It's been quite a while since the dawn of the surround audio technology and the industry has traveled a long way all these years. Germany's best-selling loudspeaker manufacturer and one of the biggest names in the field, Canton, has finally made a decisive move and dared to tread one of the newest paths in the audio industry, the "soundbar" approach to surround.

The idea behind this rather pretentious name is quite simple: audio engineers, together with designers and R&D staff, have finally found a way to fill a room with surround sound using a single cabinet.
 

Sounds wacky, doesn't it? Well, there’s nothing simpler actually! Indeed, a single piece of cabinetry is used, but it actually houses multiple chambers, each loaded with special-purpose drivers positioned according to high-precision calculations, each powered by a separate amplifier stage. In a shorter, pop-science way, you could very well say that a soundbar is created by welding all your speakers forming the surround sound system and placing them in one place.

 
The soundbar technology sports a very neat feature that simply cannot be neglected: it saves a lot of space and will spare you the never-ending cable clutters and wiring fuss, things that can be a real pain in the back, especially in small-size rooms. With the soundbar everything is much simpler: just have it wall-mounted or even set on a shelf under your TV set, plug in the wires and power cord and there you go!
 

Things are the same with Canton's first soundbar product, the CD 90 SB: this neat bar is loaded with a left-center-right channel array, all working together as one and being capable of offering a much more dramatic soundstage to the listener. Every side channel is enforced with a ½ inch tweeter and a 3” woofer, while the center unit boasts two of the same woofers and one middle-loaded tweeter. The crossover network has been set up at 3.9kHz and the whole system will deliver a neat audio performance ranging between an 80Hz bass and a high-class audiophile-grade 25kHz upper frequency threshold, suitable even for your hi-definition media like SACD or DVD-A.
 

Unfortunately, Canton forgot to deliver us the full details and that's why there is no word on the RMS power for the Sound Bar CD 90 SB. The announced price is somewhere around $650, which is quite decent, especially as the street price will most likely be lower; and given the traditional Canton quality, the CD 90 SB looks more and more tempting, at least when it comes to those rooms where space is a requisite.


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