Sonance’s newly relaunched VP series of installation speakers prove that good things come in small packages, writes Stephen Dawson.

Sonance, based in San Clemente, California, is a long established maker of installation loudspeakers. Locally it is distributed by Amber Technology. For this edition of Connected Home, Amber gave us a little taste of Sonance’s ‘Visual Performance’ range, providing two pairs of in-wall/in-ceiling speakers that took quite a different approach to the task of delivering sound.

The Equipment – Round
The VP66R speakers were quite large with 165mm bass drivers, fronted by a 25mm tweeter, while the VP48 speakers were rectangular with the two drivers laid out as though they were a conventional box speaker. And even though these sported much smaller (114mm) bass drivers, they were considerably more expensive.

The VP66R speakers seem clearly designed for ceiling mounting. It’s not just the round shape, but that the casing extends just about 120mm back into the cavity. Most conventional homes wouldn’t fit that in their walls, although that’s fine for ceilings.

Incidentally, while these come with a paintable perforated steel grille that’s round in shape, you can purchase optional square grilles if that would better suit your décor.

A problem with ceiling mounting is that a regular tweeter would not be firing anywhere near the sitting position, unless you located it directly overhead. And overhead mounting of speakers does not conform with anyone’s idea of the proper location for home theatre speakers.

So, as is often the case with high quality installation speakers, the tweeter can swivel around a little in its mount, so you can get a few degrees closer to its axis. It doesn’t swivel very much. I’d say little more than five degrees. Still, that’s better than nothing.

But there’s more to it than that with this one. Rather than being fixed to the main casing, the tweeter is on a pedestal emerging from the centre of the woofer … the place where the dust cap would normally be. The woofer sits further back into the casing – which seems to be made of ABS plastic – than is normal. The reason turns out to be that the whole woofer assembly can also swivel within the casing.

Depending on the crossover frequency between tweeter and woofer, the value in pointing the woofer itself is probably only minor, but because the tweeter is attached and the range of swivel seems to be greater for the woofer, the tweeter gets quite a boost in the ability to aim it.

The tweeter is contained in its own little enclosure, giving them greater isolation from the acoustic energy produced by the larger driver. In the VP66R the tweeter is an aluminium dome unit, with a black anodised surface.

The ABS casing gives a reasonable amount of cover for the internals, but it wouldn’t be hard for ceiling-space dust to settle in around the edges, or through the holes in the back plate.

In that space is a simple crossover (two coils, one capacity and a resistor) and two metal spring clips. The holes in the clips are large – more than 4mm in diameter – and the springs heavy so the grip on cable is good.

The clamp arrangement is such as to allow final fitting to be completed within the room. Tightening the four screws initially swings out the clamps, and then draws them in to grasp the ceiling panel. The flange is only around a millimetre thick and the plastic rimmed grille about 3mm so an unobtrusive result can be obtained. The grille is held down by eight small but surprisingly powerful magnets.

The Equipment – Rectangular
The small rectangular speakers with the small circular woofers are the more expensive of the two systems. Remove the grille and look straight on, and you’d reckon you’re just looking at a compact two way hi-fi speaker. At the bottom is a small woofer with a carbon fibre cone, rubber roll surround and a static phase plug at the centre. Above it is a 25mm dome tweeter with an interesting grey finish, looking almost textured. It seems that for this one Sonance used a ceramic material for the dome. The tweeter is ferrofluid cooled, has a small sealed enclosure behind the dome, and can swivel by perhaps 10º, allowing it to be aimed towards the listening position.

Between the two drivers is a plastic panel carrying the brand name Sonance. But this can be slid – or clicked, rather – to both the left and right. It’s actually a disguised tweeter level switch by which its output can be boosted or cut by 3dB.

Clearly these ones can be usefully mounted in a wall cavity. Each extends only 76mm behind the front panel. You can paint the grilles if you like, set them into the wall and truly have a ‘virtually invisible’ speaker system.

There are four clamps of the same self-locking kind so once again you can affix this from the front. There are no fewer than 14 little magnets on the front to hold the rectangular perforated steel grille in place.

Listening
Some caveats on my listening. I mocked up an installation using a large panel, but not so large as to prevent the possible attenuation of some deep bass. Normal installation would avoid that because the fronts and rears would be effectively isolated from each other by wall or ceiling.

Furthermore, the mere fact of having a speaker mounted right on a room boundary – wall or ceiling again – gives perhaps 3dB of bass boost. More so if it’s close to a corner.

I tried to position both sets of speakers to be representative of their use: the rectangular VP48 speakers mounted vertically, and the VP66R speakers horizontally, and quite a way off axis.

The results were really quite impressive, especially with the VP48 speakers. They were clearly thin on the deeper bass (and would be less so properly installed), but from the upper bass to the high treble they were really nicely balanced. More so they sounded just like small high quality high fidelity loudspeakers rather than installation models. There was a quite convincing sound stage between them and plenty of detail.

If you were using these speakers as main ones for a home theatre system, rather than merely for the rear channels, then you’d be well advised to add a subwoofer as well. Physics does, after all, impose limitations, and there are indeed limits to what a 114mm bass driver can produce.

The VP66R speakers did a fine job too as far as tonal balance goes. They were perhaps a touch less detailed than the smaller speakers, and the stereo stage was not quite as tangible. Nonetheless they did the stereo stuff well enough to provide clear separation. They also produced more bass, clearly and obviously so, than the small speakers.

In a sense using them in this way was inappropriate. It’d be quite hard in a real-world environment to install the VP66R speakers in a way in which they could be used effectively as front speakers in a surround system, or as stereo speakers. You’re going to get much better results with wall mounted front and centre speakers, and keep the ceiling for surround and surround back.

Conclusion
The Sonance Visual Performance series of installation speakers provide some excellent options – in terms of both practicality and sound quality – for visually inconspicuous but aurally effective loudspeakers.