You might think that things will change,
But take my word –
They won’t.
You paint a lovely picture, but reality intrudes
With a message for you and it’s real bad news.”
It’s a production twist that gives the lyrics added weight and bite, but it rests as much on the sardonic, matter of fact vocal delivery as it does on the studio (or rather, front room) trickery. The Kantas capture both the world-weary singing and the intended framing for it with an unobtrusive ease that brings the music right into the room – without making a point about how it got there.
By now you’ll have noticed the words “substance” and “presence” sprinkling this description of the Kanta 1’s musical presentation and performance. Just like any compact, this aspect of its delivery depends on the voicing of the speaker’s bottom-end; and just like any compact, the impact of that voicing is both musically obvious and readily apparent. It’s a toss up as to whether too little bass is preferable to too much (on balance, it probably is) but if you listen to a cross section of the two-way stand-mounts out there, it’s remarkable how often designers are tempted to squeeze just a bit more oomph out of their baby than they really should. The results are a disaster. A carefully orchestrated, “look how much bass they can produce” demonstration might impress in the short term, but that wobbly, overweight and bilious bottom-end soon becomes intrusive and you’ll quickly realize just how musically destructive it is. The Kanta possesses that rarest of attributes amongst small speakers, a beautifully balanced bass. Focal has resisted the temptation to trade efficiency for extension or vice versa. Instead, the middling 88dB sensitivity is mated to a low but far from crippling 3.9 Ohms minimum impedance (although that does help explain the preference for deliverable current). Combined with the large, carefully profiled port and the well-controlled cabinet, it delivers not just plenty of bass energy, but keeps it clean too, with a notable absence of the muddy grunge and rhythmic slurring that mars the over-voiced alternatives. Extension is satisfyingly deep for the speaker’s size, allowing smaller orchestras to sound convincing and able to present proper musical contrasts. That has as much to do with the speed and coherence of the bass as its depth, but it adds up to an impressive sense of scale and musical energy. The finale to Love Is Strange sees no fewer than six, various acoustic guitars, plus drums and whistle indulging in a riotous rendition of ‘The Next Voice You Hear’. The Kantas deliver it with all that purpose, energy and enthusiasm intact. There’s no escaping the fact that this is a group of seriously accomplished musicians having a very good time – or that the audience is having a good time too.
That lack of low frequency, boxy clutter does more than facilitate that natural sense of temporal flow and musical energy. The absence of intrusive cabinet character allows the music to step away from the boxes, for the speakers to disappear as identifiable sources of sound. Sure, every so often some clumsy pop producer will stick a high-hat in one speaker or the other, but any recording with a properly rendered acoustic space will stand alone, occupying its own space within the listening room. Of course, that’s supposed to be a small speaker strength, but note that I’m talking about acoustic space here rather than simple stereo spread, another clear indication that the Kanta 1s generate well-balanced and properly integrated extension that certainly belies their modest dimensions. The large acoustic but relatively small forces involved in Vivaldi’s Gloria (Decca 483 3874) show off the Focals strengths perfectly, the I Barocchisti’s foundations, built on a harpsichord, three cello and two bass line up reproduced with a vibrant sense of drive and musical intent that both anchors and propels the performance forwards. The air and space inside the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano-Besso might lack the defined boundaries and cavernous volume of a wide bandwidth system, but it still retains a natural height and scale, proportional to the orchestra and chorus. If you move to larger forces then yo’ll hear the speakers’ limitations. The fourth movement adagio from Mahler’s 5thSymphony (Barbirolli and the New Philharmonia EMI/Esoteric ESSE 90057) is a case in point. The Kantas successfully capture the sweep and beauty of the music, the plucked bass notes marking the pace just as they should, even if they lack any real texture or pitch definition. It’s a perfect case of doing just enough to keep things moving, not so much as to draw attention to the deficiencies. In some ways that’s a mantra I might use to might sum up the compact Focals, except that it risks damning them with faint praise rather than recognising the art and value in carefully exercised (and engineered) restraint.
Two into one does go…
Among the essential raisons d’être for the Kanta 1’s existence is not just limited budget but limited space. It’s designed for performance-orientated purchasers who simply don’t have the system, the space or the opportunity to accommodate larger, floorstanding designs. It’s neat, petite and discrete, meaning that it will fit right into a host of modern domestic interiors. But another fact of modern domestic life is the concept of shared space. Sure, there are audiophiles with second homes, office systems or dens that need a small speaker – but there are far more family homes where the hi-fi system has to share space with kids, pets and of course, the TV. But far from being a limitation, leveraging the Kanta’s considerable communicative capabilities in a 2.0 set up designed to elevate your enjoyment of audio/visual entertainment unleashes a possibly unsuspected bonus. Having underlined the Focal’s strengths when it comes to vocal reproduction, TV or movie dialogue is meat and drink to it, while its crisp dynamics and “just enough” bass deliver emphatic results on sound effects – without producing the sort of low-frequency thuds that keep the rest of the house (not to mention the neighbors) awake at night. Whether it’s playing BluRay discs or streaming NetFlix, serious film or superior TV drama, some big sporting event or the GameBoy, the combination of a simple stereo amp and the Kanta 1 rises to the challenge so easily that if you switch them off or flirt with basic surround sound, you’ll be scratching your head and wondering just where all the drama and excitement went. For space-starved music lovers with more than one domestic demand to meet, the compact Focal’s superb dialogue performance is a serious hidden benefit.