Company & Product Overview
The Audio Advice team was wandering the halls of CES back in 2016 on the lookout for great-sounding audio products we might not be aware of. We glanced in a small room and saw all of these brightly colored speakers and almost kept walking. But those colors drew us in and boy are we glad we went in for a listen. The Kanto speakers we heard were their new YU series which had a very warm and musical sound to our ears, plus the fact they had a built-in phono preamp made our vinyl loving side smile.
David Reid founded Kanto and came to market in 2007 with a pretty cool docking station for the iPod. Growing up, David was always around music as his father was a pretty hardcore audiophile. He experienced what it was like to be on the quest for great sound which led him to become an audio hobbyist and tinkerer as well.
After Kanto won several awards for their dock, David followed his passion for audio and came out with a line of affordable powered speakers. One really smart move on their part was recognizing the market for small, powered speakers span all kinds of customers, so rather than offering only a couple of finishes like most companies, they came out with a huge variety of vibrant colors that could fit into many different environments.
Kanto’s YU2, YU4, and YU6 have been extremely popular at Audio Advice with their multiple input choices and great sound. In mid-2019, Kanto had the idea of taking their very popular YU4 model and offering what we like to call a “Henry Ford” version. They felt not everyone needed all of the inputs and color choices, so why not make something more basic to let music lovers on a tight budget get into really great sound. The Kanto YU is the new model that fulfills their goal and is the subject of today’s review.
