Why Focal Had One of the Best-Sounding Rooms at CES

We spent some time at Focal’s CES suite to get our first in-person listen to two new products: the Mu-so Hekla and the Diva Mezza Utopia speakers. We started with the Mu-so Hekla, which may look like a soundbar at first glance but is built as a full 7.1.2 all-in-one system. It uses 15 individually amplified drivers arranged across the front, top, and sides to handle Dolby Atmos effects, with a total of 660 watts of Class D amplification. Focal rates the system from 30 Hz to 20 kHz, and it also incorporates ADAPT room calibration, which analyzes room layout and listening position during setup. We were able to walk through the setup process in the app and listen to both music and movie content, including the Top Gun: Maverick dogfight scene. The sense of immersion was convincing enough that it often sounded like there were speakers behind us, even though everything was coming from a single enclosure. From there, we sat down to listen to the Diva Mezza Utopia, Focal’s new statement active loudspeaker. It is a three-way design featuring a beryllium M-profile tweeter, a ‘W’ cone mid-bass driver, and four 8-inch push-push woofers per speaker, each powered by 500 watts of Class A/B amplification. Audio is transmitted wirelessly between the speakers using Ultra Wideband at 96 kHz/24-bit with no compression, with a wired Hi-Res Link option available that increases internal resolution to 192 kHz/24-bit. Focal also introduced Intelligent Dynamics Clocking (IDC) to keep the channels tightly synchronized, along with a more advanced version of ADAPT for room tuning. The Diva Mezza Utopia runs on the Naim Pulse platform, supporting Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Google Cast, UPnP, and multi-room playback. Based on what we heard in the suite, both the Mu-so Hekla and Diva Mezza Utopia made a big impression and earned AVSForum Best of CES 2026 awards. Be sure to check out our other CES coverage videos for more booth tours, walkthroughs, and first listens from the show floor.