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“Where the Kanta No1s came up short was put in bold relief when I compared them with GoldenEar Technology’s super-large Triton One.R floorstanders ($5999.98/pair), which were in my room because I was reviewing them at about the same time. I played Bublé! again. Even driven by the powerhouse Revelation Taurus Monos, the Focals couldn’t come close to the bass depth and power of the Triton One.Rs. No surprise there — built into each One.R is a 1600W amplifier that drives the speaker’s three woofers, assisted by four passive radiators. This results in bass that extends with power down to 20Hz, the very bottom of the audioband. The Kanta No1, tiny by comparison, stops at 40Hz, a full octave above that, and with a bit of a whimper. And when I drove the Focals from the 8 or 4-ohm taps of the JE Audio VM60s, the bass got a touch lighter. That told me that most people will likely be best served by the No1s if they drive them with a powerful amplifier — probably a solid-state model that can put out at least 100Wpc into 8 ohms, and handle an impedance that drops below 4 ohms without blinking.

But above the deep bass, with either the Revelation Taurus Monos or the VM60s, the Kanta No1s charged ahead of the Triton One.Rs by sounding a little more open, more free of their enclosures. The No1s also sounded a touch cleaner in the midrange and highs, which I particularly noticed with the Carpenters’ With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (24/48 FLAC unfolded to 24/96 MQA, A&M/Tidal). The plucked guitar notes that begin “For All We Know” sprang more freely and cleanly from the No1s than from the Triton One.Rs — but it was the voice of Karen Carpenter, who enters at 0:38, that sealed the deal: its tightly focused aural image at the frontmost part of the stage sounded slightly clearer and more open through the Kanta No1s.”

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