The Gearhead: Canton Speakers, and a Grandmother's Obsession

My mom's mom, Janice McVay, was quite a lady. As an award-winning amateur photographer in south Florida’s exciting photography scene and longtime board member of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, she was constantly on the pulse of the innovations, techniques and equipment in the photography field throughout her life.

Her best friend, Fatima NeJame, and Fatima’s husband Art created the artistic hotspot in Palm Beach in 1986. As it grew into a world-class arts organization, my grandmother lived through years of world-expert workshops, stunning exhibits and displays of the state-of-the-art in camera technology.

And she was very opinionated about her cameras, to be sure. Her husband was an audiophile, and he got me into this crazy hobby so long ago, but I think I inherited my inner audiophile tendencies even more from her side of the family.

I’ll always remember her saying to me that no camera in the world compares to a Hasselblad, except perhaps a Leica. To say this Scots-Irish woman was obsessed with Swiss and German engineering for her chosen passion is an understatement. I’ll never sell or let go of the Leica she gave me, but my wallet still weeps to think about trying to afford some lenses for it!

As audiophiles, we know that high precision manufacturing and production of new or state-of-the-art materials can come with a hefty price tag. Often, this is tied to the size of the business and its inability to operate with economies of scale, with a chunk of the cost of the product going toward recouping the enormously expensive R&D.

So it was with great interest I began to dig into the story of the nearly half-century-old and still family-owned German speaker manufacturer Canton. At present, Canton is the third-largest speaker maker in all of Europe, and the most popular brand in its home country. The story of Canton always circles around to the fact that they are producing cutting-edge materials (with typical German precision), and innovating and customizing nearly every aspect of the speaker design — and yet the brand’s extensive lineup to a large degree remains well within the budget of most audiophiles.

As the manufacturer gears up for the next editions of their well-reviewed products, The Music Room was able to secure a large collection of recent-model Canton speakers. And as a testing technician who’s heard a good many of Cantons over the years, I’m excited to share the company’s story and try to describe what exactly constitutes the “German sound.”

In America, French speaker maker Focal and British outfit KEF fairly dominate the entry-level hifi scene, but I think that’s got to change. The sub-$2K range for floorstanding speakers is where so many audiophiles take the first leap, and frankly, this is exactly the price range that needs the “German sound.” And to whit — let’s talk about tweeters.

I once briefly got to know a legendary speaker designer in the hifi audio business before his passing, who reminded me a bit of my beloved grandmother. He would opine with such ferocity that it had to be taken as truth. I would hear him say from time to time, “The tweeter is the most important element of any speaker, period,” and “a great speaker design starts with a great tweeter.”

I can’t ask him now, but I’d wager he might have been a growing fan of Canton, since their material and implementation innovations focused much energy around making accurate, musical and extremely non-fatiguing treble — one of the hardest things to accomplish in speaker design, especially at lower price points. He might have also pointed out that a great speaker design starts with the tweeter and continues downward, never veering away from the standard of excellence set at the top of the spectrum.

This is Canton to a T, and any visits to reviews of their GLE, Chrono, Vento and Reference K lines make this clear to understand. I’ve yet to find a review that doesn’t remark on the non-fatiguing, natural and musical treble created by Canton’s tweeters, before diving into the materials technology, and how Canton developed them to get there.

Before you think that Canton speakers don’t dominate competitors in midrange and bass, remember that I’m highlighting the perhaps toughest element of the design process to get right, because it’s simply that impressive what they've accomplished. 

Canton’s got plenty of proprietary technology in the other drivers, like the displacement control (DC) implemented in the Chrono range to manage woofer excursions, or the wave surrounds that help with overall coherence, or the bass-guide systems which aim to fix many problems in modern entry-audiophile speakers’ bottom end.

I would say that a Canton speaker, and by extension the “German sound,” expertly portrays the top and bottom of the spectrum with great linearity, and everything in the middle is served up both fleshy and accurate at the same time. Top to bottom, the Cantons I’ve had the pleasure of testing and listening to struck me as slightly on the fun side of neutral and on the pleasing side of ultimate accuracy. As you go up in levels in the Canton lineup, naturally those meters move toward the center.

Now if that doesn’t sound like the perfect product for the beginning audiophile, I don’t know what does. I can’t express how often new folks in the hobby immediately find themselves searching for ways to tame the “brightness” of many entry-level hifi speakers. We're thrilled to offer a solution, so it’s with great enthusiasm that we present the Canton brand, with several extremely popular, recently discontinued models already in stock and ready to ship.

Talk to a TMR sales associate today and do some of your own review digging to find out of this could be the answer to your hifi system’s woes. And remember — at The Music Room you will always find the best value for your dollar, and our recent trove of Canton speakers exemplifies this.

In my (naturally strong) opinion, German precision, intention, obsession and devotion to excellence is precisely what’s needed in the American HiFi scene. Take the Canton plunge today, or start your journey by perusing our new Canton listings below.

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