Company & Product Overview
We first heard the Kanto products at CES in 2016 and were very impressed with their sound and build quality. Plus the fact that most of them had a built-in phono stage made our vinyl side smile. Their YU series of powered speakers have proven to be a great value for the money.
Kanto was founded by David Reid, who grew up in a room where music was constantly playing. His dad had the audio bug and loved to play around with different combinations of gear to try and reach better and better sound. This led David to become a big lover of music and a tinkerer consummate. He worked in the telecommunications industry for many years and there took on the skills needed to design and build consumer electronics.
Kanto hit the market in 2007 with an iPod docking station. It won a number of awards, which helped launch the company. Their goal was to create high-performance audio products that were very affordable. They followed up the iPod dock with a line of powered speakers and other accessories. Another Kanto goal, which is a little unusual in the audio space, was to create products that looked as good as they sound. They have so many color options on their speakers, you almost feel like you are in a paint store, which is pretty cool and unique.
Following up on the success of their YU speakers, Kanto wanted to come out with a speaker that offered far more performance, yet stay within the compact size of a typical powered speaker. We have to say, they have been working on this product for quite a while as we saw a prototype at CES 2017. Audio Advice was lucky enough to get a pre-production model of this new speaker, called the TUK, for testing. The TUK is a very compact powered bookshelf speaker, that is just packed chock full of technology.
