DR;TL skip to
Highs!
I bought a pair of Canton Vento 820.2 bookshelf speakers some months ago.
I got these at the Black Friday rate of $640 (in white) and was very happy with them. They are now $900/pr minus a 10% discount through the end of June=$810/pr.
At the time, I compared them to RBH 61lse, which they readily beat, and the Focal Solo6 Be's, which they did not beat, but did do some things better!
My comments on those comparisons are in this post:
https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/canton-vento-820-2-2-way-6in-bookshelf-speaker.109838/#post-1224852
At the end, I mentioned comparison with the Paradign S2 as a logical next step in kind of establishing their place. I had mostly forgotten about this until I was recently asked how they compared to the SVS Ultra. I do not have the Ultras to perform a direct comparison; but for me, the Ultras outperformed the RBH 61lse, with the Paradigm S-2 proving itself better than the Ultra. You can read about the comparisons made by Alex (TheWarrior) here:
https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/bookshelf-speaker-shootout.95335/
Further up the ladder, the SVS Ultra and RBH 61 LSE really duked it out to win my favor. Each provided its own pleasing experience that left me constantly changing my preference with each new listening track. Sparkling, airy highs of the Ultra versus the sweet, seductive clarity of that completely non-fatiguing 61 LSE tweeter. They each have their strengths, and it genuinely comes down to which track was being listened to.
My subjective quick and dirty on this is the Ultra has better highs, and the 61lse is King of mid-range detail (everything I have heard from RBH has always had wonderful midrange and the 61lse is the top model I have heard!). The Vento's mid-range detail matched or bettered the 61lse for mid-range.
I was very impressed that the Vento did a better job than the Focal Solo6Be with the harmonic signature of symphonic chimes as well as aggressively played trombone as these are two sounds I have learned the Beryllium tweeter to readily beat any Aluminum tweeter. My understanding is the Canton ceramic tweeter is aluminum magnesium alloy with a ceramic coating (presumably a spin-off of technology we have seen with ceramic on aluminum non-stick cookware!
)
I have been listening to the Vento recently and am always impressed with the clarity of struck metal (cymbals, chimes, triangles). However, all I can say is it is very good (and better than any soft-dome I have heard) without the benefit of another speaker to compare directly!
My Focals had beat the Vento, but today I pulled out my Paradigm S-2's to see if the Ventos could hold their own in any aspects:
I listened to Lyle Lovett; Earth, Wind, and Fire; Sade; Fairfield Four, and Brandenberg Concertos.
Bass - The Canton is very good for a 6" driver and beat the 6.5" RBH, especially noteworthy if you saw how small they are (just a smidgen larger than my EMPtek 41B). However, the S2 have tremendous bass for a bookshelf. There was no contest for depth, the S2 have it. I felt like the S2 have a little bit extra bass and treble for a very subtle smile FR. In any content with solid bass, this aspect of the S2 sounded richer and fuller. The Vento impresses me as neutral, but simply not extending so deep and strong as the S2. There are many places where the Bass for Sade punches notes and I was surprised the Canton held its own. Same for Earth, Wind, and Fire. However, ultimately, there was an absence of the sense of space and fullness that comes with the deeper bass of the S2.
Mid-range - The Ventos were better at all vocals with one exception! For some reason when Sade had reverb on her voice, the S2 sounded better. I can only guess at the reason for this and maybe it had to do with some bass feature of the reverb giving her voice an enhanced fullness. However I have to give the nod to the Vento since it was better with "natural" voices. The Fairfield Four is a male vocal quartet that sings gospel. Someone here recommended it as a good audition CD (thanks!) and it is a high quality recording including some of the deepest vocals I have ever heard. I was surprised that the extra bass of the S2 didn't win in these sections, but it didn't. For strings, the Cantons caught the character of the bows/resin digging into the strings at the start of notes better than the S-2's. I guess it should be no surprise that the Canton mid-range bettered the S2's; I consider the S2 and the RBH 61lse mid-range very competitive and since the Vento betters the 61lse, it should better the S2!
Highs - This is where things got interesting! In general, the highs sounded pretty much the same, but I have learned to use certain sounds to separate the Be from the Al!
Striking metal is the most revealing, so I was listening closely to high frequency taps and on the Cantons heard what at first sounded like a triangle but I wasn't quite sure and had to go back and play that section over several times on both speakers to learn what was going on! It was indeed a triangle, but I was listening on the Vento and it positively shimmered - the combination of a high quality triangle (most are) with a good strike and a great tweeter that I have not heard done quite this well before! I don't use a triangle for discrimination between speakers because I normally think of it as a pretty thin sound (it is the rich harmonics of symphonic chimes that I am used to revealing differences),yet there it was! What am I talking about? I call it shimmer, but I am pretty sure it is the sound made as the vibrations from impact travel around the triangle to the ends and bounce back down the other way, colliding from both ends as the sound decays! It sounded like a live triangle, but I had never really noticed how the detail of this was typically missing from play-back. Since I was now listening for it, the S2 was doing it, but not so well as the Vento!
So my thought and the main reason I am making this a stand-alone post titled as it is is because I think this may be the next great thing in tweeters. If it can equal or better the Be tweeter without the high cost (which is partly due to the safety measures required to process Be). My only real reservation is life often gives us compromises and it may be that while this tweeter excels at the things I focused on, there might be some disadvantaged aspect which did or would not catch my attention.
