Focal Kanta No.2

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. 

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.

@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. 

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

"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.