PORTRAIT
Many lovers of music have one problem in common: they want to listen to good music at a high quality of reproduction but they do not have the room to place the loudspeakers they would like to buy or they cannot find the right speakers to blend in with their furnishings and taste. What they need is loudspeakers that do not look like loudspeakers.
And so we developed the PORTRAIT design, which can be hung on the wall and looks like a picture. The objective was to keep the cabinet as flat as possible. The PORTRAIT will be satisfied with only 40 mm in depth. If you take the time to make some more complex cut-outs, you can even reduce this to 34 mm.
This is made possible by the use of particularly slim 13 cm FR 12 - 8 Ohmloudspeakers as woofers. Combined with the SC 5 - 8 Ohm tweeter and the specially designed crossover, this produces a sophisticated satellite speaker unit. Due to the small cabinet, low bass cannot be produced by the PORTRAIT. As a result, the bass range below 100 Hz is best covered by a subwoofer (e.g. SUB-W 20.39 ).
This combination with a powerful subwoofer means that the PORTRAITset-up is a visually appealing and acoustically highly effective system which can, if required, be extended. If the wall space in front of and behind the listening position are free, additional PORTRAIT speakers can be hung to produce a multi-channel system for home theatre and music.
The point about the PORTRAIT is the option of fitting a fabric front to the cabinet which can vary, depending on the surroundings, e.g. single-coloured or brightly coloured silk. Of course, one can always put one's creative skills to work and make one's own silk covers adorned with favourite motifs. There are no limits to your imagination.
Press
The aim of this VISATON development was to produce speakers that were so flat, they could be hung on the wall like pictures. Used on their own, these speakers, fitted with a high-quality 2-band system using a 13-cm low- to mid-range unit and a dome tweeter, sounded a little thin - the bass end was missing, which is completely understandable with cabinets of this size. However, combined with a powerful active subwoofer, whose low frequencies cannot be located by the human ear and can thus be positioned anywhere in the room, they are transformed into a visually unobtrusive but acoustically very potent system, which can be also be combined with other Portraits or other Visaton models to make up a fully-blown surround sound system.
The Portrait, which is the name of this VISATON speaker, requires a depth of no more than 40 millimetres. In our opinion, that must be a record.
This flat speaker can survive without a subwoofer due to its wall-mounting but, in that case, will not produce any breathtaking surprises in terms of volume. The speakers demonstrated their true colours, however, during our listening test in conjunction with the subwoofer recommended by VISATON.
In that combination, the speakers made a good impression and produced natural, clear sound, provided the volume was kept to within the optimum range. With voices the Portrait seemed to be particularly at home. The whole effect is rather fascinating because the music appears to come out of the wall as if from a stage. The spatial qualities were good, offering clear sound reproduction across the full range, and without the treble range becoming too poignant.
When combined with the subwoofer, the Portrait speakers prove to be not just a stop-gap but rather a fully viable set of loudspeakers producing a sound experience that goes far beyond what you would expect from a set-up at this price level, around 100 a pair, and with such an unusual appearance. Congratulations to VISATON and thanks for producing such a brave concept which will help to solve many a loudspeaker positioning problem.
| Rated power | 30 W |
|---|---|
| Maximum power | 80 W |
| Nominal impedance Z | 8 Ohm |
| Übertragungsbereich (-10 dB) | 80–22000 Hz |
| Mittlerer Schalldruckpegel | 84 dB (1 W/1 m) |
| Trennfrequenz | 7000 Hz |
| Gehäuseprinzip | geschlossen / closed |
| Net volume | 4 l |
| Außenmaß Höhe | 521 mm |
| Außenmaß Breite | 521 mm |
| Außenmaß Tiefe | 40 mm |
Component parts list for 1 box
The kit includes all the components listed here but not the cabinet.
