The half-step–spaced tonebursts on Editor's Choice spoke cleanly and evenly down to 32Hz, the frequency of the lowest one. Listening to the enclosure with a stethoscope while these tonebursts played, I could hear very little liveliness, though I could hear some low-level mechanical buzzing in the low bass from inside the speaker with serial number 100726.
I took part in a number of blind listening tests of loudspeakers in the 1980s in which one of the test signals was my Fender Precision bass guitar, played live. The sound of the bass, with its combination of a sharply defined transient attack and high levels of energy in the upper bass and lower midrange, was very revealing both of a loudspeaker's woofer tuning and its dynamic limitations (footnote 1). So when I created the channel identification and phase-check tracks on Stereophile's Test CD 2, repeated on Editor's Choice, I recorded some riffs with the Fender. The Reference 7K did well with these tracks, offering excellent clarity and upper-bass weight.
With the out-of-phase track, the image of my bass was unambiguously positioned to the left of the left-hand loudspeaker; image stability was one of the Canton Reference 7K's strengths. The first multitrack digital recording I made was in 1997, when I recorded a jazz quartet led by pianist Marc Copland for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The concert venue was a reverberant, stone-faced chamber completely unsuitable for small-scale jazz, so I had to close-mike all the instruments. Even so, with the help of some Lexicon-sourced reverberation, I was able to come up with a mix that satisfied both the musicians and the festival organizers. Contractual issues meant that the album was never released, but I still use it as a yardstick for stereo-imaging performance.
The Cantons excelled at reproducing this track, the stable image of Copland's piano extending from the left of the soundstage, guitarist John Abercrombie on the right, German bassist Peter Herbert front and center, and the great Billy Hart's drums unambiguously behind the other three members of the band and spread across half the width of the stage. Listening to the album, I was saddened to remember that Abercrombie passed away in 2017 at just 72, the same age I was when I started writing this review, but my spirits were elevated by his great music making.
Male voice is always revealing of problems in the lower midrange. Richard Lehnert's speaking voice on the Editor's Choice tracks sounded uncolored, though with a little more body than I am used to. Similarly, Jeff Hamilton's kickdrum in the solo drum passages and Ray Brown's solo double bass in the Ray Brown Trio's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" from Live at the Loa—Summer Wind (16/44.1 FLAC, Concord Jazz, Tidal) were a touch too rich-sounding—not that this bass player objects to that! Gene Harris's piano sounded clean and uncolored.
As I have written before, piano is revealing of problems in the upper midrange due to the lack of masking and the fact that the frequencies of the notes in this region are spaced relatively far apart. In the months that have passed since I heard her play at a pre-pandemic recital in Manhattan's Merkin Hall, Russian pianist Anna Gourari has become a favorite. During the recital, as she performed the Adagio from J.S. Bach's Concerto in D Minor, the audience hardly breathed, so hypnotic was her left-hand chord ostinato. This work concludes her Elusive Affinity album (24/96 MQA, Tidal/ECM). Playing this track on the Canton speakers took me back to that magic night, the uncolored and stable image of Gourari's piano hanging between the speakers.
Elusive Affinity includes Alfred Schnittke's Five Aphorisms for Piano. The contemplative fifth Aphorism is punctuated by atonal, lower-register crashes with the piano's loud pedal depressed. The clarity of these crashes as reproduced by the Cantons was impressive, as was the low-frequency extension.
If recorded piano can reveal problems, the same can be said about the marimba. One of the things I love about Roon is its integration with streaming radio stations. A favorite is Linn Classical, which plays tracks from the Scottish label's expanding catalog of well-engineered recordings. One evening, before I started some Canton critical listening, the Linn station streamed the Allemande from the Cello Suite No.5 in C Minor, BWV1011, performed on marimba by Kuniko Kato. Immediately impressed by the Japanese percussionist's empathetic approach to this work, I found the album, J.S. Bach: Solo Works for Marimba, on Tidal (16/44.1 FLAC, Linn Classical CKD 585) and listened to the entire suite. The Reference 7Ks faithfully reproduced the delightful balance between the direct sound of the instrument and the ambience behind it. The Cantons' transparency allowed me to hear clearly how the attack on each note lit up the reverberation in St. John's Church in Estonia. No specific notes seemed emphasized, though the instrument's lower registers did sound very rich.
It is fair to note that the sound of the marimba doesn't have much high-frequency content to speak of. So what about the Canton's highs?
Patricia Barber's new single, "This Town," was released on Tidal as I was writing this review. One of the last events I went to before the New York City pandemic lockdown took effect in March 2020 was a preview of Barber's album Higher in surround sound, presented by engineer Jim Anderson and his producer partner Ulrike Kristina Schwarz. Jim also played some mixes from what would be a new album by Barber's piano trio. "This Town" is the lead-off track on that album, called Clique, which was scheduled to be released around the time this issue of Stereophile hits newsstands and mailboxes.
I cued up "This Town" (24/352.8 MQA FLAC, unfolded to 24/88.2 by Roon) and took a listen. The highs on the Cantons seemed in good balance with the lower frequencies, neither the hi-hat cymbals nor the sibilance on Barber's voice sounding exaggerated. Her piano was reproduced without coloration and, as with my Fender bass on Editor's Choice, Peter Herbert's bass on the Santa Fe album, and Ray Brown's bass on Live at the Loa, the sound of the double bass on "This Town" had an excellent combination of leading-edge definition and weight.
Conclusion
The last Canton loudspeaker I reviewed was the Karat Reference 2 DC in 2003. Though I felt that the balance of that loudspeaker, which was then Canton's flagship, was somewhat forward in the treble, I concluded that it had "powerful-sounding low frequencies, clean and grain-free highs, coloration-free midrange, high sensitivity and dynamic range, and stable, precise stereo imaging." With the exception of the forward treble balance, I can say much the same things about the Canton Reference 7K. And at $6995/pair, it is significantly less expensive than the Reference 2 DC, which cost $10,000/pair in 2003, equivalent to $14,630 in today's money. Indeed, it seems $7000/pair is becoming a sweet spot for the balance between a loudspeaker's sound quality and cost. Canton's Reference 7K is a great loudspeaker at an affordable price—check it out.
Footnote 1: You can find the spectrum of an E-string transient in one of these tracks here.
The Cantons excelled at reproducing this track, the stable image of Copland's piano extending from the left of the soundstage, guitarist John Abercrombie on the right, German bassist Peter Herbert front and center, and the great Billy Hart's drums unambiguously behind the other three members of the band and spread across half the width of the stage. Listening to the album, I was saddened to remember that Abercrombie passed away in 2017 at just 72, the same age I was when I started writing this review, but my spirits were elevated by his great music making.
Male voice is always revealing of problems in the lower midrange. Richard Lehnert's speaking voice on the Editor's Choice tracks sounded uncolored, though with a little more body than I am used to. Similarly, Jeff Hamilton's kickdrum in the solo drum passages and Ray Brown's solo double bass in the Ray Brown Trio's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" from Live at the Loa—Summer Wind (16/44.1 FLAC, Concord Jazz, Tidal) were a touch too rich-sounding—not that this bass player objects to that! Gene Harris's piano sounded clean and uncolored.
As I have written before, piano is revealing of problems in the upper midrange due to the lack of masking and the fact that the frequencies of the notes in this region are spaced relatively far apart. In the months that have passed since I heard her play at a pre-pandemic recital in Manhattan's Merkin Hall, Russian pianist Anna Gourari has become a favorite. During the recital, as she performed the Adagio from J.S. Bach's Concerto in D Minor, the audience hardly breathed, so hypnotic was her left-hand chord ostinato. This work concludes her Elusive Affinity album (24/96 MQA, Tidal/ECM). Playing this track on the Canton speakers took me back to that magic night, the uncolored and stable image of Gourari's piano hanging between the speakers.
It is fair to note that the sound of the marimba doesn't have much high-frequency content to speak of. So what about the Canton's highs?
The last Canton loudspeaker I reviewed was the Karat Reference 2 DC in 2003. Though I felt that the balance of that loudspeaker, which was then Canton's flagship, was somewhat forward in the treble, I concluded that it had "powerful-sounding low frequencies, clean and grain-free highs, coloration-free midrange, high sensitivity and dynamic range, and stable, precise stereo imaging." With the exception of the forward treble balance, I can say much the same things about the Canton Reference 7K. And at $6995/pair, it is significantly less expensive than the Reference 2 DC, which cost $10,000/pair in 2003, equivalent to $14,630 in today's money. Indeed, it seems $7000/pair is becoming a sweet spot for the balance between a loudspeaker's sound quality and cost. Canton's Reference 7K is a great loudspeaker at an affordable price—check it out.
Footnote 1: You can find the spectrum of an E-string transient in one of these tracks here.
