What’s not up for debate though is the solid presence and surprising scale developed by these compact speakers. The seamless integration of the carefully engineered drivers creates a holistic quality that gives music a sense of natural continuity, both in terms of time and pitch. So when Clifford Curzon plays the extended runs that feature so prominently in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, K.595 (Britten and the ECO on Decca/Esoteric ESSD90014) there’s no hesitation or discontinuity to disturb or inhibit his astonishing dexterity and fluidity, while the orchestral backing of the ECO is beautifully balanced and delivered with surprising scale and authority. You won’t hear the clearly defined acoustic space that comes from this recording on really wide bandwidth systems nor, despite the breadth and depth of the soundstage, do you get the pinpoint spatial separation and intra-instrumental space that comes with super high-resolution, ultra transparent mini-monitors like Magico’s Q1 or Raidho’s TD1.2. For that Focal offer the Sopra No. 1 or Diablo Utopia – but all of these options are going to cost you considerably more than the Kanta 1s. What you do get is the warm tonality and rich harmonics of the Snape Maltings, together with the presence and energy of an enthusiastic ECO to underpin the lively authority of the piano. It’s a trade off that I for one am more than willing to make.
Take that solid midrange presence along with the dynamic and spatial coherence and combine them with the overall musical articulation and it’s no surprise that the Kantas excel when it comes to vocal reproduction. Whether it’s the tonal purity and distinctive accent of Luz Casal singing ‘These Days’ (Jackson Browne, David Lindley and Tino Di Geraldo, Love Is Strange Inside Recordings INR5111-0) or the almost intrusive attitude of Aimee Mann (Lost In Space MFSL LP 1-278) there’s a naturally recognisable and convincing quality to the diction and delivery of different singers, an individually defined character that makes each singer distinct and recognisable and cuts to the sense of the song. That might seem to contradict my comments regarding resolution, but this is not about how much detail there is, it’s about what the speaker does with that detail and how convincingly it reassembles it into a meaningful whole. Vocal patterns, rhythms and inflexions are amongst the most recognisable sounds we hear, simply because we hear and interpret them all day, every day – and that makes them amongst the most telling of all material when it comes to assessing musical communication. On a track like ‘Real Bad News’ the Kantas set up a beautifully layered musical soundscape, the incidental noises and toy Casio keyboards establishing a dreamy, almost ethereal quality, full of soft textures and subtle distance, which gives Aimee Mann’s vocal all the more contrast and impact when it pops out, front and center, disturbing the comfortable status quo.
“You don’t know, so don’t say you do –
You don’t.
