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German manufacturer Canton Elektronik has a strong presence in Europe, but distribution of its loudspeakers in the US has been sporadic. Consequently, the most recent review in Stereophile of a Canton speaker, the Reference 3.2 DC, was in 2010. When we heard, in December 2020, that Bluebird Music would be bringing Canton back to North America, we were eager to review a Canton loudspeaker. Balancing performance and price, we selected the Reference 7K, which costs $6995/pair.

Phono preamplifiers could be compared to children as viewed by a previous generation of adults: They are expected to be small in stature, and they should stay out of the way, seen but not heard and maybe not even seen. With the simpler models typically encountered at lower price points, there's little to do except "set it and forget it."

One summer afternoon in Brooklyn, after a sweaty too-long day doing construction, I stumbled upon a hi-fi shop I'd never noticed before. I thought, hmmm, I bet they have air conditioning.

Inside, the air was only marginally cooler, but before I could leave, an excessively happy salesman introduced himself. After a bit of low-level chit-chat, he asked me if I was into British audio. I told him I "Never heard of it."

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux: Bloodstains & Teardrops
Whiskey Bayou Records WSK 1006 (CD). 2021. Tab Benoit, Rueben Williams, prods.; Steven Stanley, Michael "Boxy" Howell, Benoit, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

The Africans brought to the Americas to be sold into slavery were denied every vestige of their past except their memories. And yet, they preserved their rituals in dances, songs, and stories, playing the sacred rhythms that accompanied those rituals on whatever found objects they could use to fashion beats. The customs of American peoples from various African regions have been traced to specific destinations in colonial outposts in research detailed by scholars such as John Storm Roberts in Black Music of Two Worlds and Ned Sublette in several of his African-diaspora studies.

Many loudspeaker designers are minimalists at heart. They embrace a design aesthetic that says that simpler is better. Based on the evidence of the company's R 8 Arreté, Ole Klifoth, of Danish loudspeaker maker Audiovector, is not one of those designers.

On its website, in the Specifications section for its "R"-model loudspeakers (footnote 1), Audiovector offers a long checklist of technologies, many of them optional, some of them, called "Concepts," assigned snappy names and acronyms: IUC for Individual Upgrade Concept; LCC for Low Compression Concept; SEC for Soundstage Enhancement Concept; NES for No Energy Storage; FGC for Freedom Grounding Concept; and NCS for Natural Crystal Structure.

EISA, or the Expert Imaging and Sound Association, is an organisation representing 60 of the most respected special interest publications and websites from 29 countries that cover Hi-Fi, Home Theatre Video, Home Theatre Audio, Photography, Mobile Devices, and In-Car Electronics. Every year EISA's Expert Group members, including editors from this publication, test a very wide range of new products from their field of expertise before comparing results and voting to decide the cream of every product category.

The Swedish Rauna company, which has been in existence for about five years—their little Mk.II Tyr two-way impressed J. Gordon Holt a couple of years back in Vol.9 No.2—appears to be dedicated to the use of concrete as an enclosure material. One of the problems with conventional wooden cabinets is that the walls flex and vibrate, adding a spurious and often time-delayed output at some frequencies. It has even been reported that in extreme cases, the contribution of the cabinet to the overall sound at some frequencies approaches that from the drive-units. In theory, concrete should give a rigid construction with any panel resonant frequencies moved up above the critical midrange.