You’ll need to look hard to find the Bathys’ right-side/left-side markings. I weighed them at 12.6 ounces, compared to 11.2 ounces for the B&W Px8 and just 9 ounces for the Sony WH-1000XM5 (which are entirely plastic). That said, the Bathys are heavier travel companions than some of the wireless headphones we’ve reviewed lately. Montabonel says using magnesium instead of aluminum for this component delivered a weight savings of 10 grams (about 0.35 ounces). The yokes that connect the circumaural (over-ear) earcups to the headband are fabricated from magnesium and allow you to turn the earcups flat, so you can store the headphone in its fabric-covered hard-shell case. Adjustments are indexed and deliver tactile feedback with a satisfying click when you push or pull the earcups. The Bathys’ headband is constructed mostly from aluminum, with bits of plastic here and there. The headphone’s other components are manufactured elsewhere, with final assembly performed in Asia (China, presumably). The Focal Bathys are a luxury item, with glove-soft lambskin on its earpads and the top of its headband. Where an MQA stream can be as much as 9,216Kbps, Montabonel said, the aptX Adaptive codec could “compress the data to between 279Kbps to 420Kbps.” She also said “a lot of Android devices are limiting USB Audio to 48kHz.” Meanwhile, the Bathys do not support DSD bitstreams at all. While the Bathys support the MQA format, Montabonel said the playback device and/or the codec being could impose limitations by downsampling the signal. While the Bathys have been in development for more than three years, Montabonel told me the engineering team wasn’t able to implement LDAC support before the time came to freeze the electronics, but that Focal hopes to add the feature later. Speaking of Bluetooth (5.1 multipoint in this case, meaning the Bathys can maintain connections to two sources at once), Focal supports the SBC, AAC, aptX, and aptX Adaptive codecs, but not Sony’s excellent LDAC.

Connect the Bathys to your source’s USB-C port, set the button to DAC, and the headphone will handle digital-to-analog conversion.

Driver usb sony