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.Any Canton owners here who like to chime in?
Cabinet modes are well controlled but mild, high-Q resonances in the cones are visible at 3-6kHz
The magnetically attached grilles bring a further ~3dB disruption in presence band output [blue trace].
Are they really competitive? The focals are ~2000€ and all Canton LE 109 I found on eBay were <200€. I really hope they are competitiveSo 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.
Can't say for sure yet. First impressions can be deceiving and I am stuck at low level , but so far so good.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.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
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.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.
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.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
without distortion its respectable for the freq resp, but since its a canton I wont trust it without a published distortion figure.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:
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Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/lautsprecher-stereo/pmc-twenty524i-21439
(no distortion measurement published )
?? I had added also a distortion plot for those old Cantons I talked about in the post you quoted?without distortion its respectable for the freq resp, but since its a canton I wont trust it without a published distortion figure.
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: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.
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.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:
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.Any insight on the Ergo 695 DC? They're big, relatively cheap and actually veneer instead of faux-wood plastic.
Funnily yesterday you really liked their sound, they are not getting bad, you are just miss-estimating the influence of the HD plots.looks like the Slowly the ventos are also getting bad.