Review: Canton CD 300 Home Theater Speakers

In home speakers, we’re always looking for that perfect balance between form and function. This is more important with speakers than with most other parts of your entertainment system. Why? First, because your speakers are the one element that can’t (usually) be hidden, unless you opt for in-walls which bring with them other compromises. Second, the shape as well as the material of a loudspeaker can greatly affect its sound performance. In Canton’s CD 300 line, we’ve found a very pleasing balance of those elements.

The Canton CD system I’ve been using consists of two CD 300 towers with four 4-inch cones each and one 1-inch dome tweeter; one CD 360F center channel with the same drivers as the towers; two CD 220 surrounds with one cone and one dome tweeter each; and an ASD 250 SC subwoofer. Aesthetically, the CD line is more masculine than feminine, but that’s a Euro masculine, not a mid-western farmer masculine. The smooth brushed aluminum cabinets are both elegant and tough—like the robots in iRobot. They look good with a flat panel TV or, as in our demo room, flanking a projection screen.

The 300 speakers’ main drivers are all aluminum with aluminum-manganese tweeters, adding a kind of pleasant synergy to the system. On the towers two cones are focused solely on bass while the other two reproduce midrange and bass. Canton calls this a two-and-a-half way system which is designed to produce more bass in a narrow enclosure. The aluminum grilles are removable, with effort, but removing them distracts from the look so I don’t recommend it. The narrow 47-inch towers are ported, while the surrounds and centers are not. The 250-watt subwoofer, like most subwoofers, is not a style statement, but it’s not an eyesore either.

The cabinet design, while being attractive, also affects sonic performance. There are no internal parallel surfaces and the wall thickness varies, the end result is an elimination of standing waves. Canton says that even the design of the flare on the front port was carefully engineered for a 6dB improvement in headroom.

Set up was simple; the towers come with easily attached bases and the surrounds with wall brackets. The wire bindings on the rear of the speakers are large so you won’t be straining with clumsy fingers to get the wires tightened down. The subwoofer includes both line level and speaker level connectors, a phase switch and crossover and volume controls. At 37 pounds it’s not a lightweight, but not as unwieldy as other subs we’ve used here.

I first tried out the speakers with some sci-fi movies, Will Smith’s iRobot and I Am Legend. While these aren’t exactly dialog-driven movies, the CD 360 produced clear-accurate sounding dialog from the center of the screen. The towers and surrounds filled my room with the movie action. Positioning the speakers can affect the soundstage, so it took a bit of experimenting to get the right full feel I was looking for. I was impressed with the clarity of the action sequences—sound was focused when it was supposed to be, more diffuse when that was called for. In one particular scene in Legend, when the infected humans were pounding on Smith’s transparent lab door, I could practically feel the effect slamming off the screen and onto my sofa. That was fun.

One more subtle material, like the fantastic Sony release Across the Universe, the Cantons allowed Evan Rachael Woods’ lovely voice to fill the space then turn gritty and down-to-earth with Eddie Izzard’s take on The Beatles’ Mr. Kite. The speakers performed equally well on plain-old CD material and gave depth of compressed music from XM Radio.

There are lots of products on the market that try to balance looks and performance. Some pull it off better than others, and this Canton CD system is clearly in the latter group. If you like the up-front performance of tower speakers, but want something that doesn’t look like a small casket in your living room, then give these a listen. yy