B&W Panorama Review

Using the latest trend in home theater, the new Bowers & Wilkins Panorama brings cinema-like surround to your living room using one soundbar.  With flat screen televisions now providing more lifelike images, the next logical solution to bringing your screen to life is sound.  With over 40 years experience in developing and refining some of the world’s most advanced acoustic technologies, the Panorama also caters to music lovers.  The Panorama shares much of the features as B&W’s legendary 800 series.  Sound engineers depend on the speaker for its near-flawless reproduction, safe in the knowledge that what they hear in the studio is as close as possible to what the musicians are playing.

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Soundbar (B&W Panorama)

Dedicated Center Channel

The human ear is very sensitive to speech and the spoken word, and through a home theatre system this information is all sent through the centre channel.  With Panorama, we have built in a dedicated center channel so that you can experience the full engaging nature of movie dialogue.  utilizing traditional B&W technologies such as a 1in aluminum domed Nautilus™ tapered tube tweeter, 1st order filter technology and two woven glass fiber midrange units, Panorama takes the dedicated signal from a 5.1 data stream and reproduces it exactly as it should be – pure and as the director intended.

Built-in Subwoofer

Panorama is a complete soundbar in every way.  That means there is no need for an external subwoofer thanks to the clever use of materials, technology and over four decades of engineering know-how.  To generate the powerful bass needed for movie effects, Panorama’s twin internal subwoofers are driven actively by a dedicated 50W amplifier. Designed to act like pistons, the cones are capable of extending bass levels to 40Hz and below. Flowports™ help reduce air turbulence noises caused by the air velocity in the ports generated by bass units.  Panorama’s flowports are longer than is usually possible for a speaker of this limited volume; this allows for the remarkably low frequency bass tuning.

Drive Unit Technology

When designing Panorama, our years of world leading drive unit research was invaluable, as we battled to make what is a very visually discreet speaker sound as big as we could.  Panorama’s tweeter is a 1 in aluminum dome connected to a Nautilus tapered tube.  This acts like an acoustic black hole, swallowing superfluous sound from behind the dome making sure that all you hear is the purist high frequencies.  The six midrange drive units that supply the bulk of Panorama’s amazing sound rely on glass fiber cones, optimized using laser interferometry.  These dramatically reduce the unwanted effects of standing waves, leaving music and movies sounding clean, clear and true to life.

Cabinet Construction

The cabinet of any loudspeaker needs to be as stiff as possible.  This is so that what you hear is the sound produced by the drive units themselves, and not vibrations or distortions from an inferior cabinet.  Having developed the use of metal cabinets for our audiophile speakers, we knew that we couldn’t go wrong using this material again.  Knowing the stresses and strains that the Panorama cabinet was going to be under, we have strengthened it further with a glass loaded ABC compound that is both stiff and light. The result?  A speaker where you only hear the drive units, and not the cabinet that houses them.

Electronics

So how do you get a full surround experience from a single speaker?  Take the above technologies and combine them with clever DSP (Digital Signal Processing) circuits.   Developed by B&W to adjust the sound balance and manipulate the signals to create the impression of a fully immersible surround experience, Panorama will fill any room and works well in both small and large environments.

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Specifications

Technical features

• Digital Signal Processing
• Digital amplifier
• Switch mode power supply

Description

• Integrated A/V Sound System

Decodes

• Dolby Digital
• Dolby PLII
• DTS
• Stereo
• AAC-Mpeg2 (Japan Only)

Drive units

• 2x 90mm (3.5 in) subwoofers
• 2x 90mm (3.5 in) subwoofers
• 4x 75mm (3.0 in) surround channels
• 1x 25mm (1 in) metal dome tweeter

Frequency range

• -6dB at 36Hz and 50kHz

Amplifier power output

• 1x 50W (subwoofers)
• 5x 25W (center/ surround)

Power input voltage

• 100V 120V ~ 50/60Hz
• 220V 240V ~ 50/60Hz

Rated power consumption

• 32W

Standby power consumption

• <0.7W

Inputs

• 2 x optical digital Toslink
• 1 x electrical digital Coax (RCA Phono)
• 2 x Analogue (RCA Phono)
• 3.5mm mini jack: RS-232 service Connector

Outputs

• Subwoofer pre out (RCA Phono)

Dimensions

• Height    130mm (5.11 in)
• Width    1090mm (42.91 in)
• Depth    186mm (7.32 in)
• Gross weight    14.1kg

Enclosure

• Mirror black stainless steel skin
• Grille: Black steel mesh

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