Полочная акустика — Kanto Audio ORA

The ORA is a compact powered desktop speaker pair from Kanto Audio, built to sit beside a computer monitor rather than on a shelf across the room. One cabinet holds the amplification and all inputs, and the second, unpowered cabinet is fed from it through a four-pin cable about 1.8 m long. At launch the pair was priced at USD 349, CAD 399 and GBP 299, and the pair ships in either black or white. Kanto later added the ORA4 with a larger woofer, which is only about 2 cm wider, leaving the ORA as the smaller of the two.

Key specs that matter

Every enclosure uses a two-way bass reflex layout with a rear port, a 3/4-inch silk-dome tweeter and a 3-inch paper-cone woofer. A Class D bi-amplified stage gives 50 W RMS in total and 100 W peak, split as 9 W RMS per tweeter and 16 W RMS per woofer. Stated frequency response is 70 Hz to 22 kHz. Inputs are RCA line level, USB-C at up to 24-bit/96 kHz and Bluetooth 5.0, and there is one subwoofer output. Each speaker measures 10 x 14.1 x 17.5 cm (W x D x H), with a mass close to 1 kg. The power supply accepts AC 100 to 240 V at 50 or 60 Hz, and standby draw stays below 0.5 W.

Engineering and use context

With a dedicated amplifier channel behind each driver, the division between tweeter and woofer is handled by DSP ahead of the amplifiers instead of by a passive network. A small horn moulded into the ABS enclosure holds the tweeter, and the two drivers are mounted close together, so the cabinet acts more like a coaxial speaker and keeps smoother directivity when laid on its side. The drivers are magnetically shielded, a rare feature today that protects a CRT display placed next to the speakers. Plugging a subwoofer into the sub output engages an automatic 100 Hz high-pass and low-pass filter, which takes the lowest bass away from the small cones. A front knob sets volume and also switches power, a rear button starts Bluetooth pairing, and an LED shows the active input - green for RCA, yellow for USB and blue for Bluetooth. Eight rubber feet are packed in the box, and a 1/4-inch-20 threaded hole on the back allows wall mounting.

Pairing

USB-C takes audio directly from a Mac or PC, an Android phone, an iPhone 15 or a portable player, while the RCA input accepts any line-level source. Kanto's SUB8 powered subwoofer connects to the sub output to form a 2.1 desk system, and the S2, SE2 and SP9 stands from the same brand fit the rear thread.

Alternatives

The Kanto ORA4 is the larger desktop pair, using a 4-inch aluminium concave-cone woofer and 70 W RMS in total.