Does any of you guys have experience with the Canton GLE series? I am especially interested in 409 and 407 (and maybe 403 and 402). Also, are they supposed to replace the LE speakers? I saw the LE 170 at Saturn (a German store) for 229 € this afternoon, but can't find those on the official German page. The GLE 409 is 299 €.

What's the overall impression of Canton? I know most of you are not fans of Bose for example.

Some alternatives would be Quadral Quintas 500 (299 €), Quadral Argentum 07.1 (199 €), Elac FS 58 (249 €) and Elac FS 57 (199 €). I tested them at Saturn today and the sound quality is not very different.

PS: The prices are for one speaker only, not the set.

Canton speakers - generally speaking - offer a very good bang for buck.

The GLE series does indeed replace the LE series and has received many good reviews.

The 409/407 models are suited for larger rooms ... in small rooms, bass response might be a bit overpronounced whereas the 402/403 might lack some juice in the low end. If you have enough space, go for the 409 ... it will do good - especially when you move them to a larger room.

What I like about the GLE series is that Canton ditched the titanium/aluminium dome tweeter in favor of a fabric tweeter ... I never liked the audible resonance of metal tweeters which I seem to be very sensitive towards.

Well, I have a rather small room. The reason why I wanted to get the 407/409 is that they are not bookshelf speakers (no bookshelf for me - I have a relative low furniture). I might look for the 402/403 together with some "feet" then.

Solid speaker stands for compact speakers do always pay off IMO ... a bookshelf with it's very own resonance behaviour isn't where you want to place good speakers.

Buying the 409 might be an investment for the future, though ...

I went to Saturn again to see how the 402 perform (they didn't have the 403 available for testing) and the quality is OK for my needs, too. However, a stand costs 150 € and the speakers are also 150 €. Therefore, bookshelf speakers + stand cost just as much as the 409 which are also 3-way and have a larger resonance corpus.

Today stores were open until 22:00 in the Karlsruhe city center so I went to play with loudspeakers and amps at Media Markt. For testing, I had a Dire Straits SACD, Pink Floyd's Echoes and a pretty old Dream Dance 4. The funny thing is that with all speakers - including some 1500 € Cantons from the Karat series IIRC - while the Dire Straits and Pink Floyd tunes sounded really good, one of my Dream Dance tracks was awful. I am going to upload B.B. Jones' "Flash" so you can listen to the first 30 seconds of the track. Generally speaking, the bass sounded really weird - something that is very difficult to put in words. All I can say is that it's not the usual "not enough bass" or "too much bass" problem, but something different. In some moments you had the impression that there are gaps in the track. This was especially the case with some Bose shelf speakers where the bass wasn't really present, but at the same time, during the period where the bass was supposed to be, everything else was much quieter. As I said, really weird and difficult to put in words. Could this be caused by some bad wiring of the speakers (wrong polarity or something)? But then how come the other tracks (The Flether Memorial Home, When The Tigers Broke Free, One Of These Days, High Hopes) sounded just right?

At Media Markt and Saturn all speakers and amps are hooked to a terminal where you can combine the various amps with whatever speaker pair you want to test. There was a separate Denon SACD player + amp + JBL speakers (don't know the model - all I know is that they were black, trapezoidal and 999 € per piece) setup where I tested all tracks again and this problem was not present. The only problem was the powerful bass that was too strong for my taste and the lack of clear highs.

Finally, I also tested a Yamaha Pianocraft system and was surprised to see how well it compares to the shelf speakers available for testing which can go up to even 500 € per piece.

Edit: Uploaded the file here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=57039

When summed to mono in Cool Edit, the bass stays very strong, so it doesn't appear to be a phasing issue in the track itself...the only thing I can think of is that the room where you were auditioning the multiple speakers had some strong room modes (standing waves) at or near the frequency of the bass in that particular track, and the room where the Denon/JBL system was setup didn't.

Edit: If you used the same amp to compare all the speakers, it indeed could have been a wiring issue with that particular amp, but if one channel's polarity was reversed, I think you would've noticed something strange with the Pink Floyd and Dire Straits tracks, as well...did you ever sit down directly between the speakers, or were you standing most of the time? Reversed polarity could go unnoticed if you're off to one side, but when you sit directly between the speakers, you get the "hole in the middle" effect.

The JBL speakers were in the same room, but were facing the opposite direction than the rest of the speakers. Most of the time I was standing in front of the speaker I was testing. I didn't think this would be a big problem especially since I am totally deaf on the left ear.