allsop4now said:
I am always interested in reviews of products that I carry. Good or bad this is a hobby of mine as well as my business. I always like to learn and respect others opinions. I learn about potential strengths and weaknesses of products that I carry and that my competition carries. I am also not advocating to make a purchasing decision on a speaker based soley on a review being good (or bad). But, it can sometimes be a good place to start your listening evaluation process.
That being said....
I read the "review" as well as a few other articles from the author. Then, I decided to start learning about the author himself. He is an interesting figure to say the least.
I like how in his review he spent roughly 75% of the article describing his measurements and then used two small paragraphs at the end to discuss sound, in which he didn't list any details of his listening evaluation process at all. Before the review, he expressed his preconceived idea that he wasn't going to like the speaker. Quote: "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." end quote. This "Monkey Coffin" speak is a battle cry to his fans. He almost has to hate the speaker now, right?
Did he look at his graphs, listen to the speakers, and then just say what his graph told him to?
He also has an enormously huge hatred (bordering on obsession) for Stereophile magazine. Since his marketing agle is to do so, it's apparent to me that the fact Stereophile liked these assuredly sealed their fate in his bashing them.
By the way, since the author mentions an anechoic chamber in relationship to his testing process I thought this might be relevant: Canton is one of only a handful of speaker manufacturers in the world to actually have an anechoic chamber on site for their engineers to work on and test their speakers. I would doubt highly, in fact with 100% certainty, that Canton would ever design and/or sell a speaker with what the author charges as quote: “Corporate culture”.
This “review” is an anomaly from writer who is, I'll say, controversial. Read other accounts of the speakers performance and you will find an overwhelming majority of reviewers that love it.
By the way, I totally enjoyed his site and learning about him and his history in audio. Thanks for the link!
