 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See (CD, Columbia CDP 0777 7 98253 2 5), which I played using the Oppo’s analog outputs, the midrange and highs were bloated and made Hope Sandoval’s vocals seem like a huge blob between the two speakers.

To correct this, I reduced the toe-in to just a couple of degrees. In this orientation, nearly parallel with the room, the Theva N°2s cast a wider soundstage, but the center image remained solid and stable—perhaps even more so than before. I continued to fiddle with the N°2s’ placement, moving them about within a few inches of their initial positions, and found I could get their tonal and spatial qualities to be very similar to those of the Amigas.

I next spun up my MFSL reissue of Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlily (CD, UDCD 771). On “Cowboy Romance,” I was treated to the wide, deep soundstage and focused vocals I was used to hearing on this track. The piano was spread across center stage, the guitar to the left and the violin to the right, all sounding distinct, each in its own space. Despite the minimal toe-in, instruments’ outlines were only marginally vague. Tonally, the upper mids and highs were a hair glassier, and the bass had a bit more bump, though bass extension seemed more limited than what I’m used to. Overall, the sound was mostly neutral and remarkably similar to that of my Amigas, a sound my ears expected and were pleased to find.

I played the Theva N°2s in that position and orientation for a couple of weeks as I put them through their paces, getting used to their sound and presence in my home. But then I started thinking about what I knew about those inverted dome tweeters, about what the speakers were doing and what they could do. If it’s the case, as Focal says, that the high frequencies are mostly flat on-axis and fall off smoothly off-axis, then maybe some toe-in could be beneficial after all. Gradually, over the next few days, I toed the Theva N°2s in more and more. The final toe-in turned out to be significant but not so much that the speakers were pointing directly at my ears, as they did before.

The N°2s performed the stereo-imaging party trick to stunning effect. Certain instruments and voices leaped out into the room, well in front of the speakers, solid and palpable. This was best demonstrated on Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman,” from the band’s 1976 album Rumours (CD, Warner Bros. Records W2-3010). From the first few seconds, I could hear Mick Fleetwood’s tom and snare drums taking a forward position, his kick drum punching right through to the front.

The hi-hats and cowbell occupy the same acoustic space in this recording, panned hard right, and are mixed so that they sort of blend together. Not through the N°2s. They zinged and zanged out into the room, hovering three feet in front of the right speaker baffle, especially the hi-hat. I heard a similar, though subtler, effect with Lindsey Buckingham’s acoustic guitar and Stevie Nicks’s voice, which appeared a little farther back but were still imaged solidly and distinctly, while John McVie’s bass blanketed the space between the speakers.

The imaging trick was played out compellingly on “Sad Pilot” from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s 2024 album Flight b741 (256kbps AAC, p(doom) Records / Spotify). I streamed this song from Spotify through the TV via the Oppo’s DAC. The fuzz guitar riff that opens this track sounded huge as it was gallivanting around the room. Imaging trickery was not quite as striking on the rest of the track, but that fuzzy electric six-string persisted through it, appearing anywhere but at the speakers’ positions.

One of the qualities of the Theva N°2 that I learned to appreciate most is its flexibility with respect to position and toe-in. Tweaking these speakers’ placement and, especially, toe-in can markedly affect their presentation, allowing listeners to adjust and balance fluidity, brightness, and imaging according to their own aural sensibilities. While plenty of speakers with more traditional dome tweeters can also sound great, many lack such flexibility.

Generally, in terms of tonal balance, I’d characterize the N°2s as treble biased. Consistently, irrespective of their position and orientation, they emphasized the treble to varying degrees. There was some extra heat in the 5kHz–7kHz range, which was particularly apparent with vocal sibilants and cymbals, especially hi-hats. I perceived this as an overly forward presentation of these instruments. This coloration in the treble affected the overall timbre but it wasn’t obtrusive or unpleasant. At the lower register, the Slatefiber cones impressed me with their sound: clean and clear, albeit a touch too cool for my taste, from the midbass up through the upper midrange, where they begin handing off to the TNF tweeter.

Comparison

I was keen to compare the Theva N°2s against my DIY Amigas. The radiating area of the Amiga’s single 7″ Dayton midwoofer is almost exactly the same as that of the two 5″ Slatefiber woofers in the Theva N°2. The two speakers are also similar in their cabinet dimensions. Yet the Amiga manages to have far deeper bass extension. This may be due to a lower resonant frequency of the larger Amiga’s Dayton cone, which allows for a lower port tuning. Doubling up on the woofers gives the Theva N°2 a clear advantage in low-frequency efficiency, but the Amiga can play deeper. This was clearly audible.

The Theva N°2’s more limited bass extension is amply compensated by its warm, pleasant midbass. On “Gold Dust Woman,” the Amigas reached a bit deeper in their rendering of the lowest bass-guitar notes and had greater leg-shaking power in that register. But the Theva N°2s’ bass was warmer and had a bit more punch and texture.

As to soundstage, while the Theva N°2s’ lay near my listening position, the Amigas left it behind the speakers. To use the familiar (if somewhat worn) analogy: Listening to the Theva N°2s was like sitting in the second row; listening to the Amigas, the 15th. And with anything beyond minimal toe-in, the Theva N°2s have a brighter, harder edge that makes everything a bit more live and more immediate still.

With a −3dB point of 53Hz, the Theva N°2s are solid in a small to midsize listening room. In a large room, you may want to add a subwoofer—the Theva N°2 will likely play nicely with just about any sub—or step up to a pair of N°3s (a $600 premium).

When carefully built, the DIY Amiga can ably compete with the Theva N°2 and will cost you less (unless you go crazy with extras: feet, finishing, etc.). And there is no shortage of more traditional competition: the Paradigm Premier 700F and KEF Q7 Meta, both of which retail for $899 each, and the DALI Oberon 7 at $1700 per pair, to name but a few examples. (Many more are available on the market, so there’s some homework to be done for prospective buyers.) The Theva N°2 is unique, though, in its TNF inverted-dome tweeter and Slatefiber drivers.

Conclusion

Fans of the Focal “house sound” and aesthetic won’t be disappointed by the Theva N°2. Neither would those looking for a pair of towers that can do double-duty as a two-channel set and as part of a home-theater system.

The Theva N°2 is a well-built and versatile loudspeaker, one whose sonic signature can be fine-tuned by a careful adjustment of its placement and toe-in. Those who dig the simple, classic look of boxy, narrow tower speakers and prefer to leave the grilles off, as I do, would surely approve of the Theva N°2, especially in the dark-wood finish. Those who are imaging freaks, folks who want speakers that bring them up on stage with the performers, are sure to enjoy Focal’s midsize floorstander. Whether one’s focus is on aesthetics or sound, the Theva N°2 can make one a Focal fan.

. . . Matt Bonaccio
mattb@soundstage.com

Associated Equipment

• Speakers: DIY Paul Carmody Amiga, built from a Parts Express kit
• Integrated amplifier: Hegel H190v, McIntosh Laboratory MA6850
• Power amplifier: First Watt F5
• Digital source: Oppo BDP-105
• Turntable: Micro Seiki DQ-3 and Micro Seiki MA-707 tonearm.
• Phono cartridges: Audio-Technica AT95 with AT-VMN95SH Shibata stylus; Sumiko Blue Point No. 3 Low Output
• Digital cables: Tributaries Delta coaxial cable, Blue Jeans Cable Series-FE HDMI cable
• Analog interconnects: Blue Jeans Cable DA202 XLR cables, Have Inc. RCA cables
• Speaker cables: AmazonBasics 14AWG OFC speaker cables
• Television: LG C1 OLED display, 55″
• Internet router: Netgear R6080; Jameco 170245 Linear Regulated DC supply
• Analog accessories: Michell record clamp; Little Fwend tonearm lifter

Focal Theva N°2 loudspeaker
Price: $899 each
Warranty: Five years, parts and labor

Focal JMlab
108 Rue de l’Avenir, 42350 La Talaudière
France
Phone: +33 4 77 43 57 00

Website: www.focal.com

Focal Naim America
156 Lawerence Paquette Industrial Dr.
Champlain, NY 12919
USA
Phone: 1-800 663 9352

Focal Naim Canada
313 Rue Marion,
Repentigny, QC J5Z 4W8
Canada
Phone: 1-866 271 5689

Website: www.focalnaimamerica.com