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How to make the Focal Kanta No. 2 speakers sing?

Hi!

My first post here and I would like to hear your thoughts and tips for "warming up" my Focal Kanta 2 speakers.

 

TLDR

The sound from my Focal Kanta 2 speakers in my room is a bit shouty, bright and thin sounding, clearly lacking level and emotion in the lower mid range. Bass is good, quick and quite deep though.

Any tips for getting more "vocal warmth" into the system? Tube preamp, Dirac, ...? I see that many use old school power hungry amps that can heat your house during winter to drive Focal speakers. Is that really needed or can I get away with a modern amp that doesn’t cost a fortune.

 

More in depth information

In my living room (5.3 x 4.1 x 2.4m) I have a setup with both 2 channel and a multi channel setup. They share the same front speakers and front speaker amp.

2 channel setup:

 

5.2 channel setup:

 

I focus mainly on the two channel setup here. Multichannel is used quite much also for streaming movies, but is ok.

So the main issue for me is that the sound in in the two channel setup is thin sounding with mids clearly lacking in the lower end. It can be fatiguing to listen for a few hours. Bass though is enjoyable, fast and fairly deep.

Earlier I had the Focal Aria 936 speakers as front speakers in the same room (connected to the Yamaha AVR at that time). I liked them but wanted to upgrade to the next level after a few years 😄 The Arias were more forgiving than the Kantas, had more enjoyable warmth in the mids and were a bit rolled off in the top compared to the Kantas. Not fatiguing at all. But everything else the Kantas do better.

I have also had some other speakers, up to half Kanta price range, in the same room where all have had fuller mids and a more forgiving sound: Dynaudio, Totem and Triangle floor standers as well as Buchardt and my really old B&W 602s3 (super full mids but super rolled off in the top) stand speakers. The Kantas are different animals to all these and seem to require the a more delicate and correct chain of components to perform.

I have messed around with speaker positioning quite a lot. It’s mainly the bass region that is affected. Mids not very much.

Options I’m considering:

  • Upgrading the Yamaha AVR to a Marantz Cinema 50 for example to get Dirac room tuning, and run the 2 channel system through this also. The quality of the Marantz might not be the best here to use as a 2 channel pre amp/processor.
  • Use a dedicated pre amp for the 2 channel system. Budget up to 2000€. Not sure what to look for? Used equipment is fine.
  • Tubes? Never really listened to tubes but from what I understand you generally get a more warm sound from them. Tube preamp? Not very modern but might do the trick. Schiit Freya + seems to be within the budget range for example.
  • Other 2 channel amplifier. As mentioned I have tried to avoid the nuclear power plants of amps. I see people recommending amps from manufacturers like Musical Fidelity, Sim Audio, McIntosh, Accuphase etc. But these are really costly and I feel they generally belong in an older age that we are moving away from. But it might be what is needed, I don’t know, haven’t really heard them play.
  • Treat the room more. I have a big sofa, a really big carpet and a few acoustic panels in the room (no real science behind them now). The room in itself is a bit "bright" so here I can make a better effort of course, regardless of other taken measures.
  • Get other speakers. I can also just face it that the Kantas are what they are, sounding thin in the midrange and lacking emotion in voices. Getting other speakers might be the easiest upgrade. But it’s not that easy to find and test speakers in your room either...

 

Long story. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

donald_dac

Showing 3 responses by aquint

aquint's avatar
aquint
28 posts
 

I agree with soix that the amplifier may be the reason for what the OP is hearing. It's not that there aren't great-sounding Class D amps out there—I just wrote up the TIDAL Intra, and Bruno Putzeys certainly knows what he's doing—but these products aren't inexpensive. I reviewed the Kanta No 2s myself about eight years ago and got excellent results with Pass 60.8s and a T+A DAC/preamp, two products appropriately priced for the kind of system you'd expect to see the Kantas in.

Definitely do not give up on the Focals and  go looking for speakers that will sound good with your amplifiers. That's the tail wagging the dog.

BTW, soix can be a bruising combatant—I've been on the receiving end—but he is an experienced listener with informed viewpoints. It's usually beneficial when he rings in.

Andy Quint

TAS

aquint's avatar
aquint
28 posts
 

@soix It is off-topic, but such an important issue that I’ll comment here and now. Maybe the subject can get its own thread at some point.

It’s an important issue, I think, because some members of our audiophile tribe have gone a bit overboard about what’s called "immersive audio." This approach to spatiality is technologically innovative and certainly can be a great deal of fun with film. But with music, I think the jury is out. I’ve been interested in multichannel music for some time (I have more than 4000 surround sound recordings) and, based on what I’ve been able to hear on Apple Music, Dolby Atmos is not the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’ve noticed that some of the most vocal Atmos fans don’t seem to have that much previous experience with discreet MC playback and thus have a credible basis for their extreme advocacy. With most musical material, "object based" surround sound doesn’t represent some quantum leap forward. I may be one of the few audio guys who actually has Atmos playback up and running and isn’t ga-ga about it. I haven’t checked in with Kal R in a few months—he’s the authority, as far as I’m concerned—but I sense he’s taking a measured approach as well.

That’s part of it. The other part is that my consumption of multichannel music has fallen off since I discovered SOTA crosstalk cancellation - that is, BACCH. I’m not talking as much about the "dummy head" recordings that Dr. Choueiri plays at audio shows to pique interest in his products but the effect the filter has on most "regular" recordings, even synthetic studio concoctions. XTC doesn’t add anything, it recovers spatial information that was there all along. It wears well and doesn’t seem gimmicky. And if you’re capable with audio software you don’t have to buy an expensive component (like the BACCH-SP)—you can purchase the XTC filter to run on your iOS music computer, whatever that is.

So, yes. Traditional two-channel audiophiles, uninterested in either discreet multichannel or Dolby Atmos for all the usual reasons, should at least investigate XTC as a way to extract the greatest degree of spatiality possible from the system and recordings they already own.

Andy Quint

 

 

aquint's avatar
aquint
28 posts
 

@kennyc

I felt like I hit the jackpot when I purchased the Linn/DSM2 w Organik DAC upgrade. BAACH looked interesting, but the BAACH-SP was priced way out of my comfort zone. I wasn’t sure if I can buy then work the software separately, thanks for letting me know this option. I would love to try BAACH with my current DAC.

 

To be clearer about BACCH options: Theoretica Applied Physics, which makes the expensive BACCH-SP (in several versions) and the really expensive Grand BACCH-SP also sells several versions of what’s called BACCH4Mac that are far less costly – for under $5K, you can get the loudspeaker option with the hand-built in-ear microphones, head tracking capability (you provide the webcam) and, of course, the XTC software. For the really uncertain and/or thrifty, there’s a software-only version (BACCH4Mac Intro) that’s priced just under $1000 that bases the "3D audio rendering" on distance measurements (with a tape measure) of your listening geometry, rather than in-ear acoustic measurements. It's not the full BACCH experience but a decent approximation.

Visit the Theoretica web site for full details.

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