Shrinking surround

AV receivers have always been large components. Inside they need the room for five or more amplifiers, each requiring enough space into which they can ventilate heat. Outside, meanwhile, their rear panels dazzle with an often bewildering array of rear-panel socketry catering to audio and video connections both modern and legacy.

To accommodate all this, and to do their job, then, home cinema receivers and amplifiers have always been full-width, double-height products that inevitably dominate an equipment rack.

And yet we’ve long wondered if this was really necessary. HDMI has simplified AV connections, using one plug where five were once necessary. Meanwhile the rise of efficient Class-D amplification has reduced if not entirely removed the problem of heat generation by multiple amplifiers.

So we were delighted to discover Canton’s Smart 5.1, which is a five-channel AV amplifier small enough almost to tuck away at the back of a shelf. It’s a radical shift from the physicality of other brands, even those like, say, Onkyo, which have managed to reduce the height of receivers closer to that of a conventional (large) stereo amplifier. But nothing like this. Canton’s box is just 24.5cm wide and 12cm high and weighs just 2.6kg.

So the question then becomes whether you give anything away in terms of performance and facilities to enjoy such a compact solution?

Equipment

Canton is celebrating 50 years in 2022, and over that half century the German company has become best known for its speakers. The most recent pair we looked at were the A 45 speakers, $6000 floorstanders with exotic ceramic tweeters and aluminium-ceramic tungsten cones. And Canton’s models rise high to the Reference K1, priced a