Focal CMS-40

Nine inches of aluminum with an aluminum/magnesium inverted dome tweeter and a four-inch woofer - Focal's smallest CMS, and the one that made desktop monitoring respectable.

Overview

Focal's CMS line - Compact Monitoring System - started with the CMS 65 and CMS 50. Both built a reputation before the CMS 40 arrived to round out the bottom of the range. The CMS 40 is the ultra-compact member of the family, an active nearfield aimed at broadcast and post-production rooms where desk space is scarce and a full-size monitor won't fit. The pitch, as the company put it in its own advertising, was sound neutrality, extended bass, high dynamics and an absence of distortion at high sound levels, all in a cabinet no more than nine inches high. That's marketing copy and should be read as such. The design underneath is more interesting than the slogan.

Start with the cabinet. Focal built the CMS 40 around an aluminum enclosure with specific acoustic treatment. That's heavier and more expensive than the molded-plastic boxes that dominate this price bracket. The cabinet resists the resonances that color small monitors, and mounting points at the back and underneath mean it can be hung or bracketed in rooms where a stand isn't an option. Front porting is the other practical decision. The CMS 40 can sit almost anywhere, even flat against a wall, without the bass loading going strange the way a rear-ported box would. Focal's own advertising made a point of this, noting that the front port lets it be placed in positions that would compromise other designs.

The drivers show the family lineage. Up top sits the same aluminum/magnesium inverted dome tweeter used in the CMS 50 and CMS 65, and Focal rates its output as extending to 28 kHz. That's well past the limit of hearing, but the point of an extended tweeter is the behavior below that ceiling, not the number itself. Below it is a four-inch Polyglass cone woofer, which Focal credits with extending the low-frequency response down to 60 Hz. That's an honest figure for a four-inch driver in a nine-inch box. It tells you what the CMS 40 is for: mids and the delicate mid-bass balance, not subwoofer duty.

The amplification is a 25W RMS class AB bi-amped system, with adjustments for high- and low-frequency shelving. Twenty-five watts doesn't sound like much next to the hundred-watt-plus ratings on larger nearfields, but for a four-inch woofer it's a sensible match. That gives enough headroom for nearfield listening without the thermal and distortion penalties of overdriving a small driver. The shelving controls count for more than the wattage in practice, because a monitor this small will always be fighting its placement, and trimming the top and bottom is what separates a usable tool from a fixed-voicing compromise. The design brief, per Focal, allows near-field listening from as little as 16 inches without compromising sound neutrality or the mid-bass and bass balance.

Period reception was warm. Mix (May 2010, p.2) ran a review describing the CMS 40 as Focal's ultra new, ultra compact active monitor, measuring no more than nine inches high with front porting, and carrying the same look and many features of the rest of the CMS near-field range. Becka noted the stereo imaging as spot-on, with center-panned material seeming to come directly from the wall in front of him. On a desktop monitor the listening triangle is short and imaging errors are magnified, so that's a useful thing to get right. The same review is the source of the "WOW moment from the beginning" line that Focal later lifted for its advertising. It started out as an independent reviewer's impression before it became marketing.

Pricing is a little tangled. The CMS 40 was listed at $495 each in Focal's professional literature, while period advertising in EQ Magazine (February 2011, p.37) and elsewhere carried it at $450 each. Both figures appear in print, and the difference is the usual gap between list price and street or advertised price rather than a contradiction in the product. Either way, it sat at the affordable end of the CMS range, the entry point to a line whose larger members cost considerably more per box. For a broadcast or post room buying several units, that gap adds up quickly.

The CMS 40 is not a full-range monitor. The 60 Hz bottom end is the honest limit of a four-inch woofer, and Focal's own solution was the CMS SUB, engineered to integrate with the CMS 40, 50 and 65. The company's guidance was to buy the monitors first and add the sub when finances permit. The reasoning holds: a sub designed to complement specific full-range speakers will integrate far better than a generic one added later. In a small room, though, a sub can excite room modes and skew the response, so the CMS 40 on its own is often the better choice for a tight space.

The CMS 40 is a Focal professional monitor from the era when the CMS line was establishing itself. It has an aluminum cabinet and a tweeter shared with its larger siblings, and it's small enough to be useful in a home setup. The aluminum case and mounting points make surviving examples easy to place, and the front port makes them forgiving of real rooms. The 25W class AB amplification is modest by modern class-D standards but suits the driver load. The bottom end is limited, so the shelving controls are the way to deal with a room.

Similar items on eBay

No exact Focal CMS-40 listings are live right now — these searches show current Focal and similar vintage audio gear on eBay:

As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.

Related Models

• Focal ALPHA-80
• Focal CMS-65
• Focal Utopia (1995-2002)
• Focal Grande Utopia (1996-2008)
• Focal SM9
• Braun AUDIO-1 (1965)
• Braun AUDIO-250 (1965)
• Magnavox Component Systems (1972)
• Acoustic Research AR (1967-1976)
• Acoustic Research 11