Focal Kanta No.2

There's a Kanta 3 now for larger rooms. 

Bet it sounds great. 

I bought three of them for my front L/R/C paired with a Mcintosh mc452.  Great low end.  Had them with a marantz 7 ch, 150 wpc, left alot to be desired.  Gave them good power and the results were what I expected.

Lots of fun shopping around...enjoy the journey Steve!

I wouldn't think twice about putting them in a room that big. I wish I had that for my 936's. 

I Expect the 1028be could out perform just about anything out there with a select number of favorite tunes and I nearly fell under their spell until I played some old average recordings and the salesman couldn't turn the system off fast enough! At $10k there's a lot of new and used speakers to choose and the listening room is going to decide what speakers sound like more than anything else. I passed on the Kanta 2 and persona 3f without even consideration because their internal volume appeared to small to play cleanly in my 18'x26'x7' listening room! Axpona had speakers of all sizes crammed into small hotel rooms and to my ears the best sound came from the smallest speakers, but those were small rooms. At $10k new there's also the contour 60 and F228be, not to mention the new Magico! If I can't get a home demo I buy used to limit the bleeding if my dream speaker becomes a nightmare in my room. I don't care for the pastel finish on the Kanta speakers and the OP sounds like a 'my way or the highway' personality. 

Hi all, any thoughts on how the Focal Kantas would compare to a combination of high quality stand mounts like the Joseph Audio Pulsars and decent subwoofers like the JL Audio E110?  

Yes, the 1038’s were detailed but too tight for my taste and not as warm.  I really like the midrange and tactile bass on the Kanta flax drivers.  I’ve had watt puppies and Kef C5’s which were great but the Kanta delivers a nice balance of detail, space, bass texture and power with expressive mid’s...no glare or etch!

@dave_b 
That sounds like a full range speaker to me! 
Just curious... Did you compare them to the 1038Be?

I bought a pair which I have mated to a Krell Vanguard with Transparent Ultra cabling and the bass is deep, full and fast. Zero distortion and goes below 32HZ then drops off...only pipe organ or synthetic tones below 30HZ would require a subwoofer. 

I doubt it. More likely they had a gutless amp behind them in a very large room. 

kosst,

But the real reality is they distorted badly with a moderate level "rock" track.

ozzy

In a room appropriate to their intended listening distance? I have no doubt at all they could. My 936's don't struggle at all in that regard and the 926's were respectable in a much smaller cabinet and a much larger room than I'm in with my 936's. Those aren't speakers intended for a 30'x 40' room to be heard from 18' away at 95 dB. That's what the 948, 1038, Sopra No.3, and presumably the Kanta No.3 when it arrives, are for. 

Could be wrong but I doubt the Kanta can play down to 40hz cleanly at high spls. 40hz at 95db. What you think? 

@ozzy 
I'm sorry reality evades you, but your denials of it changes nothing. A speaker that reaches down into the low 40's is a full range speaker. It's just a fact. There's practically nothing below 32Hz of consequence and that's the point where most producers worth their salt will apply a steep filter. 

kosst,

Face it, the Kanta 2's with there 2 very small 6" woofers definitely are not full range speakers. Listen to them for yourself or let it go man.

ozzy

The tweeter in the Kanta No.2 is most certainly better than the Electra, so make of that what you will. 

Had the opportunity to listen to both the Kanta 2 ($10K) and the Electra 1028BE ($7K) side by side last month at my local dealer.  1028BE  better in every way to my ears.  and $3K less.  Am I missing something?

My expectation is the use of the extra current use was to extend very low bass and the phase angle is moderate. Still, I would never suggest pairing a Focal design with anything that doesn't have good impedance stability. It is likely one on of the greater causes of complaint about the speaker balance as the wrong paring will change it.

Its likely the mechanical limits as the upper driver isn't experiencing this to the same degree. Since those are lower in signal amplitude, the relative mechanical impact is increased.

Granted the efficiency gain is in a typical margin of error, but I expect Focal gave it that slight nudge as its own measurements had shown it regularly having a slight advantage. I still believe Focal was at the efficiency limit of the mid or tweeter driver instead of the bass arrangement when designing the 948.

But yes, for the most part we are in agreement with differences in talking points only.

No, the most certainly are not more efficient in the bass region! Do the math. .5dB is just about the margin of that error so that increase in sensitivity isn't going to amount to a hill of beans. However, the 2.5 ohm impedance right in the middle of their bass pass band is going to draw more power. 

As for the line arrays theory, generally, coupling breaks down once wavelengths exceed the on center distance between drivers. That distance on the 936 is under a foot so they don't really break down as a coherent mechanical unit until 1000Hz. They're down about 18dB at that point. My guess is that's why you see some odd behavior from the bottom 2 as the top one tapers off more shallowly. 

It seems we're generally in agreement. In any event, I'd expect the Kanta No.2 to have better controlled bass considering the only difference between those drivers and the 936 drivers is a significantly more linear motor. 

The Focal 948 are slightly more efficient over the 936's, but cabinet volume in relation to surface radiation area is a bit less on the 948 as compared to the 936. The main reasoning to not going further is the efficiency for the mid and tweeter drivers are not any more capable in the 948 or 936. At 92db vs 92.5db, either design is at the upper end efficiency for typical cones and domes without resorting to horn loading or other techniques for the mid and tweeter. Focal hit the limit of those drivers first and in the bass could instead be tuned for deeper response in port tuning and lower distortion.

A good deal of other lines out there do gain significant efficiency in larger models as they shelve their mid/tweeter drivers down in level in the crossover in smaller designs as compared to larger. The flax cones are pretty light and achieve output similar to coated paper drivers, but obviously they have their own set of compromises. 

Now the line array theory isn't entirely effective in the 936 as the driver symmetry goes off in the upper end of their pass band. Since its  pretty low in level, the audibility isn't high and is given as acceptable in a design at this price point. Agreeably, this has more to do with the more complex bass driver arrangement in the 936 over the other models in the line. To make that coupling work really well, you require high constancy in driver and operating environment, which some designs to practice to good effect.

It's not that myopic at all. I've heard the argument that all those individual sources can be identified, but the physics don't reflect that. If you're argument was correct, the 948's would require less power for a given output in the bass region, but the require more using fewer, larger, but otherwise identical drivers. The physics of the system suggests that the drivers mechanically couple as roughly described by line arrays theory and deviations tend to nullify, not amplify. 

That is an rather myopic view of engineering of any mechanical system. You're comparing three motor system which will in combination require more power than the single driver. The cabinet and baffle construction will be more complex and costly and the bass performance of each driver will vary due to mechanical acoustic properties as they won't have identical operating environments in the cabinets. You do get some advantages, but those don't outweigh the complications. Even if you increase cabinet volume, you introduce cabinet anomalies if not properly braced and damped.

Using an array of smaller drivers is a solution, but I wouldn't consider it optimal application unless the room size is small, which you had mentioned is your current setup. In my room, which is more than double what Focal specifies for the 936 and still significantly more than the Kanta2, going to larger cone diameter is the best route. In my case it works ideally with two eight inch drivers, but a single twelve could do as well. The negative to the twelve is wide baffle and cabinet construction to contain two eights are reasonable in engineering and cost. Right sized tools for the job is always best. 

@mmeysarosh 

Yeah, that's always the apples to oranges argument that gets made. Well duh, moving less air is going to produce less amplitude. So you use several. I really don't feel like crunching the numbers at 5am with my contacts out, but I have done the numbers and the 3 6.5" drivers I'm listening to roughly equal the area of a 10 inch cone. So seeing as how they move the same volume of air as a 10 inch driver, their excursion is identical while still enjoying the benefits of the stiffness of the smaller cones. No distortion penalty due to excursion. 

It actually is an absolute direct correlation and proven through both computational FEA and measurement. You get a substantial area in increase when moving from six to eight inch cones and this allow substantially reduced excursion and pressure exerted on the cone to achieve similar amplitude at lower bass frequencies. So while the shorter cone is stiffer due to its smaller size, its generally a linear gain unless shape is changed, which it usually is in most cases. The force increase on the other hand is a non linear function as there are multiple factors at play, the pressure itself and increase in cone velocity and acceleration in air. A smaller driver will always requires more energy to achieve the same output as larger driver in low bass area. An eight inch cone offers about fifty percent more area than a six and half inch cone. Now as that cone gets larger, the ability to achieve the rates of acceleration at higher frequencies becomes overly challenging. Not to mention the dispersion beaming that also occurs, which a six inch cone begins to beam at around 2khz, maybe slightly less. I'd do believe there would be artifacts if the wavelength produced becomes larger than the cone, but I'm not sure if its of any issues at the sized being discussed.

In ending, there isn't a single part of the driver that wouldn't require significantly more buildup if wanted to achieve a similar lower frequency performance without distortion increase. It might even be easier to use Focal's own EM technology to achieve what your proposing, but at a notable cost. Going to a larger cone is simply much more cost effective and negative is mainly overall size and increase in baffle if front mounted, a negative if trying to increase dispersion width but can be addressed with baffle shaping.

Na.... There's not really some direct, unequivocal correlation between excursion and distortion like so many want to believe in order to justify giant drivers. Making a more linear motor is an easier task than building a bigger, stiffer, properly damped cone. Focal and many others have built impressive businesses and speaker with 6 to 8 inch cones. 

Someone listed a pair of Kanta here yesterday in bright yellow.  May still be for sale.

The bottom two woofers in the Aria 936 have low crossover point at the same frequency and slope, with the minor differences seen are mostly due to cabinet placement and are acoustic in nature. The top woofer shares the same low cross point and slope but not high crossover, as the slope is reduced, most likely improving the mid range integration. Both front ports and bottom ports are tuned to the same point.

The Kanta2 has a similar height, width, but bit more depth with a smaller number of drivers, which gives the woofers a bit more cabinet volume to work with. They should perform inline with speakers using similarly sized woofers, but always remember designers have differences on how much distortion they want to allow their system to produce. A smaller woofer will require greater excursion to achieve this with the countering factor will be increasing distortion. Focal tends to lean towards minimizing this distortion and will keep high order crossover slopes in order to do so. This is giving up on the very lowest octaves that aid in giving room pressurization but keeps a cleaner mid and upper bass area in addition to the lower midrange. Compromises in anything.

I wouldn’t put much stock in bad bass experiences as that is heavily room and position dependent.

i heard them and did not hear any significant deficiency.

i doubt all the good press the kanta2 received was a fallacy.

I don't think you're very far off in your assessment, however, I think that overlooks the strangeness in the port alignment. The 3 woofers don't appear to behave identically and I think that may be how they negate the more obvious artifacts of over-damping while enjoying the benefits. 

He still has the opinion of the bass being exaggerated in his closing remarks and expects that over damping is being applied to preclude the expected effect of bloated or excess boom, which is a very common practice applied to a good number of designs.

There is a downside to the practice and its often resulting in the bass not having quite the tactful, taught, and resolute sound. A good example of this comparison would be the Revel F208 and its very similarly configured Studio2. Driver compliments are nearly a match and they share a good deal of design traits. The bass driver arrangement is similar, but the F208 shows some elevated response and measures down a bit further compared to its much more elaborate stablemate. The F208 is damped further than the Studio2 and the overall bass depth is a bit more obscured due to the down vs. front ported design. The Studio2 shows greater speed, articulation, and resolve compared to the F208 in listening, but I will tell you in certain genres of music the F208's bass outshines its more expensive twin. This is highly recording specific and and is bit of more fun choice in the F208's implementation vs resolve in the Studio2. A massive amount of this has to do with how and on what a recording was mastered on and what platforms the recording was tested on when finalizing.

My expectation is something similar will play out in the Aria vs Kanta2. A choice for greater faster and more articulate bass was likely made also with a goal of reduced distortion. That is something I see across Focal's upper end designs as they really try to push distortion much lower in upper end designs.  The Kanta2 is certainly taking its page from the Sopra series.

"A large part of the upper-bass peak apparent in this graph will be due to the inevitable exaggeration of the nearfield measurement technique."

He doesn't note that exaggeration being part of the measurement technique??? Yes, he does. He also seemed to struggle to explain what he described as the complicated behavior of the woofers and 3 ports. Don't ask me to explain it, but those things don't sound like what the raw numbers might suggest. 

Lets take a look at the entire comment. 

The complex sum of these nearfield responses, taking into account both acoustic phase and the different distance of each radiator from a nominal farfield microphone position, is shown as the trace below 300Hz in fig.4. A large part of the upper-bass peak apparent in this graph will be due to the inevitable exaggeration of the nearfield measurement technique. But with the overlap between the outputs of the three woofers and the midrange drive-unit in the same region, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Aria 936 will have too much upper-bass energy in all but very large rooms. I note that Bob Deutsch found that the Focal's bass sounded extended, but without the low frequencies sounding "boomy or bloated," which suggests that the woofer alignment is on the overdamped side. Though the tuning frequencies of the ports bracket 40Hz, close to the frequency of the lowest string of the electric bass and double bass, RD did comment on the Aria 936's excellent low-frequency extension; I suspect that this is actually related to the speaker's exaggerated upper bass.

JA doesn't note the near field measurements causing some of that result, be he clearly feels it is exaggerated. Even with that, boundary reinforcement is going to push some of that level back up, but will vary room to room. Take the Sopra 3, which had used the same measurements method practiced by the same tester and this much larger speaker produces around half the boost in the same region. 

Now the Kanta2 wasn't measured at Sterophile, but Germany's Stereoplay and they also have the Sopra2 for good comparison. The Sopra2 does go deeper, but those curves are more similar than different.

In the end, I think you'll find them less cleaner but less dynamic. I'm sure well hear your response in the near future.


Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/focal-aria-936-loudspeaker-measurements#mSEBZCCqef7HYJtX.99

@mmeysarosh 

I don't agree with your assessment at all, and neither did RD at Stereophile. If you'd read the measurements instead of just glossing over them for a chart you'd have noticed JA pointing out that the measurements weren't accurate due to the near field technique he used. The 6-7dB you're talking about doesn't exist. It's maybe half that. It does NOT suggest uncontrolled behavior by the speaker. I have a guess as to why they measure with a hump where none is actually heard. 

Stereophile did test and produced measurements for the Focal Aria 936 and that speaker has up to a 6-7db midbass to bass boost as compared to the rest of the audible range. Seeing what the Kanta2 produces recently, its much more even handed and will sound considerably lighter down low in comparison to your Aria.

As with the Sopra, Focal wanted to keep distortion well controlled Kanta2 and the measurements does bear this out. The slopes in general are similar between all models, but the boost doesn't exist in either the Sopra or Kanta. They likely allowed a bit more distortion in the Aria line to make it sound more dynamic under certain music genres.

Focal stated the composite baffle utilized allowed them to keep the front baffle stiffness they desired while taking less volume as compared ot the Sopra design. So they went for a more compact cabinet to allow better fit in more rooms.

I'm not familiar with 946's. If you mean 948's, they certainly can overwhelm a smallish to average size room. That's exactly why I didn't get them. You could probably overwhelm a small room with 936's too. The exact same things can be observed with the Sopra floorstanders. Focals are well known to have a meaty middle bass region. They most certainly design their speakers with an intended room size in mind. So you're going to blame the speakers because somebody decided to stuff them in an inappropriate room? That's kinda dumb. 

And I'm completely with Prof on the looks thing. Who exactly looks at a speaker and says "that thing isn't ugly enough to be good"? That's pretty much what a few of you have said. When was the time Focal didn't brag about the overtly french esthetic of their designs? Speakers are supposed to look like industrial machinery if they want to be taken seriously? I'm not sure I want speakers that have the esthetic of a Mazak CNC machine or a Fanuc robot, even if Dave Wilson and Vandersteen think they should. Saying a speaker looks too good to be serious is about the lamest criticism I can think of. 

The mere fact that Kantas seem to have been designed, at least in part, with crossover to lifestyle appeal in mind, is already a huge stroke against them in the minds of most audiophiles.

Not in the mind of this audiophile.  I really prefer appealing design, especially in something like speakers that essentially become furniture in a room.  So an appealing design is a plus for me, and that's one reason why I was attracted to the Kantas.

So.... I should understand that the sentiment here is to save $6000 and just buy 936's that'll blow them clean out of the water? Because that's pretty much what I'm getting here. 

The mere fact that Kantas seem to have been designed, at least in part, with crossover to lifestyle appeal in mind, is already a huge stroke against them in the minds of most audiophiles.  They would really have to overperform to vindicate themselves.

The Kanta's are not bad speakers they just don't have the balance for a dynamic whack as in rock music. Bi-amped with a sub would be the ticket, IMHO.

ozzy

Yeah... I should. I haven't had time to track a pair down. Kinda learning to be my own lawyer. I just can't believe what a few of you say based on all the other glowing things that completely contradict you guys. 

kosst,

You have no actual experience just your hard headed personal opinion. No offense man, but you need to actually listen to a pair of Kanta 2’s.
Be it at your home, a friends house or at a dealer.
As you would say, your "amateur opinion means nothing" to we who have actually heard them.

ozzy

Defensive? Na! I only seem defensive if you're feeling butt hurt! 

And yeah, I pretty much think the opinions of amateurs are useless, especially when they radically contradict the published words of people who make a living expressing their opinion. I've said that around here quite a bit. I don't claim to a professional. I DO accept the possibility great gear and a treated room can yield a lousy listening experience though. I've had that experience before. 

kosst,

I guess I'm unfamiliar with your profile.

You are a professional?

Professional what, exactly, and how does it make your view more valid?

Do you mean non-professionals can't have a valid opinion on speakers they demo?

What are you so defensive man? You haven’t even heard them. Maybe they suck? 

When a couple of amateurs start making statements the wildly contradict my experience with similar products and professional evaluations, I don't give those opinions much credit. 

kosst,

What aren’t you buying? That we aren’t reporting our experiences truthfully?

I always make a point of ensuring that the speakers I audition get the best chance possible. And this involves my auditioning them from various perspectives, pulling them out from the wall if necessary, etc, to take the "room out of the equation" as much as possible. The room I auditioned the Kanta’s in was a good one, they were well away from the walls, with treated room corners. I adjusted my seating position as well to listen for differences in bass nodes, and still came away with the impression I gave.

That’s certainly not to say that the Kanta’s can not sound balanced in the right room or set up. But if I can’t get a speaker to sound balanced in my audition, it’s not a good sign to me. And feedback from others here suggest they must be a finicky speaker to set up to get the type of tonal bass quality other speakers (e.g. most that I auditioned, and including my own Thiel speakers) have less problem achieving.

The Paradigm Persona's I auditioned actually started out in a much more compromised, right near the back wall, position and they still sounded more controlled and coherent from top to bottom than the Kanta's.