Does Anyone else own Canton Speakers?

[cantonguy]

I have trouble finding anything on these speakers here on audioholics or avs. I have had my GLE series Canton speakers for about 2 months. I have not had the opportunity to listen to a lot of different speakers since I live in SD. I'm curious to know if anyone else has heard these and what they would compare them to. They seem to be of high qaulity to me...? I spent $1200 on a GLE 455, GLE 430's, and GLE 402's. I thought that was a fair price... Could have I done a lot better for 5 speakers at that price point? I know that it only matters if I like them, I'm just curious as to what others who have heard them think.

 

[zieglj01]

I have trouble finding anything on these speakers here on audioholics or avs. I have had my GLE series Canton speakers for about 2 months. I have not had the opportunity to listen to a lot of different speakers since I live in SD. I'm curious to know if anyone else has heard these and what they would compare them to. They seem to be of high qaulity to me...? I spent $1200 on a GLE 455, GLE 430's, and GLE 402's. I thought that was a fair price... Could have I done a lot better for 5 speakers at that price point? I know that it only matters if I like them, I'm just curious as to what others who have heard them think.

Some one by the name of benclement11 has the same system.
I am sure that you may know him. Watch out, this kind of situation
will cause you to keep spending money - there is always something
better out there. Home Theater Magazine, Ultimate A/V Magazine
and Sound & Vision Magazine have done reviews on GLE speakers.
Used prices on Canton Karat speakers are good. I would like to
hear the Karat speakers some day.

 

[Boerd]

I have trouble finding anything on these speakers here on audioholics or avs. I have had my GLE series Canton speakers for about 2 months. I have not had the opportunity to listen to a lot of different speakers since I live in SD. I'm curious to know if anyone else has heard these and what they would compare them to. They seem to be of high qaulity to me...? I spent $1200 on a GLE 455, GLE 430's, and GLE 402's. I thought that was a fair price... Could have I done a lot better for 5 speakers at that price point? I know that it only matters if I like them, I'm just curious as to what others who have heard them think.

I have listened to Canton (Vento - not the Karat). They're good. I like them. You should look on the net for reviews that have measurements - that says it all. Believe me - a speaker that measures poor sounds poor. A speaker that CONSISTENTLY measures well (not only in one review) will sound well.

 

[highfigh]

I have trouble finding anything on these speakers here on audioholics or avs. I have had my GLE series Canton speakers for about 2 months. I have not had the opportunity to listen to a lot of different speakers since I live in SD. I'm curious to know if anyone else has heard these and what they would compare them to. They seem to be of high qaulity to me...? I spent $1200 on a GLE 455, GLE 430's, and GLE 402's. I thought that was a fair price... Could have I done a lot better for 5 speakers at that price point? I know that it only matters if I like them, I'm just curious as to what others who have heard them think.

I checked out a pair of the 430GLE last week and in my room, they were a bit bright but overall, they sounded really good. The bass was better than most in the same size and price range, too. In an especially live room, they would be a bit much but if the room is neutral to absorptive, they should be very good. Better for the price? I can't really think of any.

 

[majorloser]

I own various Canton Ergo speakers, from toewers to in-walls. I love them. Still my favorite speakers. I'd love to move up to the Ventos or Reference speakers. Money is the only thing holding me back.

I see now the Audioholics Store is carrying their products. Maybe I can get a good deal....


http://store.audioholics.com/search?xSearch=canton&xPriceFrom=0&xPriceTo=0&xSort=pricehl&xPage=1

 

[cantonguy]

Nice to see that there are few other people out there with these. I love my speakers. They are on the brighter side but I do like that. They are not Klipsch or Polk bright in my opinion though.

 

[davidtwotrees]

My Canton Karat L800DC speakers were the best I've ever owned. They did everthing well; from movies, to classical, to jazz, to rock.
The fit and finish was superb. They were solid as a rock- over 90 pounds. I can't speak to the series you are running, but if they are the same technology as the Karats, good job.

 

[KEW]

Based on the comments above, if you were willing to do a little cabinet repair and/or are not too worried about cosmetics, these are probably pretty good sound for $900 shipped:

http://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item/CANTKARAT707SLVA/CANTON/Karat-707-dc-3-1/2-Way-Floorstanding-Speakers-In-Silver/1.html#!wiki

 

[cantonguy]

Based on the comments above, if you were willing to do a little cabinet repair and/or are not too worried about cosmetics, these are probably pretty good sound for $900 shipped:

http://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item/CANTKARAT707SLVA/CANTON/Karat-707-dc-3-1/2-Way-Floorstanding-Speakers-In-Silver/1.html#!wiki

I already own the GLE series. It's hard to find other people who have these... I was just trying to catch the eye of other owners or people have that have heard them to see what they thought. Thanks though.

 

[KEW]

I already own the GLE series. It's hard to find other people who have these... I was just trying to catch the eye of other owners or people have that have heard them to see what they thought. Thanks though.

Yeah, I understood, but worded that wrong. I should have said "for anyone willing to ..."

 

[highfigh]

Speakers that are in boxes aren't selling the way they once did- in-wall and in-ceiling are out-selling them by a wide margin. It's part of the culture of preferring convenience over quality, like MP3 files vs CD/SACD/vinyl/full bit rate files. I asked the local rep who displays Canton speakers and he only sells to custom integrators. One dealer has a couple of models but that's about it, here. They don't seem to be making much of a push for market share, IMO.

 

[davidtwotrees]

Speakers that are in boxes aren't selling the way they once did- in-wall and in-ceiling are out-selling them by a wide margin. It's part of the culture of preferring convenience over quality, like MP3 files vs CD/SACD/vinyl/full bit rate files. ......

A world of background music reproduced on background equpt! Ungh.
Actually, my foray into whole house audio was wiring my soon to be wife's townhouse using a four speaker selector and zone 2. Instead of cutting holes in ceilings and buying new xpeakers, I used my vast collection of bookshelf speakers, hung them on the wall oppisite of the room's main listening point, and wired them up. They sound really nice................................
Back to the OP. Canton was described to me as the Bower's and Wilkens of Germany. Without going through their whole line up, I would guess the GLE series is equivalent to B&W's 600 series of speakers....................

 

[cantonguy]

Speakers that are in boxes aren't selling the way they once did- in-wall and in-ceiling are out-selling them by a wide margin. It's part of the culture of preferring convenience over quality, like MP3 files vs CD/SACD/vinyl/full bit rate files. I asked the local rep who displays Canton speakers and he only sells to custom integrators. One dealer has a couple of models but that's about it, here. They don't seem to be making much of a push for market share, IMO.

Does that mean they are bad and you don't like them? These are popular in Europe and will never be popular in the US...

 

[InTheIndustry]

A world of background music reproduced on background equpt! Ungh.
Actually, my foray into whole house audio was wiring my soon to be wife's townhouse using a four speaker selector and zone 2. Instead of cutting holes in ceilings and buying new xpeakers, I used my vast collection of bookshelf speakers, hung them on the wall oppisite of the room's main listening point, and wired them up. They sound really nice................................
Back to the OP. Canton was described to me as the Bower's and Wilkens of Germany. Without going through their whole line up, I would guess the GLE series is equivalent to B&W's 600 series of speakers....................

Very good comparison. However, Canton's entry level LE/GLE speaker is a much better built/performing piece than the B&W 600. Canton over the years has essentially trickled drivers down into the new(er) GLE models, which replaced the LE line. This allows them to focus on improving the cabinet design of their speakers and not having to keep reingineering drivers and pumping out "latest & greatest" new speakers.

 

[InTheIndustry]

Does that mean they are bad and you don't like them? These are popular in Europe and will never be popular in the US...

I received your PM & am sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. We're swamped with projects & it's tough for me to find a break.

Canton speakers are very special & unique for a few reasons. IMO, you won't find a better built or finished speaker (I believe everything is/was made & engineered in Germany?). In person, every speaker they make is impressive to pick up and look at compared to other brands. They ship anything bigger than a bookshelf via FedEx only because they found through experimentation that FedEx handles larger packages better than UPS. The sound quality is excellent across the board. Even their small cinema systems are meticulously put together & have an excellent sound. Don't be mistaken, you PAY for it. But they deliver an excellent speaker for the $, no question.

The GLE or LE models you have are excellent speakers. You won’t find newer Canton reviews out there too much these days because they don't launch new product very often. Their stance is: Why should they? If they make a great speaker that accurately reproduces sound, why mess with it? Sure, they introduce new finishes every so often, but nobody is going to need to re-review a speaker because of its finish.

I believe Stereophile has or has had several Canton models in their recommended components A/B/C list for some time. The brand is well respected by enthusiasts & people who know more about audio than what they read online or see in a BestBuy. Never have I had a competing manufacturer say one negative thing negative to me about Canton. In fact, it's always quite the opposite. There's a lot of respect in the industry for Canton

You don't see Canton in a lot of showrooms because dealers shy away from them for a few business centric reasons that have NOTHING to do with product quality. I have not purcahsed a Canton speaker in roughly 2 years but that has everything to do with business & NOT their quality. I had a meeting with Pat Mountain (former VP) at a space we were looking at to do a showroom in about 2 years back and he represented the brand very well. We just don't do floorstanding box speakers very often & archetecturally have found better offerings for the $.

- The base margin on Canton is pretty much industry standard, but they offer very few volume based incentives or flexibility for dealers. Other companies do.

- To put Canton on display in a showroom there is very little break in price below normal dealer cost. Other companies will step up and offer strong price breaks to get their gear on our shop floor. So, given a choice, dealers will take a better... deal.

- Box speaker oriented products with architectural pieces being a bit of an after thought. Fine in Europe, but this presents a problem for "solution" selling Americans. Archetectural speaker pricing from them is considered very high at dealer cost compared to almost any other brand on the market or else I would use them frequently.

- For the most part, their speakers will do great on movies, but are designed from the ground up to be full range 2 channel products and are marketed as such.

I would have absolutely ZERO issues with anyone recommending ANYTHING from Canton to audition or purchase. From start to finish, the company has an incredibly strong value system in terms of engineering, production, sales, etc. If a cabinet/driver/etc comes off the line and is anything BUT perfect, it is not used. They only engineer for excellence and they achieve it.

I had a pair of Canton LE bookshelves in cherry that MSRP at $500. I used to take them around to clients homes to show build quality & demo Sonos whole house audio. They were beautiful! I A/B compared them to a pair of $2000 Triad Gold in-walls that the Triad Rep had lent me (I had a terrible experience with Triad & the rep swore up & down that the brand was better on the "high end" so he sent me the Golds to try out). Going just by sound quality, I prefered the Cantons & that had nothing to do with $ or value.

Hope this helps & enjoy your speakers.

 

[cantonguy]

I received your PM & am sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. We're swamped with projects & it's tough for me to find a break.

Canton speakers are very special & unique for a few reasons. IMO, you won't find a better built or finished speaker (I believe everything is/was made & engineered in Germany?). In person, every speaker they make is impressive to pick up and look at compared to other brands. They ship anything bigger than a bookshelf via FedEx only because they found through experimentation that FedEx handles larger packages better than UPS. The sound quality is excellent across the board. Even their small cinema systems are meticulously put together & have an excellent sound. Don't be mistaken, you PAY for it. But they deliver an excellent speaker for the $, no question.

The GLE or LE models you have are excellent speakers. You won’t find newer Canton reviews out there too much these days because they don't launch new product very often. Their stance is: Why should they? If they make a great speaker that accurately reproduces sound, why mess with it? Sure, they introduce new finishes every so often, but nobody is going to need to re-review a speaker because of its finish.

I believe Stereophile has or has had several Canton models in their recommended components A/B/C list for some time. The brand is well respected by enthusiasts & people who know more about audio than what they read online or see in a BestBuy. Never have I had a competing manufacturer say one negative thing negative to me about Canton. In fact, it's always quite the opposite. There's a lot of respect in the industry for Canton

You don't see Canton in a lot of showrooms because dealers shy away from them for a few business centric reasons that have NOTHING to do with product quality. I have not purcahsed a Canton speaker in roughly 2 years but that has everything to do with business & NOT their quality. I had a meeting with Pat Mountain (former VP) at a space we were looking at to do a showroom in about 2 years back and he represented the brand very well. We just don't do floorstanding box speakers very often & archetecturally have found better offerings for the $.

- The base margin on Canton is pretty much industry standard, but they offer very few volume based incentives or flexibility for dealers. Other companies do.

- To put Canton on display in a showroom there is very little break in price below normal dealer cost. Other companies will step up and offer strong price breaks to get their gear on our shop floor. So, given a choice, dealers will take a better... deal.

- Box speaker oriented products with architectural pieces being a bit of an after thought. Fine in Europe, but this presents a problem for "solution" selling Americans. Archetectural speaker pricing from them is considered very high at dealer cost compared to almost any other brand on the market or else I would use them frequently.

- For the most part, their speakers will do great on movies, but are designed from the ground up to be full range 2 channel products and are marketed as such.

I would have absolutely ZERO issues with anyone recommending ANYTHING from Canton to audition or purchase. From start to finish, the company has an incredibly strong value system in terms of engineering, production, sales, etc. If a cabinet/driver/etc comes off the line and is anything BUT perfect, it is not used. They only engineer for excellence and they achieve it.

I had a pair of Canton LE bookshelves in cherry that MSRP at $500. I used to take them around to clients homes to show build quality & demo Sonos whole house audio. They were beautiful! I A/B compared them to a pair of $2000 Triad Gold in-walls that the Triad Rep had lent me (I had a terrible experience with Triad & the rep swore up & down that the brand was better on the "high end" so he sent me the Golds to try out). Going just by sound quality, I prefered the Cantons & that had nothing to do with $ or value.

Hope this helps & enjoy your speakers.

Thanks for the response. What do you use in your house and what do you sell for your business? I do have the GLE series and one of the most appealing things was their use of trickle down technology.

 

[InTheIndustry]

Warning: A looooooooong post.....

Thanks for the response. What do you use in your house and what do you sell for your business? I do have the GLE series and one of the most appealing things was their use of trickle down technology.

If I listed all of the gear I personally have in my home or have had as well as brands I carry or have carried over the past 10 years it would be a thread all on its own. And I'm not saying that to sound like a jerk or anything even remotely like that. It's just that I've been in the industry making a living for over 10 years and after that much time, well, you go through a lot of gear.

Heck, I should've done an archeological documentary about cleaning out my garage & attic this summer. I found at least $13k MSRP of weird speakers or electronics I'd either bought over the years at HUGE demo discounts or were just given to me by manufacturers or reps. Almost all of it was new in a box and I was cracking up at all of the loot I had "lost"! My garage & attic accumulate so much stuff because we work long long long hours and when we get home I'm so tired that I just open up my garage and start unloading tools, empty boxes, etc. from truck wherever it seems to fit. Before you know it, by garage is a disaster! Off the top of my head, here's a list of some of the stuff I found....

- A pair of Sunfire CRM-2s that MSRP at $1600

- 4 $1100 Sunfire Trio in-walls & the matching On-wall center.

- A Jamo D6 THX Ultra2 15" Subwoofer

- A pair of RBH Signature Series/R bookshelves in gloss black

-A Marantz reciever & an Onkyo Stereo Receiver

- A complete Jamo S 608 complete surround sound system

- A pair of Dark Apple Jamo C603

- 2 Sonos ZP90, a bunch of Sonos remote cradles, a Sonos remote, and a bunch of other things to go with them.

- A pair of BG Radia In-Ceiling speakers

- 2 Jamo DVC in-ceiling speakers

- A Jamo 4 zone ABus System (I HATE ABUS but remember a rep giving me this thing 4 years ago to try... I still hate ABUS)

- The real treasure I found, and this is pretty awesome, was a Furman Reference 20 power conditioner that's MSRP is $3500. It weighs 85lbs. I totally forgot I had even bought it like 3 years ago when I 1st became a dealer. What a find! http://www.furmansound.com/product.php?div=02&id=IT-REF_20i

I cleaned out the back seat area of 2 of our trucks one Saturday morning & found over $350 of general connectors, wire & cabling, HDMIs, power supplies, power cords, interconnects, and on and on all unopened. I returned to the distributor near me on Monday. Not a bad haul for a half days work on a Saturday! I just get busy and lose track of stuff.

We're in the build-out process of what I'm calling an "Electronic Design Gallery" that I should have done by the end of Dec. I'll post pics when we're all done in a thread in the general forum for people to check out. The back row of our reference theater as a 12', 1500 lb concrete bar top with 1000s of fiber optic lights run through it with bits of glass, liquid copper dust, & geodes the size of a fist to simulate a night sky & outer space. There's even a spot at each seat around the bar that when you set your drink down it illuminates it from the bottom with a LED light. Pretty cool! The thing curves around our couch & has an 11" back drop so when you sit down it's like being surrounded by a planetarium. The speaker system in there will be the Phase Technology dARTS with 3 15" powered subs.... http://www.phasetech.com/darts65.html

 

[highfigh]

Does that mean they are bad and you don't like them? These are popular in Europe and will never be popular in the US...

No, it means that I'm surprised they haven't tried to get more stores to sell them. I worked for a dealer who carried them, back in the early '90s, and I did a theater room with six Karat speakers and it was excellent. The 430GLE pair I had for the week sounded really good, although they were a bit bright for me, as I posted. Having metallic tweeters is the reason, I assume- I prefer textile domes but that shouldn't be construed as me thinking they're bad by any means. Considering the huge number of speaker brands and models, these would fall in the upper 1/3, I think.

 

[cantonguy]

I received your PM & am sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. We're swamped with projects & it's tough for me to find a break.

Canton speakers are very special & unique for a few reasons. IMO, you won't find a better built or finished speaker (I believe everything is/was made & engineered in Germany?). In person, every speaker they make is impressive to pick up and look at compared to other brands. They ship anything bigger than a bookshelf via FedEx only because they found through experimentation that FedEx handles larger packages better than UPS. The sound quality is excellent across the board. Even their small cinema systems are meticulously put together & have an excellent sound. Don't be mistaken, you PAY for it. But they deliver an excellent speaker for the $, no question.

The GLE or LE models you have are excellent speakers. You won’t find newer Canton reviews out there too much these days because they don't launch new product very often. Their stance is: Why should they? If they make a great speaker that accurately reproduces sound, why mess with it? Sure, they introduce new finishes every so often, but nobody is going to need to re-review a speaker because of its finish.

I believe Stereophile has or has had several Canton models in their recommended components A/B/C list for some time. The brand is well respected by enthusiasts & people who know more about audio than what they read online or see in a BestBuy. Never have I had a competing manufacturer say one negative thing negative to me about Canton. In fact, it's always quite the opposite. There's a lot of respect in the industry for Canton

You don't see Canton in a lot of showrooms because dealers shy away from them for a few business centric reasons that have NOTHING to do with product quality. I have not purcahsed a Canton speaker in roughly 2 years but that has everything to do with business & NOT their quality. I had a meeting with Pat Mountain (former VP) at a space we were looking at to do a showroom in about 2 years back and he represented the brand very well. We just don't do floorstanding box speakers very often & archetecturally have found better offerings for the $.

- The base margin on Canton is pretty much industry standard, but they offer very few volume based incentives or flexibility for dealers. Other companies do.

- To put Canton on display in a showroom there is very little break in price below normal dealer cost. Other companies will step up and offer strong price breaks to get their gear on our shop floor. So, given a choice, dealers will take a better... deal.

- Box speaker oriented products with architectural pieces being a bit of an after thought. Fine in Europe, but this presents a problem for "solution" selling Americans. Archetectural speaker pricing from them is considered very high at dealer cost compared to almost any other brand on the market or else I would use them frequently.

- For the most part, their speakers will do great on movies, but are designed from the ground up to be full range 2 channel products and are marketed as such.

I would have absolutely ZERO issues with anyone recommending ANYTHING from Canton to audition or purchase. From start to finish, the company has an incredibly strong value system in terms of engineering, production, sales, etc. If a cabinet/driver/etc comes off the line and is anything BUT perfect, it is not used. They only engineer for excellence and they achieve it.

I had a pair of Canton LE bookshelves in cherry that MSRP at $500. I used to take them around to clients homes to show build quality & demo Sonos whole house audio. They were beautiful! I A/B compared them to a pair of $2000 Triad Gold in-walls that the Triad Rep had lent me (I had a terrible experience with Triad & the rep swore up & down that the brand was better on the "high end" so he sent me the Golds to try out). Going just by sound quality, I prefered the Cantons & that had nothing to do with $ or value.

Hope this helps & enjoy your speakers.

1.)Since that you have heard and sold so many speakers, I'm interested in knowing what your favorite brand is? What brand would you buy if budget was not an option?

2.)Since you know I like the sound of Canton's, what other brands do you think I would like? Anything that sounds similar? I live in South Dakota and the only audio store is in a town 55 miles away and that is a Best Buy.

Sorry to pick your brain, but being you're one of the few I have found that have even heard these... I'm curious as to what you think. Speakers that I wish I could hear... Emptek, PSB, Ascends, Aperion, Paradigm, Swan and Axiom. Any of these sound like Canton?

 

[InTheIndustry]

No, it means that I'm surprised they haven't tried to get more stores to sell them. I worked for a dealer who carried them, back in the early '90s, and I did a theater room with six Karat speakers and it was excellent. The 430GLE pair I had for the week sounded really good, although they were a bit bright for me, as I posted. Having metallic tweeters is the reason, I assume- I prefer textile domes but that shouldn't be construed as me thinking they're bad by any means. Considering the huge number of speaker brands and models, these would fall in the upper 1/3, I think.

One of the main reasons they aren't carried widely is dealer margin. I called and got an updated price sheet this week after realizing mine was old and their margin proposition is now well below avg. vs. the below avg./avg they had been offering. Their brochure is spectacularly put together, though! But brochures don't sell speakers.... People do. And people want paid.

In my opinion, quality wise I would put Canton speakers, excluding in-walls & subwoofers, from top to bottom (meaning: if you look at all of their speakers from the least expensive to the most) in the upper 10% of all commercially available brands. Build quality wise I can think of no better. That's not to say unequaled. Just no better on a consistent basis.