We’ve all seen the most esoteric of home theaters in magazines and on the Internet. Affluent people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, architecture, furniture and cables that cost more than some cars. It is most certainly glamorous, but not within reach of most consumers. Many of us have other minor expenses like mortgages, food, auto payments and college funds to concern ourselves with.
In 1946, an entrepreneur named Paul W. Klipsch designed and hand-built the legendary Klipschorn speaker in Hope, Arkansas, with the goal of bringing live music into his living room. He was a true American audio pioneer and a member of the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame. His passion for quality sound and his understanding of the science involved gave rise to speaker technologies that would forever impact generations of music lovers.
An electrostatic loudspeaker is a speaker in which sound is generated by the force exerted on a membrane suspended in an electrostatic field. Some of the advantages of this design include significantly lower levels of distortion than conventional cone drivers and exemplary frequency response, since the operational mechanics are almost free from resonances and other sonic irregularities. Musical transparency is also enhanced over conventional speakers because the radiating surface has much less mass that must be moved.
Great things often have humble beginnings. In 1972, four hi-fi enthusiasts joined forces with the goal of producing the best speakers in their class. In October of the same year, they registered their company with the name ‘Canton’ - a combination of the Latin word "cantare" (to sing) and the German word "ton" (musical tone). Having found a vacant small town school building and house in Niederlauken, the company now had a base of operations. Starting with 35 employees assembling speaker enclosures in January of 1973, Canton began its legacy of high quality audio reproduction in the tradition of what they called “pure music”. This development work was done in the living room of their original ‘company house’, with production initially taking place in the school building.
Multi-room audio technology offers many options for today’s consumer. From multi-channel amplifiers to elaborate switching matrices, from basic keypads to advanced touch-screen LCD’s, the distribution system can be as complex as it is capable. Many systems require extensive wiring with speaker and data cables, and installation is often recommended at the construction stage of your home, as the capacity to retrofit such wiring into an existing structure can be expensive at best, or at times, not possible at all.