Stephen Mejias, our excellent assistant editor, is fully in the grip of vinyl fever. He and I are now having daily conversations about the once and future allure of the long player.

I never cared much for Santana. (The band, not Johan. Johan, I love.) You know, there was always "Evil Ways" and "Oye Como Va"&#151fine songs for a stretch of highway when there's nothing else on the radio, but, eh: So what? I shrug my shoulders.

Back in April, Daniel Jacques of Audio Plus, Focal's North American distributor, invited me to visit Focal's factory in St. Etienne. Since I'd never reviewed any Focal loudspeakers, I didn't know a lot about the company, but I <I>have</I> spent many happy hours in Jonathan Scull's ribbon chair, listening to his Grand Utopias, so I was eager to go&mdash;and to learn more.

Focal combines high-tech work stations with a phenomenal amount of hand labor. Metal drivers and inexpensive dome tweeters are heavily automated, but many drivers are assembled by <I>hand</I>, especially Focal's "W" composite cones.

Stiff, extremely light "aircraft" foam is stretched over a mold by hand and gently heated to maintain "dimensional stability," according to Dominic Baker, Focal's export sales director. The molds have different flares, depending on the driver's purpose&mdash;and they are produced in-house by Opus 42.

Another hand process is stretching and fitting various layers of adhesive-impregnated glass-fiber material to the front and back of the foam center. Again, depending on the driver's purpose, different amounts of glass fiber layers are employed. Since Focal controls the flare, drive system, and crossover, the company has massive amounts of control over elements like mass and Q.