This is a review and detailed measurements of the Kanto YU powered computer speaker with remote control. It was sent to me for testing by the company and costs US $280 on Amazon including free shipping.
The YU is a nice and serious looking little speaker:
Like the inclusion of a waveguide around the tweeter.
Speaker is powered but crossover is passive:
Like the inclusion of AC mains and all the regulatory certifications. Form what I have read, Kanto designs and builds speakers for other makers and likely that is the reason behind proper capability in this regard.
As noted, a remote control comes with the unit where you can adjust tonality (I did not use it).
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of roughly 1%.
Testing temperature was around 60 degrees F.
Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter. Grill was not used in either measurements or listening tests.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Kanto YU Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
The main deviation from flat on axis is the bow between 300 and 800 Hz. This is followed by a few resonances (peaking). Directivity is very good though which means this speaker will be room friendly and respond well to equalization. We can see this from early window frequency response which is very close to on-axis:
As such, predicted (far fiend) in-room response is what we would guess:
Near-field response shows one of the resonances from the woofer that is not filtered out and that of the port:
CSD/waterfall shows more of them:
Distortion was surprisingly low for the class:
Not letting the 4 inch woofer play too loud certainly helps in this regard.
Beam width is nice and controlled horizontally:
Vertically you have more freedom than you typically do with 2-way speakers:
Kanto YU Listening Tests
Let me preface this section by saying that I had a terrible headache when I started the listening tests. My allergies have also gotten bad as well. So read this section with a grain of salt.
I was very impressed by how loud the YU could play. Even though I test only one speaker, it could get quite loud and when it got distorted, it mildly went into that region.
As the response predicted the sound signature is quite light. This wasn't bad on female vocals but otherwise, overall it was not very satisfying. So I pulled out the EQ to correct:
At first I did not have band 4 in yellow. As a result the EQ was a mixed bag. It warmed up the sound but it was kind of boomy. So I thought I pull down that resonances at 120 Hz and this did the trick. The sound was much cleaner. Was it a "high-end" sound? No. Was it a huge step up from cheap computer speakers? Yes.
Conclusions
The Kanto YU has good directivity but unfortunately delivered a response that has a large dip in upper bass/lower mid-range and some resonances. Correcting these with EQ is possible due to very nice directivity. Ability to play loud with lower than expected distortion is another plus.
Judging by standard of great sound regardless of cost and class, the YU misses the mark. I did not enjoy listening to it longer term for that reason. But if you are going from nothing or some cheap computer speaker, it surely is a big step up. So while I am too much of a perfectionist to recommend it, you may want to consider it given its functionality and price. On the former, a powered pro monitor would do much better but comes with no remote or volume control which can be a major hassle/cost to accommodate.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The YU is a nice and serious looking little speaker:
Like the inclusion of a waveguide around the tweeter.
Speaker is powered but crossover is passive:
Like the inclusion of AC mains and all the regulatory certifications. Form what I have read, Kanto designs and builds speakers for other makers and likely that is the reason behind proper capability in this regard.
As noted, a remote control comes with the unit where you can adjust tonality (I did not use it).
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of roughly 1%.
Testing temperature was around 60 degrees F.
Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter. Grill was not used in either measurements or listening tests.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Kanto YU Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
The main deviation from flat on axis is the bow between 300 and 800 Hz. This is followed by a few resonances (peaking). Directivity is very good though which means this speaker will be room friendly and respond well to equalization. We can see this from early window frequency response which is very close to on-axis:
As such, predicted (far fiend) in-room response is what we would guess:
Near-field response shows one of the resonances from the woofer that is not filtered out and that of the port:
CSD/waterfall shows more of them:
Distortion was surprisingly low for the class:
Not letting the 4 inch woofer play too loud certainly helps in this regard.
Beam width is nice and controlled horizontally:
Vertically you have more freedom than you typically do with 2-way speakers:
Kanto YU Listening Tests
Let me preface this section by saying that I had a terrible headache when I started the listening tests. My allergies have also gotten bad as well. So read this section with a grain of salt.
I was very impressed by how loud the YU could play. Even though I test only one speaker, it could get quite loud and when it got distorted, it mildly went into that region.
As the response predicted the sound signature is quite light. This wasn't bad on female vocals but otherwise, overall it was not very satisfying. So I pulled out the EQ to correct:
At first I did not have band 4 in yellow. As a result the EQ was a mixed bag. It warmed up the sound but it was kind of boomy. So I thought I pull down that resonances at 120 Hz and this did the trick. The sound was much cleaner. Was it a "high-end" sound? No. Was it a huge step up from cheap computer speakers? Yes.
Conclusions
The Kanto YU has good directivity but unfortunately delivered a response that has a large dip in upper bass/lower mid-range and some resonances. Correcting these with EQ is possible due to very nice directivity. Ability to play loud with lower than expected distortion is another plus.
Judging by standard of great sound regardless of cost and class, the YU misses the mark. I did not enjoy listening to it longer term for that reason. But if you are going from nothing or some cheap computer speaker, it surely is a big step up. So while I am too much of a perfectionist to recommend it, you may want to consider it given its functionality and price. On the former, a powered pro monitor would do much better but comes with no remote or volume control which can be a major hassle/cost to accommodate.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/