AFUL Acoustics is anything but. We’ve been following the company here at MMORPG since its debut in 2022 with the Performer 5. It’s an audio company that embraces R&D and innovation, and though every company can miss sometimes, it has a strong portfolio of releases without any real duds to speak of. As you might imagine, the hype around a new flagship would be brimming within the audio community, and that’s exactly what we’re getting with the new AFUL Cantor. Thanks to HiFiGo for the tip!
The Cantor breaks new ground for the brand, coming to market with an all balanced armature driver arrangement. Its last release, the MagicOne, featured a single balanced armature with an innovative resonance chamber and its Performer series each used a mix of BAs and dynamic drivers. This new series brings a whopping 28 balanced armatures, 14 per side, forward to enhance your listening experience.
Sheer driver count doesn’t mean much. In fact, it has been used to artificially inflate hype many times in the past with products from other brands. Here, we have reason to take pause and give AFUL the benefit of the doubt. Like we mentioned in the intro, the company has always sold itself on its custom technologies, and it’s bringing new and refined tech here, as well as some older technologies that are staples of the brand.
The biggest is its advanced crossover system. A crossover is either a physical or electrical way to specific frequencies to certain drivers. When done correctly, individual drivers or groups of drivers can be custom tuned for specific features, like texture or soundstage. Here, we have an intricate system of acoustic tubes that physically crossover the frequencies.
That’s not all. For the bass, these tubes extend into a labyrinthine “acoustic maze” resonance chamber the tune the air pressure and their resulting quality. The armatures covering the highs have their own resonance chamber and narrow catheter to smooth out any harshness without harming extension. The Cantor also features AFUL’s RLC Network Frequency Division Correction system that has been present in the Performer series, smoothing out errant peaks in the frequency response. There’s a lot going on here.
The AFUL Cantor is available from HiFiGo for $799. Find out more details there and stay tuned to the site for our review in the coming weeks.
