Fontana Speaker Kit

Visaton Speaker Kit - Fontana
Art. No. 5974

Visaton Fontana - shown assembled with suggested cabinets, not supplied.

Characteristics and Sound Properties
The 2-way FONTANA system is a 360° omnidirectional speaker with a highly attractive appearance and is particularly well suited as an effect speaker. The speakers are arranged so that they point upwards and reflect the sound output by means of two specially shaped cones. This results in a uniformly distributed frequency response, that matches your hearing expectations in the room.

The best sound quality is achieved if these omnidirectional speakers are positioned about 50 cm to 1 m from a wall. This produces spatial sound of such tangible quality that it is perceived at any position in the room. Virtual sound sources, such as instruments or voices perceived to be between the speakers, can be clearly located from any seating position in the room, which gives listeners a freedom of movement in the room they have never had before and this holds true even in acoustically difficult rooms. This results in extraordinary diffusion fields for the effects channels in Dolby® Surround and multi-channel systems.

The DT 94 - 8 Ohm tweeters, ideal for this type of system, working in conjunction with the mid-bass AL 170 - 8 Ohm and the carefully tuned crossover unit, ensure balanced, neutral sound reproduction. Low-range bass frequencies are boosted by the BR 15.34 tube, which is situated in the bottom of the bass chamber and guarantees clear, powerful bass reproduction.

The omnidirectional FONTANA, tested in an anechoic chamber, achieved a maximum volume of 98 dB. If positioned, as recommended, near a wall, however, the system produces + 6 dB or, in a corner of the room, + 9 dB, making this omnidirectional speaker ideally suited even for larger rooms. If required, two FONTANA's can be installed on each side to produce a full surround field. To do so, position one omnidirectional speaker to the side of the seating arrangement and a second one behind that. The same applies to the other side.

The FONTANA is ideal as a fullrange effects speaker system for high-quality surround sound systems for movies and music, but can just as well be used as the main loudspeaker for hi-fi stereo systems to give you excellent spatial listening pleasure for your favourite music.

Extract from Klang & Ton: "The most noticeable feature of the Fontana is its impressively stable spatial music reproduction: (...) At almost any point in the room, the spatial positioning of the sound sources is excellent." "...Fontana offers spatial positioning qualities of the finest grade and in particular almost complete freedom of movement in the room." "...a loudspeaker system that is both suitable for more demanding background sound and concentrated music listening pleasure."

Technical Specifications

Exploded Cabinet Drawing

Exploded Speaker Box Drawing

Assembly
The Fontana cabinet consists of 8 side pieces 16 mm thick with bevels and a base and top both octagonal and made of 19 mm material. First, cut out the openings in the base and top. Then the side pieces and base are glued together. Before fitting the top, cut out and finish the four openings in the sides for the fixing points and connection points for the upper part. Then glue the lid in place.

The frequency crossover unit is on the connection terminals and is fitted in the base, along with the bass reflex tube.

The mounting sets can now be fitted. These comprise four parts (terminal posts, consisting of an inner part, an outer part, a disk and spacer posts) which are screwed together. One of the outer terminal posts is red, the other is black. These two terminal posts are used at the same time for connecting up the tweeter. To this end, feed two wires from the tweeter output of the crossover through two separate 7.5 mm holes side-by-side in the lid and solder them to the spacer posts of the colour-coded mounting set (red (+) / black (-)). Then insert all four assembled mounting sets in the holes in the lid, ensuring they are firmly seated.

The upper section of the speaker consists of one large cone over the low- to midrange speaker and a smaller one over the tweeter. The large cone is connected to the bass cabinet via the mounting sets and brass rods. Two of these brass rods also serve as signal carriers to the tweeter which is mounted in the large cone. Two short wires (approx. 5 cm long) are soldered to the tweeter and two of the rods. Take care to ensure that you solder the wires to the right rods - these must be the ones which are connected via the mounting sets to the crossover in the cabinet. The entire upper section can now be mounted on top of the cabinet.

Finally, the small tweeter cone is stuck onto the diffuser of the tweeter.

Internal Damping
Four mats of damping material are rolled up and spread around the cabinet.

Component Parts List for Each Box - Supplied with Kit
The kit comes with all necessary components (see list below for one box), one set if the speaker is an each, or two sets for a pair, see price above for details.

Speaker Cabinet Material List to Make 1 Box - Not Supplied with Kit

Speaker Cabinet Dimensions

Crossover - Supplied with Kit Already Assembled

Speaker Kit Crossover Circuit