Audiophilepure

Overall, the Focal Theva No 3’s sounded very good and are an excellent value for the dollar. They tend to have a punchy bass and bright highs. That is their sonic signature. When I see photos on Facebook of audiophiles’ setups, and an equalizer is in the photo, the sliders are adjusted to boost the bass and treble. The Focal Theva N^o 3’s already do that. The bass was a bit too intense for me, so I stuck a rolled up sock in the port. That reduced the bass a few dB, and it was perfect. I will show you the difference in frequency response and impedance curve in the bench test section. If you want to do this, with any speaker for that matter, obtain a foam insert. You can Google foam speaker port plugs (also called bungs) to find choices.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/mofi-sourcepoint-8-loudspeaker

There’s no criticising the speaker’s ability to communicate rhythm and pacing either – important for every genre, but arguably more so when diving into the boundaries between jazz and what Westerners glibly call ‘World Music’. There’s a lot of those crossover subgenres explored on Jazz Is Dead 001 [JID001; 44.1kHz/16-bit], the first disc of a series from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad putting modern jazz compositions in the limelight, and the SourcePoint 8 articulated the off-beat drumming on ‘Distant Mode’ and the counterpoint alto saxophone of Gary Bartz without sounding muddy or just plain wrong. Holding things together and presenting challenging compositions lucidly is what the speaker does well – it certainly kept the funky jazz rhythms on ‘Conexão’ flowing and got my foot tapping.

That the SourcePoint 8 doesn’t swell the soundstage to an epic scale, but keeps it focused, works to its advantage with most albums. Playing music a tad more ‘up front’ and immediate – but never forced or brash – these MoFi cabinets typically kept me engaged, as if I was up close to the stage. Which is exactly where the fun is to be had.