Kanto YU6 Powered Speakers with Bluetooth and Phono Preamp - Matte Black

Ok, so I was in the market for a new set up but wanted this one to fit in with my decor which is vintage hipster. Something that I could have in the background projecting all the vinyl goodness from its tweeters for the listening pleasure of my weekend late afternoon patio parties. I've been trying to think of something to say to talk about the color but I will leave that to rock icon Nigel Tufnel who said“There's something about this that's so black, it's like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.” though you could also get them in different colors but then I wouldn't be able to use that quote.Setup was easier than getting my labrador to eat the the last of my submarine sandwich. As these speakers have their own phono amplifier, the RCA wires from you manual analog turntable slip easily in their red and white receptacles on back of one of these bad boys. There are speaker terminals to connect the two speakers and give you discreet lush sound. It looks great in your vintage set up and for you young folks living in a small place, it's space saving since you lose the need for a bulky amplifier clutter up the very particular Dutch aesthetic of your listening area.What more is there to say but they are well constructed, look fantastic, are space saving, give good bang for their buck and can fit into wherever you choose to listen to your record player. These would be perfect for the kids in dorms who want to impress their girlfriends with their small but "elite" collection of essential artists. Then you grandly move on to show the true centrepiece of the setup, the turntable which you have carefully curated from hours of searching junk shops and good will stores to find the ":best deal ever". You will have this turntable until you get your first job out of school and then you will upgrade to a ridiculously overpriced top of the line beauty that you will play "Tender" by Blur on when trying to seduce a young lady in your building. The point is, these speakers will be the same as you go from girlfriend to girlfriend (or either gender combination you like), and turntable to the latest, greatest and most importantly coolest, speakers. They are built to last and you will remember them many years later when you try looking for the same kind of speakers because you NEEDED to have that vintage Marantz tube receiver to hear music at it's purest and why not get vintage speakers now since these poor speakers, that has served you a decade, are being thrown away for the latest toy. Shame on you. Anyway, I don't see any reason why it would fall apart unless you plan on bringing them camping and then I would say your experience may differ from mine. They'll probably last you years giving you great sound and looking sleek on the bookshelf.You may have nieces come over to give your brother and his wife a break for the weekend and she may want to play something on her iPhone and she can easily connect her phone to the speakers via Bluetooth and she can control the sound with the remote control that comes with the speakers. Should you want to hook up a subwoofer, it has output for it as well as other inputs such as Aux, Optical & a handing USB charging port for your iPhone making the top of the speakers a convenient location to store it. Ah, the possibilities for pictures of your phone, speakers and iPhone on social media with some deep comment about technology from different millennia working together.I'm not doing any of that though. You can but it does fit into my mid century modern decor and compliments my funky Pro-Ject elemental (review coming soon) with a nice clean honest sound. I love the fact that I didn't have to get a new receiver as that Marantz was looking nice and the modern touches of Bluetooth and a remote control are quite excellent. I don't know of any apps. They may have one, but I haven't looked so not quite sure how you would go about controlling the volume if you lose the remote or it breaks or you labrador puppy chews on it. That could be a problem later on and I should probably look into it. Still, I treat my audio equipment as that equipment that your cool uncle had and weren't allowed near when you visited your cousin on the weekend, then warned the whole time about how serious they were about not going near my uncle's turntable. So, I'm not dropping it anytime soon and I still have the original packaging to transfer them securely if they have to be moved againThe TL/DR of that ridiculous wall of text are that these are great speakers., Get them for anyone interested in getting into turntables and vinyl records so they don't have to have the added cost of a phono pre-amp or receiver/amplifier with pre-amp. Not only does it save cost, it saves space and it gives great sound for their size and their cost and the added convenience of having Bluetooth connectivity to play audio from your phone, Has a basic remote but it does what it should and big problem is I'm not aware of how to control volume without the remote playing a turntable. Could be, I'm not aware though. Very happy purchase.

I am pleased with the sound quality which is clean, well balanced and powerful which can easily fill my room of 200 square feet without distortion. I connect these speakers to Chromecast and an extractor and the set up is easy and done in minutes. I also use my smart phone to stream music via Bluetooth. Pairing is easy and the reception is very stable without any interruption or issue. Having equipped with the remote control is really handy, allowing all the functionality including power on off, input selection and volume control although the build quality and appearance of the remote device is only ordinary. The speaker cable that is included to connect the control speaker to the other one is not terminated with a banana connector, i.e., with only bare wire at the end and for the price of these speakers, I expect the manufacturer would provide a speaker cable terminated the banana plugs to take the full benefits of the binding post of these speakers. I have these speakers for about a month by now. I mostly listen to classical symphonic as well as chamber music, and also human voices from YouTube podcast. So far I find them satisfactory and am happy with my purchase.

they sound decent, but not great.Better bass can be had from the 50$ soundcore portable bluetooth speakerauto shutoff can’t be disabled and it breaks my train of thought every time I have to turn them on when I need sound. I didn’t notice that much at first but now I want to throw them out the window every time (10+/day) I have to stop when I do anything with sound, realize it is these ^%$#^%$#ing speakers, find the remote, hit the power button, and wait for them to come on, and then resume playing music or whatever.I would return them if I still could.

Overall it is a good speaker with "decent" sound quality for its price, I say this because it feels a bit overpriced for what it delivers.Design:It has a sleek design, I got the matte black it makes the speaker fully black which gives a minimalist look. overall I would give 9/10 for the design, this is mainly because of some details that could be considered to make it better such as the big remote reader with its LED, in my opinion they could be put on the speaker with a cleaner way instead of squishing all LEDs in one small area.The remote gives overall control over the speaker, without the remote you can only turn on and adjust the volume, which is not a big deal in my opinion. It has base, treble, balance and volume controls with buttons that switch to the mode you want. it has previews next and pause/play button for Bluetooth devices.Performance:So this is where it kinda disappointed me. I said decent because you cant compare this speaker with other similar priced studio monitors. the big part of the reason for this is that most of the price goes to the preamp and Bluetooth and many connection that the speaker delivers, I mean feature wise they nailed it, great connectivity and Bluetooth has a reset button on the remote to disconnect all devices and make it easy to connect the one you want to connect. however lets talk about the actual QUALITY of the SOUND. I tried multiple styles of musics, and some preformed well and others were kind of giving distortion, all my musics were tested on Apple Music platform so the quality of all the musics were at the same level.For acoustic music it does fine with producing high and mid range frequencies, for low frequencies I will talk more in a separate section below. some music gave be a bit buzz noise when the music volume was all the way up. I did enjoy acoustics on this speaker, but going with EDM and Hiphop is where It kind of disappointed me. Since both styles of musics require base, it was the LOW range frequencies that were not impressive much. You actually have to be really careful to higher the volume of a music that have high base, it will give you fart-like noise plus it kind of made me scared to damage my speakers because of the insane base load that it was delivering, I am not sure if having extra sub can solve this problem.Build Quality:overall the MDF body was solid with nice matte finish, the cables were of a high quality, the right speaker connecting wires were long enough and thick enough to maximize the quality of the sound. I like the optional rubbers that are provided to put it based on your preferences, this gives you the flexibility to put the speaker to many type of tables. the REMOTE, you are paying premium price to this product, but the remote build quality was terrible, it felt used to be honest, plus it had some scratches on it which at first I thought it was an extra protecting layer.My Honest Opinion:this is an amazing speaker over all, but it is kind of overpriced in my opinion. Kanto is not really popular in Studio Monitors area, I did not find as much reviews and tests on Kanto as other brands like KRK, Yamaha and Audioengine, so I wanted to try them out to see how they sound and feel. I intended to keep them over the fact that I felt it being overpriced for its performance. so talking about the build quality, one of the edges at the back of the speaker had a really hard damage, I would blame QUALITY CONTROL department for it, originally I would give this speaker a 4 star, losing 1 star for its overpriced price point. IGNORE: (The reason why I ended up giving 2 stars is because of the damage/remote and the small details that Kanto could actually pay attention to to make the price match the quality and performance.)UPDATE: I got a replacement which was also scratched from front, this time Kanto reached me and wanted to ship a new speaker directly to my house from their warehouse, so they did satisfy me with their customer service but I did not want to exchange one more time, instead Kanto gave me a small discount for the small scratch on the speaker.Potential Users:The market for a 500$ priced studio monitors with preamp is actually limited to those who only want a good quality for entertainment or gaming purposes. it gives you decent amount of details for gaming, can be used for video editing and music editing, but pro users would go with a cheaper monitors from another brand plus an amp or audio interface, that's what I would do.IF you are interested in those speakers for being the first pair of speakers, I would suggest going with the Kanto YU4 model and then upgrade it to a higher end speaker from another brand. I did not test the YU4 model but it is 110$ cheaper with only smaller size and watts than YU6, all other features are still included.UPDATE: I found YU4 for 249$ which is worth,If you liked this review please hit the "helpful" button, thank you.

I bought these to de-clutter my vinyl setup which consisted of a couple of components. They sound very good but you do need to break them in for a few hours before listening to them critically - fairly harsh out of the box. The built in phono preamp is of a much better quality than the ones that are built into turntables and probably is good enough for 90% of vinyl listeners. In fact, after getting these speakers, I soon realized that my vintage turntable was sub-par so I upgraded to a Pro-Ject Debut. My setup includes a Paradigm sub (8") but these speakers have a surprising amount of bass reproduction so I have the crossover set on the sub to get the stuff under 80Hz.My secondary use, and the only use for the rest of the household, is to stream music from Spotify. Again the sound quality is excellent - best bluetooth speaker I've ever used by far. The range is OK - you can have your steaming device in another room - but don't stray too far.I have only one gripe - the remote is pretty much useless unless you are directly in front of the unit with a clear line of sight and standing no more than 6 feet away. It's too bad that the remote performs poorly because the functions on the remote are fantastic; including the ability to flatten both the bass and treble with one click each. Sometimes I notch up the bass on some old albums then flatten out the sound for remastered stuff.