July 2007 Reviewed by Kevin East	Canton GLE 405 CM / GLE 407 / GLE 402 / AS 85 SC Home-Theater Speaker System

Description Model: GLE 407 floorstanding speaker Price: $999 USD per pair Dimensions: 37.4"H x 7.5"W x 11"D Weight: 32.3 pounds each Model: GLE 402 surround speaker Price: $449 USD per pair Dimensions: 11.6"H x 6.7"W x 10.2"D Weight: 10.1 pounds each Model: GLE 405 CM center-channel speaker Price: $449 USD Dimensions: 17.9"W x 6.7"H x 11.8"D Weight: 15.4 pounds Model: AS 85 SC subwoofer Price: $549 USD Dimensions: 17.7"H x 10"W x 14.6"D Weight: 26.5 pounds Warranty: Five years against factory defects and workmanship; subwoofer, two years. System Price: $2446 USD (not including stands)

Features Speakers: 7" aluminum woofers (GLE 407) 6" aluminum woofers (GLE 402, GLE 405 CM) 1" silk-dome tweeters Bass-reflex design (GLE 405 CM is a sealed design) Gold-plated binding posts (nonstandard spacing) Optional 24"-high LS 600 stands (GLE 402) Finishes: beech or walnut with silver grille, cherry with graphite grille, single-color black ash or silver Subwoofer: 9" aluminum woofer Adjustable crossover frequency Adjustable output level Switchable phase adjustment Switchable input sensitivity 150W internal amplifier

Perhaps the best single aspect of installing an attractively designed set of new home-theater speakers is their seamless visual integration -- how they complement each other and, if judiciously chosen, how they can complement the room. That was my experience with Canton’s lovely GLE series. The review samples’ walnut finish and silver grilles made a stunning postmodern design statement that impressed, even if Canton’s cherry finish might have melded better with my cherry-stained oak floors and A/V cabinet -- guests "oohed" and "aahed." But after I’d heard the GLEs, the finish mismatch seemed, at best, a minor quibble. Of course, they were review samples. If you’re buying a set of GLEs, you’ll be able to choose your finish options.

Attributes

The GLE series is Canton’s update of their notable LE series. In the GLE models, aluminum drivers replace the LEs’ polypropylene cones, and improved cast baskets increase power handling. Sensitivity is rated 89dB/W/m for the GLE 407 indicating only modest power is required. They’ve also upgraded the series’ 1" silk-dome tweeter, which now has a slightly flared mounting plate to increase its efficiency. The crossover networks have been redesigned to better match the drivers and the redesigned enclosures, to improve the speakers’ linearity and frequency response both on and off axis.

Also part of the system reviewed was Canton’s AS 85 SC powered subwoofer ($549 USD), which has a port and a 9" aluminum driver, both firing from the front, and a 150W amplifier. The GLE 407 tower speaker ($999/pair) and GLE 402 surround speaker ($449/pair) are also bass-reflex models, the 407 with a front port, the 402 with a port on the rear; the GLE 405 CM center-channel speaker ($449) is a sealed design. The system reviewed costs $2446.

The three-driver GLE 407 is unique among the GLE models in being a "2.5-way" design: the crossover sends the midrange signal to the upper 7" driver, and the bass and midrange information to the lower 7" driver. This is claimed to improve the off-axis dispersion -- if my listening was any indication, the off-axis response, in both Dolby Pro Logic II and Dolby Digital 5.1, was impressive.

The GLE 405 CM center and GLE 407 both have W-T-W arrays: the tweeter between the woofers (6" woofers are used in the 405 CM). The tweeter in the GLE 402 surround model is placed above a single 6" woofer. The cabinets were rock-solid, knuckle raps eliciting little more than a dull thunk. The binding posts are interesting: their nonstandard spacing means that they can’t accommodate dual banana plugs, and each post is really two halves separated by a rather large vertical notch. I suppose the notch is designed to accept the finger-thick pins with which some high-end speaker cables are terminated, but it’s so big that the posts can’t really accept any wire smaller than 12AWG without also using large spade lugs or banana plugs.

The seemingly acoustically transparent metal grilles are removable. I know that some audiophiles throw the grilles away, but I’ve grown to enjoy the protection they afford delicate instruments such as speaker cones, especially around small children and pets. Besides, you can still see the drivers in their glorious aluminosity, and the grilles are a critical part of the GLEs’ considerable visual appeal.

Setup

Canton’s schematic for positioning the floorstanding GLE 407s suggests that the speakers form an equilateral triangle with the listening position, and be aimed straight ahead. This works great if you’re designing a room around the speakers. However, most of us have to fit speakers into already-existing environments. I positioned 407s about 6’ apart, on either side of the A/V cabinet about 11’ from my center listening position. After tuning them, using the onboard pink-noise generator of my Onkyo TSR-800 A/V receiver and a RadioShack digital sound-pressure-level meter, I found that for those distances, a toe-in of about 10 degrees provided the best overall balance of sound. Canton supplies spikes if your room is carpeted. Ours is not, so the speakers rested on their own firm rubber feet.

Our A/V room’s surround and rear-channel speakers are hardwired, ceiling-mounted Mirage Omnisat Micros, so I had to install temporary wiring to accommodate the GLE 402s. Canton provided a pair of LS 600 stands for the 402s, but this precipitated another real-world installation dilemma. My seating area is dominated by a sectional sofa whose "L" is to one side of the listening position, and at 24" high, the Canton stands -- again, killer décor items -- were simply too short: the right surround fired directly into the sofa’s back. So I set the 402s on two 29" stands I had lying around. The right surround was now above the sofa’s back, and the tweeter of each 402 was now at ear height -- in my experience, the optimal height for two-way surround speakers in any application.

I installed the GLE 405 CM center speaker where its predecessor, another Mirage Omnisat Micro, had long sat: atop my A/V cabinet. However, I found the center-channel sound too dispersed, so I shimmed the 405 with a couple of widths of old mouse pad to cant it slightly down toward the listening area. The AS 85 SC subwoofer, with its 9", front-firing aluminum driver, ended up behind an overstuffed chair to the left rear of the A/V cabinet, taking the place of my Mirage LF-100.

Listening: Music

Although this is a review of a home-theater speaker system, the GLE 407s are blessed with full-range attributes. With a claimed frequency response of 25Hz-30kHz, they should be able to function well as the speakers of a two-channel, music-only system. But add a subwoofer, center and surround speakers, and Dolby Pro Logic II, and you might have a system that, unlike too many home-theater arrays that rely on satellite front-channel speakers, can be musically as well as theatrically pleasing.

I set the AS 85 SC’s crossover at 80Hz and let the Onkyo TSR-800’s bass-management system decide when there was sufficient low-frequency information to kick-start the sub. I put the GLE 407s -- with and without Dolby Pro Logic II -- through a series of CDs, each a stringent test of one or more of a loudspeaker’s critical attributes: Acoustic Alchemy’s Red Dust and Spanish Lace [MCA MCAD-5816], for soundstaging and HF response; Enya’s Watermark [Reprise 26774-2], especially the bridge to "Orinoco Flow," for deep bass; Marti Jones’s Any Kind of Lie [RCA 2040-2-R], for midrange and midbass accuracy; Jellyfish’s Bellybutton [Charisma 2-91400], for midbass accuracy, soundstaging, and high-frequency response; Joe Jackson’s Live 1981-86 [A&M CD 6076 DX 3095], for soundstaging and treble response; and Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks’ Striking It Rich! [MCA MCAD-31187], for midrange accuracy, depth of field, and transparency.

The GLE 407s initially responded with a slight uptilt in high-frequency reproduction, an artifact I’ve often observed in speakers tuned for home-theater applications. Then again, there are so many variables with listening to music in an A/V system that one is never quite sure what line is being crossed where. For instance, because the speakers sit to either side of a cabinet -- there is no practical option for placing them farther out into the room without seriously blocking traffic -- it’s asking a lot for them to throw a deep soundstage with the sort of three-dimensionality that the best speakers can provide when properly positioned in an audio-only environment. That said, the 407s’ soundstage was generously wide, and even wider with Dolby Pro Logic II. However, even after enough listening that anyone would assume would satisfy the so-called "break in" requirement, the 407 never lost that touch of HF prominence. (I’ve always questioned the "break-in" phenomenon -- it seems to me that a properly engineered speaker should be ready to play out of the box without the buyer having to blow too many hours of out-of-phase pink noise through them.) Mind you, the 407 was decidedly not brittle or shrill; it just had the barest hint of HF accentuation. There was no mistaking, however, the system’s bass response. The bridge to Enya’s "Orinoco Flow" contains subterranean bass that has defeated some fairly sophisticated audiophile speakers, which turned clearly pitched notes into a series of muffled chuffs. The Canton AS 85 SC hit every note with admirable clarity and punch.

The GLE system’s high-frequency response, especially in the climbing piano figure in the coda of Joe Jackson’s "Breaking Us in Two," was musical and accurate. There was no trace of the harsh brittleness that some lesser speakers have produced with this track. Similarly, the marvelous percussion bridge in Acoustic Alchemy’s "Mr. Chow" pinged, whanged, and boinged -- there’s a bent saw in there somewhere -- across the top of the soundstage just like the petite xylophone in Jellyfish’s "The Man I Used to Be," with only that slight emphasis of the highs. Midrange reproduction was no less solid. Willie Gillon’s clarinet, in Marti Jones’s "Second Choice," had just the right touch of woody resonance.

In Dan Hicks’s "Canned Music," the voices of Hicks, Naomi Ruth Eisenberg, and Maryanne Price were recorded in a real acoustic space -- as is the whole of Striking It Rich!, a rare treat in the pop canon. Each voice occupies a defined space in the soundstage. If a speaker mishandles the midrange, the voices can wander all over the place; through the 407s, they were rock-solid. Finally, the midbass -- for instance, Don Dixon’s doubled piano and Fender bass in Marti Jones’s "Any Kind of Lie" -- was not only faithfully rendered, but the transition to deep bass, as with Jellyfish’s "The Man I Used to Be," was flawless. Of course, in any system that includes a subwoofer, the transition from the midbass to the deep bass is as much a function of how you set up the sub’s crossover. That said, the handoff between the 407s and the AS 85 SC was as smoothly handled as I could wish.

Listening: Movies

Our A/V room’s normal speaker complement deploys as front-channel speakers two PSB Image 2Bs (discontinued; $399/pair), the forerunner of the Image B25; Mirage Omnisat Micros ($180 each) handle the center, surround, and rear channels; and a Mirage LF-100 active subwoofer ($300) holds up the bottom end. The Image 2B is a formidable, largish bookshelf speaker whose claimed frequency response descends to 49Hz, obviating the need for a sub in small or nearfield applications. Why mess with extra standing waves when you don’t have to? However, my room, at 16’ by 22’ by 10’ high, is fairly large, and even supported by the sub, the Image 2Bs lack the punch to fill it with uncompromised sound. The GLE 407s, in conjunction with the GLE 405 CM center and GLE 402 surrounds, wrought a substantial change, throwing a virtual wall of sound around the A/V cabinet as high as the 405 CM’s placement, and easily 1.5-2’ beyond the outer edges of the 407s.

I’m used to the wide dispersion produced by my combo of Image 2Bs and Omnisat Micros, but that array is very different -- if only because the Micros are mounted on the ceiling, where they can take advantage of their virtual 360-degree dispersion pattern. The GLE system’s sound envelope was wider, higher, and better focused -- though admittedly it wasn’t so at the beginning, when the 402 surrounds were aimed at the listening position. Despite my considerable fiddling with their output levels, they seemed too intrusive, clamoring for attention when the soundtrack didn’t call for it. The solution was to aim them about 30 degrees off the horizontal axis, so that their sound converged at a point about 3’ in front of the listening position. Even so, I backed their outputs off by 2dB each. After that, I couldn’t have asked for a more engaging surround experience.

There’s a lesson to be learned from my continual fiddling with placement, firing angles, and SPL output. No matter what an instruction manual says, or what advice is given by any "how to" article near and dear to your heart, a given loudspeaker array will react differently to every different room. You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: experiment. Don’t be afraid to move speakers around and adjust their outputs until you have the sound you want.

I have a weakness for mindless shoot-’em-ups and well-crafted animation, and those genres put the GLE system through its paces. Luc Besson’s sublime The Fifth Element possesses all the requisites for brainless fun: Bruce Willis; a barely plausible plot; spot-on performances by Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker, Ian Holm, and a hilariously dumbed-down Luke Perry; and enough spaceships, vengeful aliens, and firefights to fuel your action jones for some time. The Fifth Element also has all the sonic, er, elements to challenge a home-theater system, from a simulated holographic radio broadcast (chapter 20) to a spectacular gun battle (chapter 28) to Diva Plavalaguna’s plaintive aria (chapter 26). The GLEs responded so effortlessly -- with an enveloping radio broadcast, thundering machine-gun blasts, the Diva’s delicate soprano -- that if I hadn’t been listening for these aural events (i.e., writing this review), I would have been responding to The Fifth Element’s totality of sound and picture. I don’t think there’s much more you could ask from a home-theater speaker array.

Writer-director Brad Bird’s The Incredibles also offers a dizzying assortment of sonic flourishes for inventive visual effects: Dash’s dash through the topography of Nomanisan Island (chapter 20), Frozone’s swirling walls of ice (chapter 29), the curtain of volcanic fire that dominates Syndrome’s dining room (chapter 12), and explosions galore. Once again, the GLEs rendered sound and picture seamlessly coherent. I may have been vaguely aware that something was going on around me, but the GLEs’ knack for getting out of the way focused my attention on the movie, not on aural idiosyncrasies.

Porco Rosso, director Hayao Miyazaki’s shameless display of drafting virtuosity -- aircraft and boats are among the most challenging drawing assignments -- boasts a subtler soundtrack. Languid flights across mammoth skyscapes evolve into swooping dives (chapter 6); strafing runs ricochet across the soundscape (chapter 3); and Gina’s lovely song is offset by an overeager reporter’s pursuit of Porco (chapter 2). Again, the Cantons artfully glued sound to image without drawing attention to themselves. The diving seaplanes buzzed effortlessly from one side of the action to the other. Curtis’s fusillade into Porco’s engine compartment during their second dogfight was tracked across the bottom of the soundstage with deadly accuracy. As Curtis none too gently suggests that interviews can wait, Gina’s period alto carefully recedes into the background before being brought back to center stage. The subtlety of this last scene is something that my PSB-Mirage configuration could only hint at.

The phrase "without drawing attention to themselves" best encapsulates the Canton GLEs’ considerable attributes. As seamless as the integration of their design, their ability to seamlessly render soundtracks, passing moving aural effects from speaker to speaker without pauses or dropouts or shifts of timbre, was unsurpassed. The soundtrack of any film should complement the plot and character development. Only when the storyline absolutely demands it (e.g., any Stephen Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle), and the exploding house/car/plane/boat/planet is the raison d’être of the action onscreen, should the speaker system take over -- and then only for that instant. If you can live with that definition, then you can live with the Canton GLEs. I found the GLE 407 to be an excellent, almost-full-range speaker as suitable for music as it was for movies, and ably complemented by the GLE 405 CM center speaker, the GLE 402 surround, and the AS 85 SC powered subwoofer.

Summary

The Canton GLE speakers are attractive, affordable, and sound great. Add to that their ability to reproduce music well, and they comprise a single system that can perform double duty without compromise. I recommend them for all but the most demanding A/V environments -- for instance, I’m not sure they’d pass muster in the very large, custom home theaters that the well-to-do install in their basements. But if your home-theater speaker budget is less than $25,000 and more like $2500, the Canton GLEs should be on your short list.

Manufacturer contact information:

Canton Electronics Corp.
504 Malcolm Avenue SE, Suite 400
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Phone: (612) 706-9250
Fax: (612) 706-9255

E-mail: factory@cantonusa.com
Website: www.cantonusa.com

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