So I'm a big head-fi guy. I've owned high end options from Audeze, Audio-Technica, Hifiman, Grado, B&W, B&O, Oppo & SONY. I prefer closed back phones for listening privately.
Principally, I am interested in audio quality mixed with excellent build quality and comfort. So it may be interesting to know that when the Airpods Max hit the scene, I sold all of my other headphones (except for one pair of electrostatics). Reason was simple: they sounded as good as or better than everything else except the Audeze, they had a very low noise floor meaning I could listen to details at a safer volume (and while moving) and heavy as they were, they were much less cumbersome than the Audeze or most of the other high end wired headphones, which tend to have ludicrous cables and require finicky dongles.
Finally, the connectivity was awfully good. It's not quite magic (and in the early days of the firmware it could be downright bad, with the headphones dropping signal or needing to be reset many times per day), but light years better than every pure bluetooth options I tried.
Over time, the fact that my only option is compressed music has been a bit of a downer, and I do miss the fuller dynamic range and higher resolution of the Audeze. I am very much the intended market for a high end ANC headphone -- but I don't know if I'll be able to buy anything that doesn't have at least as good ANC as the Airpods Max and that included the transparency mode, which on the Max is almost magic compared to the competition. Hearing that the Focal do transparency well is a big plus.
I'm not sure if I will audition these or not. I like the idea of a decent onboard DAC and good transparency, but you can see in this review how bad the performance of the app is, which has me concerned for the experience of switching from wireless to wired modes. These are also rather inexpensive for a Focal headphone, which has me worried that they may have outsourced the build or cheaper out on the drivers.
