Sonic accuracy and performance in both home theater and music, visual appeal.

These are nits but I'll list anyway:

. No bi-wiring. My previous speaker had it...
. Canton publishes their "frequency range" for the AV700 as 40-30000 Hz but they don't list it as +/- 3db, leading me to assume that the +/-3db numbers are very different. I doubt that the speaker can really do much close to 40 Hz. That was an annoyance when trying to do research and comparisons. C'mon Canton, rise above the lousy "BOSE standard" and give us some standard specs!
. It's difficult to find this brand via the typical retail channels. Canton seems to specialize in the custom HT install arena. I found some one-off online sites but it seems like a lot of last year's models or older.

Admittedly my search for a new center channel was nudged by a size issue with my current center channel (Kef Coda 80) in our new entertainment center. I was pretty happy with the Coda 80 but it just didn't look right in the enclosure (stuck out / too deep) and moving it elsewhere was not an option.

I was turned on to Canton by a local home theater custom install shop owner when I had called about Klipsch bookshelf speakers, of all things. He mentioned how happy he was with Canton - their sonic performance was top notch and decently priced. Canton, contrary to one's assumption, is actually a German company who has been in the business for 35 years. I 'filed' this info away and ...

... happened upon the Canton AV700 for sale on eBay. Admittedly it was a leap of faith after never having heard it, but Canton's reputation (based on the aforementioned conversation and some reviews that I found after some Google searches) drove me to bid and win at roughly one third the retail price.

The fit in my new furniture is perfect. The sound, after recalibrating with my receiver, is outstanding. Accurate, strong when it has to be, nice balance across the frequency range. The fact that it's a different brand than my other speakers is not a concern. The voice-match issue is not a big deal to me and the result after calibration has me in awe.

Similar Products Used:

Kef Coda 80
Polk CS175i