Love my Nova / Kanta’s

Last year, after we moved into our new apartment I pulled the trigger on a new audio system. The convincing arguments were that we sold our old house very well, and that the existing combination of Arcam FMJ A-30 with Focal 736 speakers would be too small for our living room.

There are 4 important things I took into account: it needed to sound good, it needed to look good, it needed to be versatile and it needed to be user-friendly. For the looks, I was already in love with the Focal Kanta’s and confident I would like their sound, as I was still happy with the Focal speakers I had. One hour of listening time at my local dealer, in combination with the offer on a bundle of Focal Kanta 2 and Naim Uniti Nova lead to an immediate purchase.

And I couldn’t be more happy.

The kanta’s indeed look very good (my only gripe is that the bundle was only for the black finish), and the Nova is also a sheer beauty with that fantastic volume dial.

The combination sounds great, when I’m sitting 3 meters and also 10 meters away from it. I think the room could do with even bigger speakers, but the budget didn’t stretch further.

The above was kind of to be expected, but what really makes this such a superb system are the versatility and user-friendliness.

I have my Pro-Ject Debut connected to it to listen to vinyl (small Nova down-side: no built in phono pre-amp), and also listen a lot to my digitized collection over UPnP via Rigelian, as well as streaming from Tidal. And last November I got an old 90’s Sony cd player with a digital output that I hooked up, which led to a renewed appreciation of my cd collection, as well as for the low priced second-hand cd market.

The final killer in the user-friendliness department is the support for Airplay. The other household members consume their music mostly from Apple Music and can stay within that app, and enjoy the music is fine quality, including synchronised play on the Nova and the HomePods in the kitchen.