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Canton Loudspeakerpeteraczel | 07 May, 2006 19:30
Floorstanding 3-Way Loudspeaker System Canton Electronics Corp., 1723 Adams Street NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413. Voice: (612) 706-9250. Fax: (612) 706-9255. E-mail: info@cantonusa.com. Web: www.cantonusa.com. Vento 809 DC floorstanding 3-way loudspeaker system, $5000.00 the pair. Tested samples on loan from manufacturer.
Canton is not a Chinese brand, the name notwithstanding. The speakers are made by the Canton Elektronik company in Germany and distributed in this country by the company’s U.S. affiliate. Even the earliest print issues of The Audio Critic, back in 1977, contained some Canton reviews, but the Vento Series is relatively new. As readers of this Web ’zine know, I am not very interested in “monkey coffins” anymore (a monkey coffin being a rectangular box with passively crossed-over forward-firing drivers), and the Vento 809 is still basically a monkey coffin despite its gracefully rearward-curving sides. So why am I reviewing it? Mainly because it’s roughly the same size at the same price with the same number of drivers as my Linkwitz Lab “Orion” reference speaker, and by contrast it’s quite conventional in engineering. A valid comparison of good standard vs. maverick design. The Design The Vento 809 is a little under four feet high and takes up less than a square foot of floor space. Its horizontal cross section is two thirds of an ellipse with the tip chopped off. The bass-reflex enclosure houses two 8" aluminum-cone woofers, a 7" aluminum-cone midrange, and a 1" aluminum-manganese dome tweeter. The crossover frequencies are 250 Hz and 3 kHz. The cabinet, made with a multilayer lamination process, is exceptionally solid and acoustically dead. Two pairs of terminals are provided for biamplification, which has certain advantages, or biwiring, which is utter nonsense. Unfortunately, the manual does not make that distinction—the tweako/cultist tradition is honored. The Measurements I took three quasi-anechoic (MLS) frequency-response curves at a 1-meter distance: on the tweeter axis (Fig. 1), 45° off axis horizontally (Fig. 2), and 45° off axis vertically (Fig. 3). As I have pointed out before, quasi-anechoic measurements with the Maximum Length Sequence technique are not as reliable and accurate as measurements made in an anechoic chamber or outdoors under windless conditions. The former, however, are a lot faster and more convenient, and they indicate the overall trends more than adequately for our purposes. What are those trends in the case of the Vento 809? Not good, I’m afraid. The three curves clearly show that the power response into the room is rather heavily skewed toward the higher frequencies, from about 2 kHz on up. Below that frequency the response is reasonably flat; above it there’s a lot more output no matter where the measurement microphone is placed. This is not a peak but an excess of energy distributed over several octaves. If the only problem is that the tweeter is set too high (“I vant more brilliantz, Helmut”), it’s easily remediable. As it is, it’s highly audible (see below).
Fig. 1: Frequency response (amplitude blue, phase red) at 1 meter on tweeter axis.
Fig. 2: Frequency response (amplitude blue, phase red) at 1 meter 45° off axis horizontally.
Fig. 3: Frequency response (amplitude blue, phase red) at 1 meter 45° off axis vertically. The bass response can be accurately measured with the nearfield technique (originally developed by our sometime contributor Don Keele). Fig. 4 shows the nearfield response of the two woofers and the bass-reflex vent. The curves are highly accurate from 100 Hz on down. Fig. 5 shows the summed nearfield curve, taken at a point experimentally determined to yield the flattest and deepest response. It appears that the box is very loosely tuned to around 32 or 33 Hz and that the –3 dB frequency (f3) of the summed response is 42 Hz. The –6 dB frequency, generally considered the limit of bass response, is 38 Hz. I expected deeper bass from a $5K-a-pair loudspeaker.
Fig. 4: Nearfield frequency response of the two woofers (blue and red) and the vent (magenta).
Fig. 5: Overall nearfield bass response. Fig. 6 shows the distortion products of a 45 Hz tone played at a 1-meter SPL of 96 dB. That’s the lowest frequency within the ±1 dB flat response of the speaker, and 96 dB is about as loud as it gets that low in the bass. The 2nd harmonic (doubling) distortion is –35 dB (1.78%), the 3rd harmonic –53 dB (0.22%), the 4th harmonic –72 dB (0.025%), the 5th harmonic –60 dB (0.1%), the 6th harmonic –73 dB (0.022%), the rest totally negligible. I would call that an excellent result, confirming the quality of the 8" drivers. Generally, bass distortion is by far greater than midrange or treble distortion, so this is the only THD measurement I took.
Fig. 6: Nearfield spectrum of a 45 Hz tone at a 1-meter SPL of 96 dB. The impedance of the Vento 809 is shown in Fig. 7. (Ignore the curves below 35 Hz; they are irrelevant.) The magnitude dips as low as 3.4Ω at 45 Hz and 130 Hz, and peaks to 9Ω at 67 Hz and to 7.1Ω at 1.35 kHz. The phase fluctuates between –35° and +21°. Any half decent amplifier can happily drive a speaker with that impedance.
Fig. 7: Impedance magnitude (blue) and phase (red). The Sound Speakers that measure poorly but sound great exist only within the pages of Stereophile. The Vento 809’s excessive output of high frequencies above 2 kHz is not only measurable but readily audible. If a recording is on the bright side to begin with, its reproduction through the Vento 809 will be downright unpleasant. If it is a well-balanced recording, it will merely sound overbright. The effect is most obvious on axis but is still clearly perceptible no matter where you sit. By contrast, the Linkwitz Lab “Orion” is gorgeously listenable on recordings with a wide range of brightness; they will simply be reproduced with varying degrees of presence. (Of course, the Orion doesn’t really “exist” in the commercial sense.) As I suggested above, the fault may be only skin-deep; perhaps the tweeter just needs a little more padding. The speaker appears to be well-engineered overall; the bass is on the light side but the sound is quite transparent and spatially detailed. I really doubt if the engineers are responsible for the exaggerated high frequencies; they know better. Probably some higher-up decision maker wanted that sound for marketing reasons, thinking it will sell better. (Jawohl, Herr Generaldirektor!) He overlooked the fact that the Vento 809 is not a kitchen radio. I seem to remember that the Canton speakers I reviewed in 1977 were also overbright. Corporate culture? Pad out that tweeter, Ingenieure, and send the speaker back to me. (Fat chance…) I think I’ll like it then.
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