I decided to buy these Canton speakers after having listened 4 years to a set of Jamo speakers that weren't at all bad but they lacked a solid bass.
The Canton Ergo's are good quality built speakers as described by the previouw poster. I would like to add that the enclosure is made of MDF (as in most of the better speaker brands) and that the cross-over filter is split up into two separate parts, one for the woofers and one for the mid/high. The internal speaker cable has quite a large diameter. All in all the value for money in this speaker is realy good. (i paid approx. USD 1250 excl. shipping)
Of course the build quality doesn't tell how a speaker sounds....
These speakers produce an open sound with a good soundstage, the vocals are produced with good dynamics and precision due to the big midrange speaker. The highs are detailed but not harsh as you might expect with a metal dome tweeter. Canton resolved this by mounting the metal dome in a textile ring.
Then there is the bass... never heard a deeper and tighter bass in speakers of this size and price range. Realy awesum.

The room compensation unit does exactly what Canton claims it does. You can add or subtract a little bass or treble to compensate for imperfections in your listening room. It is more like making subtle changes to the cross-over in the loudspeaker itself. The control range is only a few dB +/- but it is sufficient.

Well every product has its flaws and i must say the Canton has one that i hope to get rid of:
The roomcompensation unit operates on a external mains adapter that supplies +15V and -15V for the opamps that are inside this unit.
In the apartment building that i live in we have an elevator which is drivven by a large electric/hydrolic pump. This motor produces electric spikes on the mails and these spikes you can hear through the music as sharp ticks. None of the other components in my setup have ever had trouble with these spikes.

It seems Canton has saved a bit on the external mains adaptor in choosing a type that supplies just enough power. You can also notice this adaptor to get quite hot after a while. I have decided to build myself a new mains adapter with improved stabilising, larger transformer and so on, and hope to get rid of these 'ticks' this way. I haven't completed this adapter yet but i'm sure this will solve the problem. Perhaps there may be some improvement in sound quality as well....

Even with the somewhat underpowered mains adapter i think these speakers deserve a rating of 5 stars for overall performance. I'm very happy with them.

smooth yet clear midrange and impressive bass

not able to connect to a balanced system due to the single-end construction of RC-unit.

I agree with the other reviewers about these loudpeakers strength- they sound excellent and are very well built. They have an incredible bass which can hear in Reference Recordings "Poms & Pipes" (RR-58-CD HDCD). Compared to the sound of Sennheiser HD600, I find the midrange in Canton Ergo RC-L little exaggerated, but that can be the fault of my listening room. For those who have balanced electronics, it's too bad the RC-unit is only single-end. I opened this sucker and found 5 NE5532 op-ams in two symmetrical layouts. RC-unit has two pair inputs as you owners already have discovered and that means with little soldering and wiring, it can be made to accept balanced signals too. and why not replace NE5532 with the much better OP275 or even OPA2604?

After having owned several floorstanding speakers from different manufactures including PSB, Audio Physics, KEF and Infinity I have never been completely satisfied with the total sound-image of any of the speakers. (To much or boomy base, not enough base, poor definition of base, not enough punch, unclear midrange, to much/bright treble, poor homogeneity and so on.) After having read some tests I went listening to the Canton’s. Wow! OK, they are not THE PERFECT SPEAKERS (do they exist ?), but I my opinion they are REAL close. They give you deep (down to 18 Hz) controlled and tight base, a clear and natural midrange, and airy ”unfizzy” high frequencies. The special feature of these speakers is the room compensation unit (included). With this unit you are able to adjust the speaker to suit the room acoustics (its NOT an ordinary tone control unit which may mess up the sound) with slight level adjustment in the upper and lower frequency. This is an excellent solution; not many rooms can adapt to the speakers…and not your other equipment either. So if your room "steals" base or if you've got too much of it, simply adjust the Canton's. As you understand I’m satisfied for the first time! And yes, I use them for music (all kinds) and home theatre (no need for any subwoofer). And they look real good to! Do yourself a favour and try them, maybe you’ll agree with me…

I am very satisfied with speakers deep ranging bass and harmonic sounding mid/high range, They're also very steady built with internaly bracing(heavily).You can't say that it just sounds, it also looks very well. The handcraftmanship is of excellent quality. It can't be better. The onluy thing to wish for is a bigger Bassrelfex duct. It's only 1x3" duct on 2x9" basstransducers. Sometimes you can here the air streaming throw the pipe. I use my speakers on a NAD 208 THX Mosfet Amplifier. I give it five stars for the following points:
1. Excellent craftmanship, specificaly the cherrywood fininsh!
2. You get that deep bass you can´t possible here it, reaches 18hz!
3. Good power handling
4. Excellent detail and very pleasent, harmonic and neutral sound.
5. Bi-wiring capable.
6. I got them for 1200$ (believe me, i imported them myself, from germany.)
7. You can adjust and compensate for the varying room-acoustics!

Thank you for reading....But remember to listen first to get the apropiate impression!

Great craftmanship, solid.

Unrealistic

I used these speakers for almost 3months and I was not at all impressed by them. Folish as I was I ran out and bought them after not enough listening. But since I was eager to get new speakers I relied on tests, they have received some got reviews in a couple of magazines.

I was instantly dissapointed. But I decided to give them some time. But they failed to live up to excpectations. First of all the are not very precise in the midrange area. And the bass loses controll pretty fast even whith extremely powerfull amps(Rotel 1090, Mc Cormack DNA 1,0). The tweeter is´nt very detailed either and soon becomes annoying at higher volume levels.

Sure this is a party speaker and if you haven´t got elevated excpectations you will probably settle for these. But skip the filter box! With it the music becomes totally unrealistic! Sure it may sound good to a novice. But you will soon plug it out!

Settle for something else! They are extremely overrated!

I can understand that some people doesn’t like a certain speaker but giving this speakers a 1/1 rating is just absurd. You can get similar priced speakers that are better in certain aspects, a good monitor can beat the Cantons at what monitors do best, but with the Cantons you get a speaker that are coherent, performs well across the board and without any real flaw.

If you work with the placement, not to close to the back wall, they can image very well. The bass can cause problems in small rooms, when I bought them Canton recommended a room size of 40-50 square meters on their German web site. If your room is small using the compensation box can cause nasty low bass resonance’s at higher volumes. The midrange and treble performs very well, not exceptional, but very competitive for a full range speaker in this price range. I sure haven’t noticed any hiss around 10-12Khz and neither has it shown up in any measurements I have seen. Female voices sound just super on a good recording. Bass resolution is among, if not, the best in the price range. They are not party speakers and if are into disco and rock midbass punch you are better off elsewhere.

The break in time is substantial though. I first heard this speakers in a local hifi store and liked them right away. I later found out that they was awarded high end speaker of the year in Swedens largest hifi magazine. When I first got them and hooked them up in my system the result was not as pleasing. Out of the box the bass was shy and thin and the trebble was a bit hard, but both improved slowly with time. They don’t require a monster amp to drive, go for a decent power but of higher quality and remember that the preamp is just as important. The compensation box, as some has pointed out, could be of better quality though, both the quality of the opamps and the power supply. If I were to upgrade I would consider the top of the B&W Nautilus, Dynaudio Contour or JMLabs series. I’m hesitating to give them a straight five for performance, a 4-4.5 would be more accurate, but since they definitely doesn’t deserve a one, I gave them a five in the end.

I agree with most that have been said about these speakers. Bass is very deep and natural without overblown mid bass. If paired with high-class electronics they sound just wonderful on good recordings but very unforgiving of bad recordings. I'm driving mine with a Plinius SA100 and it appears to be a good match.

The only drawback, as pointed out by some of the reviewers, is the single ended control box. The box compensate the speakers own frequency deviations and you can increase/decrease bass/treble by approximately +/- 3dB. My first unit was broken but the second has been working fine for approximately 6 months.

I haven't opened the unit, but if it has two symmetrical layouts (as Patrik below claims), and he reefers to one layout per channel, wouldn't you need two units to "balance" the layout. If it has two symmetrical layouts per channel it would be easy though.

These are the best loudspeakers I heard in that price range (under $3000 US). They have deep, tight bass, silky-smooth midrange and clean highs. What is remarkable about them is that they are incredibly detailed and revealing yet very smooth sounding. They come with a special room compensation unit--I tried it and it works--adds treble or base but not in the same way as tone controls-- I do not use it at this time. These speakers sound best in larger square rooms.

Super clear sound with very tight and deep bass!!!

hmm none!

Canton ergo rc-l whith "S.A.T amplefix" amplefier and Pioneer pd-s06 kicks ass!!! The sound is "live" very
clear and crisp.Canton blow my old kappa8,2i away :)
TIPuse semi-balansed cabels if you have balansed inputs
like i have in my amp.:=}

Similar Products Used:

infinity kappa 8,2i

Overall sound for it´s price

Even though the test´s in Sweden had the Ergo RC-L as a winner in the price range 20.000-30.000 SKR these speakers are widely available for 15.000 SKR and at that price there is no match.

As for Per with his Mark Levinson´s here is a qoute from the No.33 review

"Ok, first you would have to be THE DUMBEST of all to pay $32,000 for those FUGLY amps, who cares about the performance, a VETTE has better performance.. Those are the biggest, fattest waste of money, if you pay $32,000 for those metal boxes, with the name plate that says , hey Im a FOOL, well the plate fits you!"

I doubt a person spending that kind of money on amp´s even tries cheapos like the RC-L. He probably end´s up a sucker for some Wilson overpriced speakers too.

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Lots