Focal Sib Evo Dolby Atmos-Enabled 5.1.2 Home Cinema System

Description

The 5.1.2 pack is the second generation in the Sib range, composed of two loudspeakers equipped with an additional speaker driver on the top featuring Dolby Atmos technology. This system distinguishes itself by offering sound effects on a vertical plane, reflected off the ceiling. Get ready to live a completely new audio experience worthy of cinemas!

Combination systems like the Focal Sib Evo have been around for a long time. They typically include small speakers and a subwoofer. Done properly, this type of design has some inherent advantages.

The human voice falls right in the critical midrange area of the acoustic range. By designing a small speaker that does not need to worry about producing deep bass, the engineer can focus on getting the important range of the music right. A well-designed sub can then take over to fill in the lower frequencies. The engineers know which speakers will be dedicated to which frequencies, and can design them to work perfectly with one another.

The real trick is coupling the satellites with a subwoofer that is fast enough to keep up with them without just being a boomy, noisy box. That boomy bass will cover up all the midrange goodness, defeating the whole purpose.

A good sat/sub system also offers the ability to place the smaller satellite speakers in the best spot in your room for great stereo imaging and put the sub in a place that couples best to your room for full and even bass response.

Most French audio products have a pretty cool look about them, and the Sib Evo is no exception. The five speakers are in a curvy ABS plastic housing. They will never be accused of having a basic, boxy look! Fit and finish are excellent. The speakers use a push connection for the speaker cable and will accept up to a 12 gauge speaker wire. All 5 also come with a neat little base for table use and included in the box are two wall mounts, which will probably come in handy for the rears. There is also an optional floor stand available for them.

The left and right larger speakers have two sets of connections on the rear, one pair for the main, and another on top of those for the Atmos speaker. One of our few complaints was the push connection widgets. It takes a little fiddling with them to get the speaker wire to go in all the way, and once you have it in, getting it out again is a bit of a challenge. For most people, getting the speaker wire in will be a one-time thing, so we felt this was not a deal-breaker.

Features & Technology

The five satellites each have a 5” Polyflex woofer and a ¾” soft dome tweeter. You will notice the main left and right satellites are larger than the other three. This is the cool part! These guys also have a 4” full-range Dolby Atmos speaker in the top of the cabinet that fires up at an angle.

The Cub subwoofer included in the package is almost a perfect 12” cube. It has an 8” Polyflex driver connected up to a 200-watt class D amplifier. The driver is downward firing with a front-firing port. Connections on the rear include a right and left input; the left is used for LFE (low-frequency extension channel). There is a level and crossover control, along with a phase switch. If you had to put the sub behind you, you’ll want to flip the phase switch to 180. The sub box itself is made out of a pretty dense MDF material and has a really solid feel to it with virtually no resonance. You’ll also notice that the feet for the sub are very large and designed to reduce vibrations.

Dolby Atmos came out about two years ago and we think it is the biggest improvement in surround sound we have heard since the introduction of Dolby Digital almost 20 years ago. Dolby Atmos is an object-based surround format where the audio engineer doing the movie soundtrack has the ability to place sounds in a three-dimensional space. The idea is to use surround speakers at ear level in addition to either in-ceiling Atmos speakers or speakers that reflect off the ceiling as the Sib system uses. The Atmos speakers in the larger left and right satellite cabinets are angled to bounce the sound off the ceiling so it will appear to be coming from right above you.

By now you may have figured out what the 5.1.2 means. In the new lingo of Dolby Atmos, this means you have five main speakers, one subwoofer, and two Atmos speakers.

Performance

We set up the Focal Sib 5.1.2 with one of the new Sony ES receivers to test it out. These are a great value, like the Focal system, and we suspect this will be a popular combination. Any Dolby Atmos-certified receiver will have a section in the setup in which you tell the system what kind of Atmos speakers you are using. When setting up the Focal system, make sure you specify that you are using upward-firing Atmos speakers in the front.

We set the crossover points for the satellites at 80 Hz and then put on some tunes to get the front speakers positioned best. Like most satellite/sub systems, we found you want them in a rough 2:3 ratio. This means that if they are two feet apart, you sit three feet from them. In most rooms, this will probably work out to about a 6-foot spread sitting about 9 feet away from them. We then played a few different cuts with deep bass to get bass levels set properly.

Being the two-channel audio geeks that we are, we first had to determine how this system performed with just music in a two-channel stereo. Our music tests used a NAD CD player going analog into the Sony receiver — very impressive! The speakers are very clean sounding with no trace of harshness. If you dial in the satellite position, you can get a great 3-dimensional image with the main vocals floating dead center in front of you. Probably the most impressive part is how well the subwoofer blends with the satellites. It took a little fiddling with its position and output level, but once we had it set the way we wanted, the bass was quite seamless to the satellites. While it does not go as deep as a more expensive subwoofer, its response is excellent for its size. We just found music was a lot of fun to listen to using this setup.

Moving onto the home theater performance, we tried some cuts with challenging dialog. One of our favorite movies for this is Valkerie because there are a lot of accented, deep voices in the soundtrack. If your center channel is weak, you’ll really notice it on some of the scenes. The Sib system did very well in this regard — the dialog was crystal clear, allowing the actors’ emotions to come through.

You’ll get the best results if you set the surrounds up just a little above ear level when you are seated, and about 12-18” behind your head, aimed at your listening area. If you have a flat ceiling that is 10’ or under, the upward-firing Atmos speaker does a pretty impressive job too. The cool thing about the base that comes with the main fronts is the way you can adjust the tilt on it +/- about 5 degrees so you can “tune” the way Atmos feeds bounces off the ceiling and arrives at your listening spot. Overall, we still prefer actual Atmos in-ceiling speakers for the best effect, but for the money, this system works really well!

The Focal Sib 5.1.2 might be one of the best values we have ever seen in home theater. You’ll have to run some wires to the rears, but the end result is way beyond any soundbar/sub combo in the same price range as the Sib 5.1.2 and a good Dolby Atmos receiver.

Overall Recommendation

Over the past couple of years, the soundbar has gained popularity because it is just so easy to integrate with a TV. But the audio performance of a soundbar just can not even approach a great separate home theater package.

When making your choice, you have to think about how much time over the next ten years or so you will spend watching that TV and listening to the audio system. We feel like the Focal Sib Evo 5.1.2 bridges that gap between a full-fledged home theater system consisting of multiple speakers in your ceilings and walls and a soundbar/sub combination. Couple it with a modest Dolby Atmos home theater receiver and you’ll be having tons of fun enjoying movies, TV, and sports for many years to come!

• Composed of a 5″ Polyflex speaker driver and a 1″ silk dome tweeter integrated into a sizeable enclosure in order to give it extended frequency response. The Dolby Atmos loudspeaker is equipped with an additional 3″ full-range Polyflex speaker driver on top dedicated to the Atmos effects.
• The Cub Evo active bass-reflex subwoofer recalls the same design codes as Focal’s Hi-Fi subwoofers in a ‘‘lifestyle” product. Equipped with an 8 ‘ ‘ speaker driver and a 200W Class D amplifier.
• Dolby Atmos offers sound effects on a vertical plane, which reflects sound off the ceiling, giving an ultra-realistic 3D realism effect to a home theater.
• Easy installation with a wide range of mount possibilities.