Canton Karat Reference 2 DC

We were pleased when we first hooked up the Canton Karat Reference 2 DC speakers (review coming soon) and experienced Canton's latest offering. We were even more pleased when we were able to sit down with Frank Gobl, Head of Development and Research, and discuss the technical details behind the Canton design. Considering the number of people attending the show, Frank took a fair amount of his precious time to discuss the concepts that drive their designs. For example, Canton's approach to cabinet design is everything but conventional. Their Trapazoidal design eliminates parallel surfaces, helping to reduce standing wave resonance. They also do a tremendous job of implementing a passive radiator with their massive woofer. The passive radiator allows Canton to produce a 70mm (almost 3 inches!) peak to peak driver excursion which produces tight, deep and accurate bass. It also reduces the cabinet size which would otherwise require a huge port in order to tune the cabinet comparably. We also learned that the resonance fequency of the passive radiator is 10 Hz which is below the audible range, and therefore does not interfere with the performance of the speaker as do some port designs. Canton Electronics is also among the few companies we've heard that effectively implements a metal dome tweeter. Their success is attributed to the use of two different alloys that make up the dome. Frank tells us the advange of this tweeter design is that the dome can be careful shaped in order to eliminate ringing within the audio frequency band. Our personal experience with this tweeter is that it's able to accurately produce high frequencies without sounding bright or harsh.

Canton manufactures a variety of different speakers from affordable to high-end. But what we like most about this company so far is their engineering-based principals used to design and manufacturer all of their products. We look forward to reviewing many of their speakers. Stay tuned as the Canton Karat Reference 2 speaker review is only weeks away.