Canton speakers.

[Scottso]

Funny but there are lots of speaker makers and lots of people that buy them. Canton 9k have a high-quality build and for a two-way in their price range, they sound great.
Crosstalk what speakers do you listen to?

 

[Head_Unit]

Any Canton owners here who like to chime in?

Not an owner, but having just visited and enjoyed Iceland I had to chime in. I've heard Canton at trade shows and always the sound was very nice.

 

[Scottso]

I own the Canton 9K reference run by technics SUG 700

Through this integrated amp the cantons have excellent dynamics and detail. It is not a bright speaker it is not fatiguing if you’d like speakers that are soft sounding with no detail in limited dynamic range the nine K is not for you. The speakers also have great imaging

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Well, Hifi News have the reviews of Canton reference 7K.
It's very clear why the speaker have the distortion problem in that area

Cabinet modes are well controlled but mild, high-Q resonances in the cones are visible at 3-6kHz

Also the grills:

The magnetically attached grilles bring a further ~3dB disruption in presence band output [blue trace].

 

[eriksson]

So the Cat dragged home a pair of Canton LE 109 - free of charge!
Picture shamelessly stolen from the interwebs:

It seems they were made very early in this century. Two 200mm bass units, Front facing port, "fabric" tweeter and midrange on top.

I have been using past hours to compare them with my Focal Aria 926. Focals seem a tad bit more sensitive so direct comparison isn't accurate without level matching. It's late in the evening and I am in a condo and don't want to play loud so my testing is limited so far. Let's just say the Cantons are NOT disappointing and they are giving my Focals serious competition. Sweet and clear vocals and strings, plenty of detail ...

PErhaps I will update when I can feed them more watts.

 

[juliangst]

So the Cat dragged home a pair of Canton LE 109 - free of charge!
Picture shamelessly stolen from the interwebs:

It seems they were made very early in this century. Two 200mm bass units, Front facing port, "fabric" tweeter and midrange on top.

I have been using past hours to compare them with my Focal Aria 926. Focals seem a tad bit more sensitive so direct comparison isn't accurate without level matching. It's late in the evening and I am in a condo and don't want to play loud so my testing is limited so far. Let's just say the Cantons are NOT disappointing and they are giving my Focals serious competition. Sweet and clear vocals and strings, plenty of detail ...

PErhaps I will update when I can feed them more watts.

Are they really competitive? The focals are ~2000€ and all Canton LE 109 I found on eBay were <200€. I really hope they are competitive

 

[eriksson]

Are they really competitive? The focals are ~2000€ and all Canton LE 109 I found on eBay were <200€. I really hope they are competitive

Can't say for sure yet. First impressions can be deceiving and I am stuck at low level , but so far so good.

 

[eriksson]

Are they really competitive? The focals are ~2000€ and all Canton LE 109 I found on eBay were <200€. I really hope they are competitive

Ok, for the past two hours I have been trying to compare the Cantons to Focal 926 - and during this time I had your question in mind. The short answer is yes.
It's difficult to switch speakers fast enough for comparison, so the method I use is to put Canton on left channel and Focal on the right, then flip the balance on my computer left and right for quick comparison on the fly between speakers. I am using my Denon 1600ne to drive them.

The main difference is a bit surprising perhaps - albeit with smaller bass cone area the Focals produce a bit more upper bass. If memory serves me Amir has mentioned this changes the coloration of the sound and many find it more pleasing than "neutral upper bass". I suspect this is a feature of the Aria line from Focal some of us like about them. However when I dig up sub-woofer tests tracks it clear the Cantons can do more in the bass department, they go deeper than the Focals.

On the flip side - the Cantons sound a tad more clear and bright. I happen to like that, but YMMW. Keep in mind I can't hear anything above 14khz.

I would describe the Cantons as "neutral", they create great soundstage, they would benefit by subwoofer (just like the Focals) To my ears they sound fantastic. And I am pretty sure if one doesn't like the tonality - they can do what you want with EQ and do it well. I suspect the rock&roll crowd would want more bass and perhaps less midrange.

 

[earlevel]

My home stereo speakers "are" Canton CT-1000s. I quote "are" because I haven't had a stereo set up in my living room in a long time, I mainly listen in my office/studio out back, where I'm listening to studio monitors. But I did really love the CT's. I'm mulling whether to pull the beasts out of the closet to sit aside my new 77" OLED, or audition some slimmer tower speakers—the latter makes more sense for the room, but I did enjoy them in the living room back when.

Looking to put in a modest stereo back in '85, I checked out quite a few speakers, and Canton book shelves where pretty decent for the price. Then I had to go and compare them with the next ones up, CT-1000, and it was over. The smaller ones were pleasant, but the crafty old owner of the audiophile shop put on Yello's Ciel Ouvert, and I couldn't live without the bass extension after hearing it. I auditioned similar KEFs and others, but the Cantons were it. The CT-2000s were nice but I wasn't going to pop myself into yet another price category, so avoided listening to them much.

They didn't just go low, the low end was tight and the whole range was well managed. I was working on a DSP plugin, and my employer had given me a pair of popular budget studio monitors—I told them to get me something flat, because I couldn't evaluate the tone of the product I was making for them, and eventually talked them into getting me a pair of Genelecs. In the meantime, I told my co-worker that I'd bring in one of my Catons, which I decribed as "flat". He chuckled and said, "well, they won't be flat, but bring it in." He had worked for Mackie previously (I think on the HR824 studio monitors?), and didn't mind telling people their ears weren't as good as they thought they were. So I brought one in and hooked it up, he stood in front of it as I play some music. The song ended, he stood motionless for several seconds, said, "they're flat", and nothing more was said about it.

But the product I was developing was a guitar amp simulator, so produced piercing high end. On one interation, I had a gain variable set at an accidentally insane value and fried the mid range voice coil instantly. I had the mid speaker repaired, but it had higher output, enough to notice (not from a casual listener, but I knew exactly how they should sound). By that time I wasn't really using my home system anyway, but I would want to address that if I decide to use them again.

Here without their perforated metal screen covers (from the web), for a size reference (a covered port in the rear):

 

[thewas]

That good old loudspeakers measure even with today's standards surprisingly well is quite known, here for example one of Cantons smaller bookshelf models from 1979:


Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/vintage-hifi/canton-gle-50-bj-1979-vintage-21239
By the way the distortion measurement is done at 95 dB/1m!

For comparison a current 6900€ pair price floorstanding loudspeaker measured from the same magazine/lab:

Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/lautsprecher-stereo/pmc-twenty524i-21439
(no distortion measurement published )

 

[eriksson]

Ha!
And here I am surpriced by the sound of Canton towers from ~2001 with price tag close to $2k in the U.S. marked back then.

 

[thewas]

Ha!
And here I am surpriced by the sound of Canton towers from ~2001 with price tag close to $2k in the U.S. marked back then.

Those prices are though rather utopic recommended list prices, the LE were intro series and the LE109 (and their sucessors) were sold here often for street prices of around 500€ per pair.

 

[Crosstalk]

They have to look good to sound good and mine sound and look marvelous. My take is to buy local top-quality used, and save thousands lol.
The KEF R 11 are fine speakers not so ugly they look like all the other multi-driver designed boxes and cost 3 times as much as my 9K Cantons with subs.
Show me the research supporting your view that the 9k sound bad not in my house? I listen nearfield 7' ft apart- and 7' from me. Canton corp. controls all the means of production so everything is done in-house which is a big deal. A final word from me Nobody bats 100% there are poor performers in each brand KEF included.
As an aside I wanted to know the best crossover setting for my SVS subs and emailed Canton in Germany and got a response the next day and welcomed any other questions I might have.
You might want to read this if you think they are just mediocre sounding.
https://stereo-magazine.com/archive/articles/2016/4/cantons-k-question-66507

haha , thats a lame argument, how can I possibly fly from europe to US to measure your speakers! Cantons use that same driver in all K series speakers which distorts more than any other brand in 2 to 4kHz region. The Problem is with their flawed ceramic tungsten driver which many times I have listened to with speakers upto 1k.

How this distortion sounds is not like a distortion! when a particular instrument falls into this frequency region, at lower levels the sound of the instrument is right as the cantons freq response is very good.

Once the level is increased , that instruments sound will have an added distortion signal which results in off tone. Meaning you hear that instrument in two different tones depending on the volume level which is unaccceptable for the price they charge. Also that driver is from 2014 and is long overdue for a fix!

I dont care about anything stereo magazine schreibs as they are just another subjective review advertisement website like what cry fi.

Anyway References are quite old now and recently I heard the new Vento 100, to me it sounded really superb, better than the Reference 8k(small tower) which was placed near it. Of course Ventos are huge but price wise they were equals.

 

[Crosstalk]

That good old loudspeakers measure even with today's standards surprisingly well is quite known, here for example one of Cantons smaller bookshelf models from 1979:

View attachment 226235View attachment 226236View attachment 226237
Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/vintage-hifi/canton-gle-50-bj-1979-vintage-21239
By the way the distortion measurement is done at 95 dB/1m!

For comparison a current 6900€ pair price floorstanding loudspeaker measured from the same magazine/lab:
View attachment 226239View attachment 226240
Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/lautsprecher-stereo/pmc-twenty524i-21439
(no distortion measurement published )

without distortion its respectable for the freq resp, but since its a canton I wont trust it without a published distortion figure.

 

[thewas]

without distortion its respectable for the freq resp, but since its a canton I wont trust it without a published distortion figure.

?? I had added also a distortion plot for those old Cantons I talked about in the post you quoted?

 

[thewas]

haha , thats a lame argument, how can I possibly fly from europe to US to measure your speakers! Cantons use that same driver in all K series speakers which distorts more than any other brand in 2 to 4kHz region. The Problem is with their flawed ceramic tungsten driver which many times I have listened to with speakers upto 1k.

How this distortion sounds is not like a distortion! when a particular instrument falls into this frequency region, at lower levels the sound of the instrument is right as the cantons freq response is very good.

Once the level is increased , that instruments sound will have an added distortion signal which results in off tone. Meaning you hear that instrument in two different tones depending on the volume level which is unaccceptable for the price they charge. Also that driver is from 2014 and is long overdue for a fix!

I dont care about anything stereo magazine schreibs as they are just another subjective review advertisement website like what cry fi.

Anyway References are quite old now and recently I heard the new Vento 100, to me it sounded really superb, better than the Reference 8k(small tower) which was placed near it. Of course Ventos are huge but price wise they were equals.

The Vento 100 you liked so much also has the 100 dB distortion rise around 2-4 kHz, which strengthens my older thesis you rather hear the radiation widening of the K models in that region which seems to be not so accentuated on the Vento 100:

Source:

https://www.canton.de/media/pdf/c5/cc/f9/Vento_100_Audio_Test_9-22.pdf

 

[Crosstalk]

The Vento 100 you liked so much also has the 100 dB distortion rise around 2-4 kHz, which strengthens my older thesis you rather hear the radiation widening of the K models in that region which seems to be not so accentuated on the Vento 100:


View attachment 230773

View attachment 230774

Source:

https://www.canton.de/media/pdf/c5/cc/f9/Vento_100_Audio_Test_9-22.pdf

looks like the Slowly the ventos are also getting bad. Are they going step backwards? Then the steal deal is the discounted 896 or 896.2s. I had the 896 for long and I felt them to be ok speakers. The references are step up in build quality but not different in sound quality. Ventos are the sweet spot of Cantons. But still see that the distortion is still lower on the Ventos than the references, so the problem lies probably in the Ceramic coated drivers. I honestly do not see any advantage with those drivers other than visually beautiful.

 

[3125b]

Any insight on the Ergo 695 DC? They're big, relatively cheap and actually veneer instead of faux-wood plastic.

 

[Crosstalk]

Any insight on the Ergo 695 DC? They're big, relatively cheap and actually veneer instead of faux-wood plastic.

For me they look very dated in terms of aesthetics. Veneer is present in lot of speakers in its price class if m not wrong.

 

[thewas]

looks like the Slowly the ventos are also getting bad.

Funnily yesterday you really liked their sound, they are not getting bad, you are just miss-estimating the influence of the HD plots.