I recently heard a pair of Reference 5K powered by an Esoteric DAC/streamer and F-07 integrated amp.
- impressive build quality
- beautiful
- very detailed and resolving sound, unfortunately that became very grating at anything above 80 dB or so at listening position
- the issue to my ears wasn’t from frequency response aberrations, as that seemed pretty neutral, but rather from the tonality of the drivers. Perhaps this is a byproduct of using ceramic and metal for each driver. I’ve had this issue with other speakers using metal drivers like those from KEF and Paradigm.
Definitely not for me. I’ll also note that the resale value of Canton is horrible in the US.
