Canton's new L 800 DC features the side-firing woofer and elegant slim face that distinguishes the Karat family

Canton has introduced the Karat L 800 DC, a full-range, three-way floorstanding loudspeaker that incorporates many of the engineering principles developed for the company’s flagship Reference 2 DC speaker.

The L 800 DC features Canton’s Displacement Control (DC) technology, which uses a proprietary high-pass filter to prevent infrasonic frequency signals (below 20 Hz) from interfering with the bass driver. In conventional speakers, these signals can generate high levels of unwanted harmonic distortion in the audible lower bass range, causing a muffled or “blatty” tonal quality. DC technology allows the speaker’s 12-inch cellulose-graphite woofer to provide clear, linear bass reproduction to 20 Hz, the bottom of the audible sound spectrum.

The new Karat will be available in January, 2003 in Ash black, Cherry, or Beech veneer finishes, as well as the Karat family’s unique silver lacquer finish. Suggested retail price is $4,200 (US) per pair.

More About the Karat L 800 DC

Canton Elektronik Web Site

More CES 2003 News

AUDIO INDUSTRY NEWS     Grass Valley, CA, January 7, 2003
Unique Software for Audio Searching and Editing Available at FindSounds.com

Comparisonics Corporation has announced a packaged version of its ground-breaking sound search and retrieval software.

FindSounds Palette is an audio player, recorder, editor, database, search engine, and Web browser, all in a single software package. It is easy to use and well suited for anyone needing to search for, organize, and edit sound effects and musical instrument samples. Intended users include electronic musicians, sound designers, multimedia and Web developers, filmmakers, videographers, teachers, and students.

FindSounds Palette provides access to more than 1,000,000 sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web and gives users the ability to organize and search audio files stored on their hard drive. Sounds can be searched using any combination of their attributes including file name, description, category, genre, source, copyright, format, file size, number of channels, resolution, sample rate, duration, key, and tempo. In addition, for any example sound, a Comparisonics “sounds-like” search can automatically find similar sounds on the Web or on the user’s hard drive.

FindSounds Palette utilizes the Comparisonics colored waveform display to represent the sounds retrieved by a search. This display helps users to “see” the sounds they are editing. Similar sounds are represented by similar colors, and changes in sound are indicated by changes in color.

The example below is a representation of the sounds made by a cat (orange), a fly (lavender), and a rooster (red). More examples can be seen at http://www.comparisonics.com/gallery.html.

Hollywood sound designers know well that useful and interesting sounds can be obtained by changing the playback speed of an audio recording. FindSounds Palette makes it easy to change speed, and is the first sound-retrieval system able to search the sounds of multiple speeds. By searching each audio file at 25 different speeds, a collection of 10,000 audio files becomes a searchable database of 250,000 sounds!

FindSounds Palette is available for Microsoft Windows XP, 2000, Me, 98, 95, and NT. A limited version FindSounds Palette 1000 that can handle up to 1,000 locally-indexed sounds costs $50 (US). The full FindSounds Palette 10000 supporting up to 10,000 local audio files costs $150 (US). More information about the product, including a free 15-day trial and special introductory Web-download pricing, is available at the FindSounds.com Web site.

Comparisonics Corporation is the world leader in sound-retrieval technology. FindSounds.com is the company’s Web search engine for sound effects and musical instrument samples. This award-winning search engine is like Google and AltaVista, but with a focus on sounds. Each month it processes more than 1,000,000 sound searches for more than 100,000 unique visitors.

Comparisonics Web Site

FindSounds Search Engine

Canton Electronics has introduced the Karat L 800 DC, a full-range, three-way floorstanding loudspeaker that incorporates many of the engineering principles developed for the company’s flagship Reference 2 DC speaker. The L 800 DC features the side-firing woofer and elegant slim face that distinguishes the Karat family, providing for superior upper-frequency dispersion and off-axis imaging..

The Karat L 800 DC incorporates many of the engineering principles developed for the company’s flagship Reference 2 DC speaker. The L 800 DC features the side-firing woofer and elegant slim face that distinguishes the Karat family, providing for superior upper-frequency dispersion and off-axis imaging.

The L 800 DC features Canton’s Displacement Control (DC) technology, which uses a proprietary high-pass filter to prevent infrasonic frequency signals (below 20 Hz) from interfering with the bass driver. In conventional speakers, these signals can generate high levels of unwanted harmonic distortion in the audible lower bass range, causing a muffled or “blatty” tonal quality. DC technology allows the speaker’s 12-inch cellulose-graphite woofer to provide clear, linear bass reproduction to 20 Hz, the bottom of the audible sound spectrum.

The Karat L 800 DC includes two 7-inch midrange drivers, which are made of lightweight and extremely rigid aluminum. The diaphragms benefit from a concave shape that contributes to the speaker’s highly symmetrical mid and upper frequency radiation pattern, and helps defeat the standing wave modes that can occur with conventional dome style voice coil caps.

High frequency reproduction is handled by Canton’s legendary 1–inch aluminum-manganese tweeter. This remarkable transducer’s dome and voice coil former are constructed as a single structure, giving the driver a lower mass, and greatly improved heat dissipation characteristics. The diaphragm is also much less susceptible to deformation at extremely high frequencies, allowing it to retain its linear output all the way out to 30 kHz, far beyond that of most tweeters.

All of the drivers in the Karat L800 DC were designed and developed by Canton’s own engineers, and matched tonally to generate a smooth and extended response across (and beyond) the entire audible frequency range. The cabinet is constructed of reinforced 1-inch MDF, and is 8 inches wide, 45-1/4 inches tall, and has a depth of 18-3/4 inches.

The L 800 DC will be available in January, 2003 in Ash black, Cherry, or Beech veneer finishes, as well as the Karat family’s unique silver lacquer finish. It has a suggested retail price of $4,200 per pair.

Canton Electronics Web Site

More CES 2003 News

M-Audio has announced a new version of its Maximum Audio Tools — a powerful software bundle included free with all M-Audio soundcards and keyboards.

The centerpiece of the new Maximum Audio Tools is Live Delta, a basic version of Ableton’s revolutionary Live audio sequencer software. The updated bundle comes with the introduction of Live 2, including new features that transform the product into a complete production environment based on the concept of elastic audio.

“We recognize Ableton Live as a complete paradigm shift in the way music is being made,” says Adam Castillo, M-Audio’s Marketing Director. “The ability to treat audio elastically to create entire productions in real time without ever hitting the Stop button is nothing short of incredible. This bundle allows musicians to explore the amazing creative freedom that Live provides in the comfort of their own home or studio.”

Maximum Audio Tools — Audio Version
(included with M-Audio Delta, USB audio and Firewire products)

• Ableton Live Delta audio sequencer (special edition)
• M-Audio ProSession series WAV/REX samples (125MB)
• ArKaos VJ VMP visual performance software (special edition)
• IK Multimedia SampleTank SE VST sample player (special edition)
• DSound RT Express VST host with WAV player (special edition)

About M-Audio

M-Audio (formerly Midiman) is a leading provider of digital audio and MIDI solutions for today’s electronic musicians and audio professionals. Founded in 1988, M-Audio now has independent offices in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Japan. M-Audio’s ability to parlay advanced technology into affordable products has led the company to win some of the international audio community’s highest praise and awards—including being named the industry’s fastest growing company for the past two years running by Music Trades magazine.

M-Audio’s mission of “Redefining the Studio” delivers new levels of control, virtualization and mobility that transform the way computer-centric musicians compose, perform and live their creative lives. In addition to manufacturing its own product lines like the popular Delta audio cards, Studiophile reference monitors and USB Keystation MIDI controllers, M-Audio also distributes best-of-class products such as Propellerhead’s Reason, Ableton’s Live, ArKaos VJ and Groove Tubes microphones. The company has also recently launched a product line that brings professional-quality audio to the consumer electronics market.

M-Audio Web Site

German microphone maker Schoeps has introduced a new in-line low-pass filter, the LP 40. It is designed to be added to an omnidirectional microphone to create a fill-in low frequency pickup in conjunction with cardioid and super-cardioid microphones.

No directional microphone is able to pick up frequencies down to as low as 16 Hz as well as high-quality condenser mics with omnidirectional pickup patterns. You can compensate for this by adding the signal of an omni mic which has been filtered with a low-pass filter. The LP 40 has been designed to extend the response of a Schoeps supercardioid (i.e. MK 41) downwards with as little ripple as possible.

Schoeps says the LP 40 is ideally suited for an OCT (front surround, optimized cardioid triangle) system using super-cardioids. When the signal of a Schoeps MK 2 omnidirectional capsule with LP 40 is added to that of an MK 4 (cardioid) or MK 41 (supercardioid) capsule, you get a smooth frequency response down to the lowest frequencies.

Although it is designed to complement the characteristics of Schoeps microphones, the LP 40 can be used with any microphone (with XLR connector) made by any manufacturer.

The LP 40 filter is available at a suggested price of 170 Euros ($160 US).

Shoeps has also announced that beginning in January 2003, the company logo is changing significantly (see new logo above). The new logo focuses attention on Schoeps’ primary interest and manufacturing expertise: microphones. This is the first time the Schoeps logo has changed in more than 50 years.

LP 40 Technical Specifications:

• Filter: low-pass, critical, 2nd order (12 dB/octave)
• Cut-off frequency (-3 dB): 40 Hz
• Output impedance: 40 Ohms @ 1 kHz with SCHOEPS CCM Compact Microphones and CMC Standard Colette microphone amplifiers
• Gain: 0 dB
• Maximum output voltage: ca. 1 V @ 4 mA
• Diameter: 20 mm
• Length: 94 mm
• Suface finish: Nickel

Schoeps Web Site