Focal Kanta No.2

"Geeze.... This just sounds like every rant I've ever seen from people who heard them in horrible rooms with lousy gear. "

I'm another who also reported finding the bass of the Kanta to be disappointing - overarm and disjointed.  It was in a very good room, with room treatments (including tube traps) on very good gear.   A monitor audio speaker, about the same size in an essentially identical room did not have these problems.

I also demoed various Focal speakers over the last two years,and did indeed find some of them a bit too bright.  They have always had a "look at me" tweeter sound, every time I've ever encountered Focal speakers (which is a lot, in many different set ups).

I actually like the sound of some Focal speakers, especially their large models. 

I listened to 936s a few years ago, and I still remember that they had a different timbre-presentation to any of the other brands that I was auditioning.  Not precisely bright or forward, but definitely in the see-through camp; it's actually hard to put on adjective on it.  I could easily see how people would respond positively.  Personally, I preferred the presentation offered by Vienna Acoustics.

I've heard speakers with 2 dedicated 6.5" woofers go loud and reasonably deep, the Revel F32's, but they didn't have the midrange to die for that focal gives you. The 1028be sounded really, really good and I expect the Kanta2's to be an improvement at + $3000.00 per pair. Both speakers cabinets look too small to put big sound into a big room, but in an average size room with a couple hundred watts, maybe a peachtree nova 300 the bass is controlled and musical? If you like the focal house sound you'll like the Kanta2's. 

kosst,

The Focal Dealer said he was playing the Kanta 2 with $85,000 worth of amplification. His room was decked out with lots of room treatment. 
The speakers just can't handle much in the way of rock music.

ozzy

@ozzy 

Fascinating... And I'm over here with an average size room powering 936's with an amp that cost $1000 to build, getting it's signal from a refurbed 1977 Marantz, in a room treated with carpet squares and bed pad from Walmart and acoustic foam from Amazon, and there's nothing remotely discordant about the sound or imaging. I'm about 99% sure I'd get the same results from 926's as well. Or any if the 1000 series. 
Sorry folks... I'm not buying it. I know from experience that you can easily put speakers in horrible places in a room and get really ugly sound out of them. I've done it with mine. And no amount of treatment or insanely priced gear fixes that blunder.