Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

At last I arrived at a sound I felt represented the Panorama at its best in my room, and with my system—though to misquote a famous seer, there are always other possibilities. First, to the good stuff. Set up optimally, the Panoramas live up to their name in producing as focused and precise a soundstage as I have ever heard. Lateral definition was spot-on. Depth was nearly as good, though a bit short of the near-holographic quality of the left-to-right placement. On Rickie Lee Jones's "The Moon is Made of Gold" from Rob Wasserman's Duets (MCA 42131), the solo voice and guitar popped up at center stage, not forward or pushy but remarkably "there." On Jazz at the Pawnshop (Proprius 7778-79), I could hear distinctly located images—even the isolated movement of one of the musicians (not an image wander, but a definite impression of a movement of about 2' during the jam). The positioning of each part of the drum-set was obvious. Similarly sculpted spatial definition was heard on a wide range of recordings. On Uakti (Verve 831 705-1; a Brazilian instrumental group working on a variety of very unusual instruments), each note on the marimba could be heard coming from its own distinct point in space.

My listening notes only rarely comment on the midrange of the Panorama. Occasionally I thought I caught a trace of nasality in its output, but it was infrequent and not consistent over a range of trusted program material. There was some leanness in the lower midrange, but it did not seriously detract from an open, relatively uncolored presentation—a boxless quality that firmly anchored the musical fabric.

But there was no such anchor in the low end. The Panorama has, in my judgment, serious limitations at both ends of the spectrum. No one reasonably expects a loudspeaker of this size to produce very much in the way of useful output below 50–60Hz, and this one doesn't. But the entire bass range sounds prematurely pinched off. It may have been a conscious design choice, to avoid any sign of a peaked midbass—the rising response (indicative of a high Q) just before cutoff in a small loudspeaker which gives the listener the comfortable feeling of low bass where there is none. If the choice was intentional, then in that respect it is successful. There was no hint whatsoever of such a characteristic here. But neither was there the feeling of a natural balance. Lessons for the Lyra Viol (Astrée AS 51) was significantly short of a satisfying harmonic richness. The foot-stomping which forms a solid backing for the chorus in "Who Were You Talking To?" from Ladysmith Black Mambazo's Shaka Zulu (Warner Brothers 25582-1) lacked weight. The rhythmic underpinning of popular music was lightened, the timbres of all music thinned out.

There was a reasonable balance on recordings which were inherently prodigious in the low end. Even though the SOTA, as expected, couldn't do much with the bottom octave of Dorian's organ transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition (DOR 90117), the recording has such an inherently thunderous bass content that the Panorama provided a reasonable illusion of a real organ, if not a particularly resounding one.

But on a large number of recordings with average low-end balances, the Panorama lacked low bass and sounded reticent in the octaves immediately above—the region which provides for realistic musical warmth and weight. An appropriate subwoofer may help (SOTA makes one designed for use with the Panorama), but it remains to be seen if it can compensate for the leanness which, in my listening tests, extended above the normal cutoff point for a subwoofer. Addition of the VTL amplifier and moving slightly closer to the loudspeakers did help in balancing the mid- and upper bass with the midrange, but the bottom of the Panorama remains an area of concern to this reviewer.

The other problem area is in the top octave. Before I got the tilt-back right, it had a clearly excessive output in this region. The Panorama is definitely not designed to be listened to on the tweeter axis. With the tilt-back properly set, standing up while listening will encourage you to sit down immediately. Not only does the high end become more than a bit fizzy, but the midrange becomes clouded, that superb soundstage confused. But even on the proper listening axis, the high end had problems. As long as the high-frequency content in the program material remained moderate and relatively undemanding, the SOTA had a pleasingly detailed, open, airy, and spacious sound. Sibilants were just a tad bright but well controlled. But as the material became more demanding, the high frequencies lost some of their aplomb and generally lacked the pristine smoothness characteristic of live music—and approached by a number of competitive loudspeakers. There was a trace of fizz, and a tendency for abrupt, closely spaced transients to smear slightly into each other.

Describing these effects does run the risk of exaggerating them. But they combine with an overall tendency to a prominent upper octave—a slightly etched, crisp quality to most program material having significant high-frequency energy—to form a top octave that called undue attention to itself. While it was very often exciting, it lacked that natural, self-effacing quality of the best top ends. And this from a reviewer who likes detailed sound—and can even tolerate the mildly analytic variety. The VTL 90/90 softened the sound slightly compared with the Levinson, but didn't really solve the problem. And it did add a bit of forwardness to the brightness region which didn't mate as well with the Panorama as it had with the Vandersteen 2Ci.

Conclusion My reactions to the SOTA loudspeaker definitely vacillated during the course of the review. Until I uncovered its spatial qualities, I have to admit that it was a chore to audition. Then, when the setup was properly tweaked, I found myself powerfully drawn into the fully dimensioned stereo soundspace. But the lightened sonic balance kept holding me at arm's length. The signals were mixed. One was of a convincing reality, the other of a simulation which had been stretched out of shape—not enough to lose its fundamental nature, but enough to compromise the conviction.

After completing my assessment of the SOTA Panorama, I placed a pair of Snell KIIs, which had been sent here (in error) instead of to Santa Fe, on the Sound Anchor stands (now returned to an approximately level setting) and hooked them up to the same system I had been using with the SOTAs. The KIIs are also a two-way design, though with an 8" woofer and far cheaper ($465/pair) than the Panoramas. They had been broken in, but there was no time to spend in tweaking them for position or anything else. They were bi-wired, as the SOTAs had been.

The Snells couldn't come close to matching the near-holographic soundstage of the SOTAs, and lacked some of the latter loudspeakers' midrange clarity and detail. But the soundstage they produced was nonetheless convincing (indicating that a good front-end and proper placement on solid, secure stands go a long way in achieving that quality) and the midrange was free of obvious coloration. More to the point, the octave-to-octave balance of the KIIs was significantly superior. They had a trace of wispy grain at the very top end, but the upper octave did not call undue attention to itself. And although they did no better than the Panoramas in producing the bottom octave, the listener was not made so obviously aware of that shortcoming.

I do have to admit that the Panorama won my admiration for its striking way with a soundstage, its clean midrange, and its open, uncongested sound. My reservations about both ends of its response—reservations serious enough to keep me from recommending it—are significant. But any loudspeaker involves compromises. There are real strengths here, strengths both potent enough to make an audition worth your time, and to point the way to a future design which will even out the spectral balance and retain the soundstaging. That is a loudspeaker I want to hear.