Cool Tom! Sounds like we are in the same boat full of ears. hehe
I'm sure Mercenary loans to a cat such as yourself, or I could PM you my guy at Sweetwater who has been the coolest proaudio guy I've ever dealt with and I'm sure he would set you up, (with a little 30 day return policy method, maybe better?)
God, of all the things in the world I could wish for it would be that Tom Eaton gets to have some Focal Twins in his control room for the next couple months. Seriously. If you are doumbfounded with Genelec and others like I am, I would love knowing that your life would be filled with joy and learning for a long time.
I honestly didn't know what to think when I first got the Twins in. I switched up from the Solos, and the Solos were obvious intantly to me, I loved them but they were light as hell below 50.
Reading the threads, good trustable sources were saying just go up to the Twins, screw the sub, and I'm not a sub guy, so that's what I did.
The first few months I actually felt disappointed. The Solos were funner to listen to and I used to put CD's on just for enjoyment. I couldn't do that with the Twins. I expanded the GIK trapping in my room and things got a bit better. I bought more GIK, things started to get really good. I redid the room. Studied some physics and 30 degree angles, etc.. redid my room.
The Twins will not lie! Until I got 23 GIK Monsters and 244's in my control room, they showed me that my room sounded bad. When I finally got things right in the room, I noticed a big difference between my left and right ear midrange response. I wanted to blame the speakers, but switched them and couldn't blame them. I went through my entire system. Nothing to blame.
I went to a specialist (Dr.) and he showed me how I have a slight difference in the angle and shape of my ears. My left ear is ever so slightly tighter to the head and doesn't have this fun little bump near the main entrance. The difference is about 3% by sight, but until I had the Focal Twins I would have never known! The Twins make it glaringly obvious every day. I have some tricks to work around it and a possible invention in the works.
I think this in itself is pretty crazy and amazing.
So after a year of totally questioning the Twins, actually at times hating them, after this knowledge about my ears came to light, I suddenly loved the Focals with a pure love reserved for only very special things.
Like, I know my wife will not lie to me and that forms part of the foundation of our beautiful marriage. Well, I know the Focal Twins will not lie to me and since I accepted that fact as reality and started working from that premise, I have made many miracles happen with these Twins. Because as soon as I hear something, I have a judgement that is so purely tied to knowledge now, that I am able to know the right thing to do or not to do instantly.
The quality of my work is steadily increasing almost in reciprocal proportion to my knowing the Twins.
I could understand why alot of people would hate these. I just don't think they understood why they hated them.
On a pure enjoyment factor I have to give them a zero out of 10! maybe a 1.
On a pure truth to microscopic scintific rediculous proportions i have to give them a 9.8 or 9.9 out of 10.
They are the tools of a scientist.