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Sound Lab Majestic 645 electrostatic panel loudspeakers Review

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And in music listening, you won’t know what you’ve been missing until you experience instruments coming not only solidly between the panels but also out from the edge of the panels, and marvel at the creative prowess of the recording industry. I would hear triangles and other percussion sounds so far out on the edges as if there were additional equal-sized panels installed into the side walls.

The Sound Lab tested my habit of often turning up the top-end and midrange energy on speakers whenever such adjustments are available. These electrostatic panels have such radiating area as to surpass all other speakers in sheer tonal and dynamic scaling. Energy produced was of such prodigious scale and volume that the need to increase the output at the top and middle was rendered moot.

There’s the magic of life-size soundstaging as only a six-foot tall, thirty-four inches wide full-range electrostatic panel can recreate. I played the Deutsche Grammophon record of the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 with Krystian Zimerman at the piano and Carlo Maria Guilini on the podium on several mornings at medium-low levels and the realism as accorded by the meticulous recreation of the physical space and the instruments within made quieter morning music enjoyment invigorating.

On delineating tones, each of the 645 panels featured three adjustment knobs, MID-FREQUENCY, BRILLIANCE and LOW-FREQUENCY. The panel’s MID-FREQUENCY setting of “0” was mightily adequate from the first note, there was simply no need for the panels to produce more midrange energy. It went on for three months and my brain got greedy and I dialed it up to “+3.” Sufficient time passed such that I had appreciated the beauty and richness of the Sound Lab’s midrange and now wanted more. At this point, there was no going back to “0” or less. If Dr. West had provided the facility for “+6,” my brain would’ve gone for it, too. A few more months down the road and I started to feel the energy, and dialed the midrange back to “0,” while the BRILLIANCE knob remained at 2 o’clock.

I started listening to more sopranos and choruses, and it was starting to get to me. So, I dialed the MID-FREQUENCY down to “-3” to soothe out the voices. The BRILLIANCE was also dialed back to 1 o’clock, then to 12 for the sake of better spectral balance. The result enabled me to turn the volume up higher and higher, and it was majestic. The all-important top-end from speakers that I clamored for all my life was becoming less a focal point as the Sound Lab possesses the most revealing top-end even with the BRILLIANCE setting at the neutral, 12 o’clock position. Granted, the cymbal in the REO Speedwagon SACD Hi Infidelity became less prominent at this setting than before, but high quality classical music recordings are the reference for the most natural sound, and I could simply dial the knob back up when I pleased.

The knob for BRILLIANCE must be a continuous mechanical one as it is, and Dr. West’s vision is spot on. Were the MID-FREQUENCY knob also continuous (not stepped), we would spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with it, cutting into the precious time we would’ve spent enjoying the music instead. So, it’s either “-6,” “-3,” “0,” or “+3.” And then we match the BRILLIANCE to the overall tonal palette as we please. Dr. West thinks like a parent.

Of course, I dialed the BRILLIANCE back up to 2 o’clock when playing the Styx Paradise Theatre SACD. Those guys did a brilliant job in caring for the sound of their recordings and a little more top-end energy on this disc did it for me.

But the electrostatic panels are also bass monsters. In the Sound Lab, I’m hearing the least compressed, swiftest in takeoff, and most natural bottom end of any loudspeakers. Apogee diehards prefer the fast, mass-less, potent bottom ends of ribbon panels like no other speaker users’ business.  Being an owner of a pair of Apogee Duetta Signatures, I found the externally charged panels of the Majestic 645 produced a bottom end at the “0” setting that was not merely mindboggling but mind-bending. At this setting, the bottom-end reproduction of the Sound Lab attained such speed and force that it created a pseudo vacuum effect on my ear drum the moment the bass was cut during a scene in a movie. Panels microns thick that are the Majestic 645 excited the air with tidal waves of bottom-end densely woven in resolutions like I’ve never experienced before. The “+3” setting was too powerful for my taste, while the “-3” and “-6” settings accorded readers with smaller listening room a high degree of control for the best sound.

The 6-foot M645 projecting deep and fast bottom-end in my room notwithstanding, it boggles the mind to imagine what the company’s 7- or even 8-foot models could do.

High resolution files contain vastly denser data, more information in the audible range, and the full-range electrostatic panels are eminently prepared for playing back music from such files. The thing with the Sound Lab is that despite the fact that they recreate life-sized performances on stage, the effects were even more pronounced and engaging when the source was SACD and high-resolution files. There is simply more information accorded by the higher audio standards than Redbook. Regardless, the Sound Lab projected life-sized soundstage from CD, an aspect of CD sound often found wanting with other speakers. Moments abounded when the music had stopped and the realism and emotional power of the Sound Lab’s delivery would continue to reverberate in my mind and immobilize me in its wake.

Ultimately, the 645 revealed the voltages generated by the cantilever of the Top Wing Suzaku from record groove tracing to carry more complex and highly-defined tonal and textural cues of the music than even the Esoteric SACD player counterpart. It showcased the meticulous and powerful brasses conditioned and molded by Karajan and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic in the 1984 Wagner Overtures LP, making for the most enjoyable and revelatory experience of these monumental performances to date.

Furthermore, the Top Wing cartridge, supported by the Clearaudio turntable with the AMG 12J2 tonearm, Stealth Audio Cables Helios phono cable and Van den Hul The Grail SE phono stage currently also under review, didn’t seem to have a limit to its dynamic range and would go wherever a recording (and the loudspeakers) took it. Such was the case with the 1983 Decca digital recording of Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Sir Georg Solti and performed by the Vienna Philharmonic.

The Sound Lab didn’t exert sound pressure the way cone drivers do. The ease and smoothness of the delivery was such that a full day of Wagnerian music ensued more than a few times during the auditioning period. Not being an avid opera fan, I prefer overtures and orchestral editions, and the Solti recording is one such prime example. Solti was the expert in creating symphonic layers of instrument groups, piling the unrelenting, proclaiming brasses atop the rumbling double basses amidst the sonorous strings in absolute order. What better technology to reenact this but the vast surface area of the Sound Lab panels? Then again, one gasps in awe the moment when the hammer hits the rail iron at full force in track 2, “Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla.” The separation and integrity of the rail being hit is where the glory is. The force of it as driven by the Bricasti Design M28 amps was such that not even SET-driven horns could approach.

I especially enjoyed the way the panels reproduced the moment of breakup of the trombone near the end of track 3, “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Works.” It’s another of those magical moments when audiophilia meets musical wonderland.

The force and definition of the kick drum in the Diana Ross hit, “I’m Coming Out” from the Diana LP was incomparable and unsurpassed as realized by the panels, its six feet tall worth of vertical dispersion in an arc of horizontal dispersion were the most expeditious, cleanly defined and uniform in my experience. Chart toppers of the eighties could be so finely crafted and produced as shown in this album, contributing to an unprecedented wealth of cerebral tunes for the times. The Close Encounters of the Third Kind original soundtrack LP is a tour de force composition and performance in sonority and juxtaposition. The Sound Labs resembled the uniform dispersions of the Destination Audio Vista Horns for life-sized recreation of venues and instruments, while far surpassing multi-driver speakers I’ve experienced in stereophonic projection.

The Sound Lab didn’t always require the massive output of the pure class A Pass Labs XA200.8, although one would be hard pressed to find a more superlative match. The $32,000 Bricasti Design M28 monoblocks, at 66% the cost of the Pass Labs, were less spectacular in tonality and spatiality, but they are nonetheless a contender for the very best in that price class. Then there is the Margules Audio tube monoblocks. The tone of instruments by the electrostatic panels as driven by the Margules U280-SC Black tube monoblocks, outputting 55 watts per channel in the incomparable triode mode, was unreal, and the sound was among the most definitive and realistic, albeit at medium volume due to output limitation, inducing the panels to create the most discreetly reconstituted spatiality and dynamics. There would be music lovers forever devoted to the panels just for this sound.

Sessions during which the Majestic 645 played at 85 dB SPL were positively overwhelming, what with the huge panels radiating in their entirety at once. Higher volumes induced palpable fright, especially, for example, when playing the movie Interstellar. Dynamics from movie effects, this with the Oppo BDP-105D picking up the Blu-ray audio signal and sending it to the Esoteric for deciphering trumped even the CD soundtrack itself in dynamic scaling and contrasts. Still, the point is that the sound of vast panels such as these, even at sub-80 dB levels, is fuller, denser and more voluminous than that from other speakers.

Beginning with the publishing of the 47 Laboratory 4741 Izumi CD player Review this April, Review of the Pass Laboratories INT-250 integrated amplifier, the Koetsu Jade Platinum cartridge, the Clearaudio Master Innovation turntable system, the Audio Note UK Fifth Force/Fifth Element DAC,the Esoteric K-01XD SACD player, the Top Wing Suzaku coreless straight-flux cartridge and the Aurender N100SC caching music server and streamer all led up to the six feet tall, and thirty-four-inch curvature of a Sound Lab panel.

However, perhaps the most crucial aspect of the panels is their durability. I have been playing them nearly every day for over a year now, typically for several hours, not to mention TV watching. Complaints of old on the fragility of the panels don’t seem to apply to these modern productions, granted the area of where I live in California is not as humid as some other areas. These panels are undoubtedly a much evolved edition of the early panels of old, and their consistent performance instilled confidence of quality and stature from me.

The M645 stayed true to the caliber of recordings. Despite the use of the aforementioned systems, the Sound Lab did not transform a pristine vinyl copy of a 1973 Deutsche Grammophon Karajan-conducted Bruckner Symphony No. 9 into what it could never be, namely the more sumptuous and textured sound of the conductor’s post-1982 digital recordings on LP with the same ensemble and label, or the even more detailed and dynamic sound of the Telarc LPs, which area far cry from the vastly superior sound of Keith O. Johnson’s Reference Recordings vinyl productions. With its unusually rich tonal reproduction and delicate but sharp differentiation, the Sound Lab has steered my listening to a greater mix of analog playback.

Some of us have hobbies to keep ourselves occupied, and some can afford to book a trip to space, all to harvest extraordinary experiences that make us feel more alive. The most salient and all-encompassing point of the audio hobby is the ability of the system to break us out of our present predicament and into a world of sound and music of the highest order. In my room, the Sound Lab accomplishes that mission in the most singular manner.

With other loudspeakers, I have often wondered how they could be surpassed by yet superior designs. The Sound Lab is the ultimate $25,000 loudspeaker system for me in my listening room. For anyone with the requisite space preparing to spend $100,000 or more on speakers, not auditioning the Sound Lab Majestic 645 and its larger models is to miss an experience that will last a lifetime.

 

Copy editor: Dan Rubin

 

Review system:

PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 20 AC regenerator

Acoustic Sciences Corporation TubeTraps
Audio Reference Technology Analysts EVO interconnects, power cable
Audio Reference Technology Analysts SE interconnects, power cables
Audio Reference Technology Super SE interconnects, power cables

Clearaudio Master Innovation turntable system with SmartPower 24V battery power supply
AMG 12J2 tonearm
Stealth Audio Cables Helios phono cable

47 Laboratory 4741 Izumi CD player
Audio Research DAC 9
Bricasti M21 dual-mono DAC
Esoteric K-01XD SACD player/USB DAC
Esoteric G-01 rubidium clock

Clearaudio Absolute Phono
Pass Laboratories Xs Phono
Van den Hul The Grail SE Phono

Pass Laboratories Xs Preamp
Pass Laboratories XA200.8 pure class A monoblocks
Bricasti Design M28 class AB monoblocks
Margules Audio u-280SC Black ultralinear/triode tube monoblocks
Sound Lab Majestic 645 electrostatic panels

 

5 Responses to Sound Lab Majestic 645 electrostatic panel loudspeakers Review


  1. Kent says:

    Mr. Soo

    A cogent ingredient to the discussion would have been that Mr. Somasundrams excellent listening room with the Soundlabs panels is diminutive by any standards and very irregular in shape. That said the mismatch if indeed there is one, would be strictly visual.

    • Mr. Kent,

      Thank you for your readership and comment. I neglected to caption the picture for clarification. All pictures of the panels are of the Majestic 645 in my house. The following caption is now added: “Sound Lab Majestic 645 left panel, in my listening room and slightly toed-in.”

      My apology for any confusion.

      Incidentally, one of the drafts of the review positions the review as Part 1 of 2 with the following title, “The Midget and The Giant,” with the Majestic 645 being the midget in the Sound Lab family line. “The Giant” is the Part 2 on a pair of bookshelf speakers of another make.

      But I later felt such title could take away the focus on each review. Hence axed.

      Review on the bookshelf is nearly completed. Stay tuned.

  2. Evan says:

    Constantine,
    After nearly a year with the 645s, do you ever wish you’d gone with larger panels per Roger’s recommendations?

    • Evan,

      Thank you for your comment and readership. August 2021 shall usher in the 25th month of my ownership of the Sound Lab Majestic 645, and I am planning to upgrade to the M745 very soon. The M745 uses the same crossover electronics so it’s just a matter of swapping the 645 panels with that of the 745. I could get the M945 now but I’m so curious about what the 745 and 845 can do for the comparative pittance the company is charging against others, that getting the colossal, nine feet tall 945 now would probably put a period in my large speaker reviews as well as be a disincentive for me to review the 745 or 845, or anything afterwards.

      The sound of the electrostatic panels is the most realistic and accurate I’ve experienced; the only drawback is the sheer physical size of the panels as necessitated by laws of nature. There is simply no way around this. All speakers utilize capacitors and resistors to suppress characters of the drivers of a speaker in the amalgamation of a cohesive whole, but at least the Sound Lab is an electrostatic line source from top to bottom with an incomparably fast and vast radiating surface.

      For readers with the space and budget, having various makes and models of large speakers in the same room is great fun. But if only one pair can be had on a more restricted budget, the Sound Lab M645 at around $25,000 the pair is the most definitive design that I know of.

  3. Evan says:

    Thanks!

    I’m on the fence and trying to decide whether to go with 645s, which suit my eye better (and make accessing the records on the shelf behind the speakers easier) or the 745s. I heard U-745s last week and love them, but they are SO BIG, especially in my modest room. Your room is quite a bit longer than mine (18′ I think for your room and mine is 14’5″), but similar widths, so your move to yet larger panels makes me wonder even more which way I should go!

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