Here’s something you don’t see very often in the pages of Access, or any of the SoundStage! Network publications, for that matter: outdoor speakers. In a former life, when I covered the custom-installation industry heavily, speakers of this sort crossed my threshold on the regular. But in consumer audio, and especially in the domain of budget-conscious passive speakers, they’re much rarer, for reasons I’ll be discussing in an upcoming editorial.
That’ll have to wait, though. For now, let’s get KEF’s Ventura 6 outdoor speaker (US$599.99, CA$749.99, £459, €599 per pair)—the larger of two (or so I thought) new IP65-rated offerings from the company—unboxed and installed so I can get to listening.
Honestly, KEF’s packaging for the Ventura 6 gives a perfectly thorough and succinct rundown of the speaker’s intended purposes and selling points. I was a bit more worried about that ding on the bottom of the box, though, which is particularly surprising, given that KEF shipped the speakers to me via UPS, not FedEx. The former normally delivers things with care these days; the latter can be like throwing a box from low-Earth orbit without a parachute and hoping for the best. But thankfully, it at first seemed to be a small ding and not worth worrying about.
The first thing you’re greeted with upon opening the box is a handful of pack-ins atop the foam, including what serves as a manual for the Ventura series, complete with mounting templates and references to Ventura speakers that aren’t available in North America. The Ventura 4, for example, seems to simply be an even smaller version of the standard Ventura outdoor speaker, whereas the Ventura 5T is a 70V/100V speaker of the sort you typically see in the landscape space, where multiple speakers are daisy-chained together like Christmas lights. The Ventura 6 is not that sort of speaker. It’s a 6-ohm speaker designed to be used in the traditional way, with one amp channel for each cabinet.
Below that paperwork you’ll find—ugh—EPS foam endcaps instead of the much more flexible but admittedly more costly EPE foam. Within a little cavity in one foam endcap, you’ll also find the four ratcheting caps intended to hold the speakers to their mounts, assuming you don’t use the optional mounts designed to screw into the back of each cabinet. Those are sold separately.
Remove the big, crumbly, squeaky slab of EPS at the top of the package, and you’ll find the pair of Ventura 6 speakers and their mounting brackets underneath, and not much else. The brackets are sandwiched to save on packing space, and it was starting to look as if any concern I might have had about the dinged box was unfounded. The speakers looked to be in perfect shape.
Pulling the cabinets and brackets out of the box for a quick inspection provided further evidence of that. Everything was individually plastic-wrapped and in good order. It was at this point, though, that I noticed a complete lack of mounting hardware, aside from the brackets. I guess that means this is a BYOS (bring your own screws) party. But I’m good with that, especially given that KEF can’t know whether you’ll be mounting the speakers to wood or stucco or concrete or what.
Now I realized that I was wrong about the speakers not sustaining any damage during shipping, though. While not a major booboo, the corner of one of the speaker grilles appeared to have taken a good whack and is a bit catawampus.
The grille does come off with a bit of effort, though, revealing the 25mm (1″) aluminum dome tweeter and 160mm (6.3″) injection-molded woofer for each Ventura 6.
After a bit of pinching and flattening and pinching and flattening and firm-but-gentle pressure at the corner, that damaged grille snapped right back, and it looked good as new when reinstalled.
Another cool thing about the design of the grille is that the logo can be freely rotated to accommodate any of four mounting positions: vertical with tweeter on top, vertical with tweeter on bottom, horizontal with tweeter on the left . . . and you can fill in the rest, I’m sure.
As you can see, there’s not much to mounting the brackets: plot out positions for screw holes, insert screws, hang bracket, congratulate self for a job well done.
It’s also helpful to insert the ratcheting caps and give them a half spin or so, just so the threads bite but still leaving some wiggle room to settle the speakers into the grooves built into the mounts.
Also, if you’re mounting the speakers in a tight space, near a soffit or something of that sort, it probably makes sense to make your speaker connections before hanging the speakers. Note also that the binding posts don’t have a lot of protection from the elements, so keep that in mind. They do accept banana plugs just fine.
And here’s a look at the first of two Ventura 6 speakers installed under my patio. I’m still on the fence about vertical vs. horizontal mounting, given what it likely means for dispersion, and I might change my mind halfway through the review. But we’ll see in due time. Keep your eyes peeled for my complete evaluation, coming soon to SoundStage! Access.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
