AQ Canto 5
Floorstanding loudspeakers
An experience that moves your soul. This is how Czech loudspeaker manufacturer presents the brand-new Canto range. For the company, the Canto is a milestone, so important that they decided to dedicate a special website to it. The range consists of two models for now – the two-way bookshelf model 3 and the floor-standing model 5 should be complemented by a bigger three-way speaker in near future.
Function and form
The first thing I noticed is how immaculately the Canto 5 were made. The fit and finish of the AQ Canto can be compared to that of big brands like Bowers & Wilkins, Focal, and Sonus Faber. The back of the loudspeaker – if there is such a thing like the ‘back’ - is made of press-bent beech plywood, with matt lacquer finish. This plywood monocoque shell is made by Czech Plywood, a company that builds on the tradition established by Thonet/TON furniture making, and of which history reaches back to 1891. The plywood structure is manufactured by pressing 1.12mm thick peeled veneers in high-frequency and steam presses. In the Canto 5, the plywood is combined with MDF boards for top and bottom plates, extensive bracing, and with a specially designed internal chamber filled with sand to increase stiffness of the whole assembly. The world of loudspeakers (especially in this affordable price category) is populated by rectangular boxes of all sizes. The Canto 5, with their graceful curves, look really exceptional and valuable.
The drivers are outsourced from Danish SB Acoustic. The fabric dome tweeter sits in a massive, milled aluminum waveguide, and both mid-bass drivers employ aluminum-ceramic cones. There is a bass-reflex port firing towards the listener; bi-wireable speaker terminals are placed in a vertical row on the speaker´s backbone ready to accept bare wires, bananas, or spades. What you cannot see is that there are no faston connectors used in the speaker – every joint inside is hand-soldered and AudioQuest cabling is used throughout the box.
The Canto 5’s room placement was surprisingly easy. I spent maximum five minutes by moving them around before I heard a spectrally even pink noise signal with a tightly focused phantom image. The dispersion characteristic of the speakers was among the best I encountered, and the images stayed put even when I moved my head +/- half a meter from the sweet spot. The pink noise was smooth, with no excessive hissing or low-frequency rumble, so I got hopeful that the Canto 5 might perform really good. It was time to play some music.
Bass management
I cued up Barbara Dennerlein and her Stormy Weather Blues, a track that is propelled by weighty bottom end and incredible Hammond organ playing. I already mentioned the Canto 5’s excellent soundstage stability and it was proved with this track too. The musicians and their instruments were locked in their spots no matter where I sat. There was a moment I stood up and walked around the room to perplex the speakers, but it was like walking around during a concert in a club – there was the podium, there were the players and the stage possessed dimensionality of a live event, not of a hi-fi projection. Such imaging is exceptional irrespective of the price category. Of course, there was not the detail and micro-imaging that high-end speakers are capable for, but who wants it for the price?
Clarity & delicacy
If It Ain´t It I Quit (Blues On the Bayou, MCA) is a wonderful B.B King’s piece with a swinging piano and King’s trademark guitar licks. There is also a bass guitar, which is responsible for the rhythm of the track, even more so than drums. The AQ Canto 5 provided enough bass to shake the (large) room and pumped most of its energy in the rather attractive region between 80 and 100Hz where the bass body, warmth, and hardness resided. On Cassandra Wilson’s Come on In My Kitchen (Blue Note) the very same octave was accented. Clearly, in the AQ Canto 5, the low-end extension is made up for by the ‘thickness’ of the upper bass. I found it not surprising given the internal volume of around 50 liters. In the acoustically treated room and with the speakers far from wall boundaries the full bass was heard at around 42Hz (-3dB). The specifications say that the Canto 5 reaches down to 23Hz (-6dB), which I found rather optimistic value. Not only is it its depth what makes the bass attractive – the texture is important too, and here the Canto 5 lacks the refinement of some other speakers. On the other hand, the enclosures of the AQ Canto 5 are exemplary rigid and do not resonate at any playback volume. Most their peers from the same price category tend to disintegrate into parts if they are driven too loud – the AQ stand still and steady, with no obvious change in tonality and pitch.
Tonal accuracy
When I compared the new Canto 5 against the AQ Passion (that sit at the top of the AQ’s catalogue) there was a clear difference in voicing. The Canto 5 was warmer, more midrangey, with a pleasant roll-off in highs. The Passion was more sparkling, the Canto was plushy smooth. This plushiness remained consistent no matter if the speakers were listened to from a distance, or from a near-field. What’s the benefit for the listener? The Canto 5 sounded relaxed, comfortable, and vinyl-like. The midrange was full and colorful, so the piano in Reckless Blues (Madeleine Peyroux, Dreamland, Atlantic) had beautiful sonority, although its hammers as if had an extra layer of felt. The transient roundness was also heard on the rhythmic mayhem of Pentaphobe (Café Abuse Tone), where the drum clicks became much less aggressive. From how I described the sound of the AQ Canto 5 it might seem that they were extremely forgiving speakers with compromised transparency. That’s not true, however.
I cued up Alpujarra (Ramón Ruiz and Anita La Maltesa, Naim) and started grinning, for the AQ beautifully recreated fingers plucking the acoustic guitar strings, as well as they wonderfully portrayed subtle ambient clues like the mass of air returning from the venue’s walls back to microphones. I found this amazing – there are not many cheap floor-standing speakers that can do that.
Spatial resolution
So, what is the main take-away? The Canto 5s are not ‘the first impression loudspeakers’. The first five minutes with them were unimpressive in fact. However, the longer I listened to them, the more I liked them They can fill even a big room with stable sonic images, and they have colorful midrange, warm bass, and decent treble. They have average sensitivity (88dB) and will perform the best with powerful amplifier. In this case break the rules and buy an amp that is more expensive that the Canto 5.
The AQ Canto 5 (as well as the smaller Canto 3) may be a breakthrough for AQ. These are beautiful and high performing speakers that have a potential to become leaders among affordable speakers. Bravo!
Recommended resellers
AQ s.r.o., Červenka, tel. +420 585 342 232
Manufacturer's website: http://www.aqcanto.cz
Associated components
- Sources: xDuoo X10T II digital transport
- Amplifiers: Lindemann MusicBook Source + MusicBook Power 500
- Interconnects and speaker cables: InAkustik Toslink, AudioQuest Rocket SBW
- Power conditioning: AudioQuest Niagara 3000, AudioQuest Blizzard
- Loudspeakers: AQ Canto 5, AQ Passion, AQ Canto 3
Gallery
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