MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Tower Loudspeaker Review

For some years now, MarkAudio has been known around the world by audio enthusiasts and DIY speaker hobbyists for their full-range drivers. Their drivers make it very easy for a hobbyist to build a reasonably good sounding speaker, since a single driver design can be used with no crossover needed. All the user has to do is build the cabinet. Full-range driver proponents champion this approach to speaker design, since they claim that crossovers color the sound and that using multiple drivers create lobing interference patterns that also sullies the sound. Earlier this year, MarkAudio introduced their finished speaker brand, MarkAudio-SOTA, into the U.S. market. Their product line-up consists of four speakers: three bookshelf speakers and a tower speaker. In this review, we will be looking at their tower speaker, the Cesti T. The Cesti T towers are a modestly sized towers meant for two-channel applications that come in a finely lacquered finish, and at nearly $3,500 per pair, are intended for an upscale market.

Setup and Appearance

The Cesti T towers arrived in boxes with a clever locking mechanism that kept the packaging safely together and also made it easy to unpack. Within the boxes, the speakers were sandwiched between thick foam blocks on the top and bottom of the box, with a thick foam band protecting the middle. While the packing looked good to protect the speakers from bumps and shocks, the speakers did not come in any kind of plastic wrapping that would protect them from moisture, an odd omission at this price point. Nonetheless, the speakers arrived at my doorstep in excellent condition.

Out of the box, the Cesti T speakers looked snazzy. They have a sleek, modernistic design, and that vibrant red color with its exquisite polish certainly gives them flair. Yes, ‘snazzy’ is the word I would use for these; they are not so conservative that they become sedate, nor are they so unconventionally styled that they become ostentatious. The rounded corners and the grooves of the waveguides around the drivers give the Cesti T’s clean lines that are free from any sharp angles. The drivers present themselves as aluminum disc cones surrounded by the black rings of the surround and driver frame. The only logo on the speaker is the inconspicuous initials ‘ML’ in the bottom corner of the speaker. If you look carefully, you can see that the waveguides are not completely symmetrical with respect to the cabinet. They have a slight directional preference. With the grille on, the speakers do lose much of their personality, and, as we will discuss later, the grille does not improve their sound, so there is no harm in leaving the grille off if the user prefers. The use of magnetic grilles keeps the front baffle clean of grille guides. The Cesti T speakers also come in white and black colors for those who want a more reserved look and would rather not have the speakers stand out as much. To sum up the Cesti’s appearance, they look good, and, depending on their color, they should be able to fit in a wide range of decors.

Design Overview

MarkAudio-SOTA speakers place an emphasis on use of the MarkAudio full-range drivers as their chief selling point, which is expected given the name of the company. The MarkAudio drivers are full-range drivers, and, as such, should be able to cover most of the frequency range of music as a single driver. The Cesti T uses two 4” drivers and one 2” driver. Typically, full-range drivers are used as the sole driver in a speaker, in order to avoid the adverse effects of using a crossover and interference that can occur when multiple drivers. Full-range driver enthusiasts claim that the sound of a full-range driver speaker is purer and has greater fidelity, since there is no way to introduce any phase conflicts that can occur at crossover frequencies in speakers that divide frequency bands between drivers. However, the Cesti T uses two different full-range drivers and a crossover, in defiance of the traditional use of full-range drivers. The reason may be that MarkAudio-SOTA wanted to avoid beaming issues were they to use their 4.4” driver by itself, and their 2” driver wouldn’t have had the dynamic range needed for a tower speaker. In addition to that, the 4” driver would be far more capable of bass playback, and the 2” driver would be more adept at treble. This then begs the question: why use full-range drivers in this sort of orientation to begin with?

MarkAudio-SOTA’s answer looks to be that some of the more deleterious effects of crossovers and drivers of different character can be reduced when you pair together similar drivers with wide bands of operation such as MarkAudio drivers. One example of this is that since the MarkAudio drivers in the Cesti have very similar cone profiles and cone compositions, their behavior will be very similar, so you get a very close match in performance over the crossover frequency and will be less prone to the problems that occur between considerably different drivers such as a typical 5” midrange driver and a 1” dome tweeter. Using full-range drivers of such similar character also allows a more gentle and less severe crossover slope, since the drivers will blend together very well, so that should reduce the problems that crossovers can create. Since the Cesti drivers are so alike, the behavior of the MarkAudio drivers should blend very well off axis as well as on axis, in what MarkAudio-SOTA likes to call the symmetrical sound field, where the dispersion characteristics are the same from both drivers. MarkAudio-SOTA claims that these qualities give their speakers many of the advantages of multi-way speakers while preserving the advantages of single full-range driver speakers.

The drivers themselves use a shallow-profile mixed-alloy cone and a healthy-sized magnet. They have the distinctive “button” dustcap seen on all MarkAudio drivers. The cone itself is very light. The 2” driver looks very much like a shrunken version of the 4”. These drivers are also used as sole drivers in MarkAudio-SOTA speakers sold in Europe and are specified in those speakers as having a full-range response. The president of North American distribution tells me that he is thinking about bringing the single driver speakers to the American market. As with most full-range drivers, these are not able to take enormous amounts of power. The amplifier requirements in the specs sheet should be heeded here. These drivers are not as durable against large amount of current as conventional driver types seen in this price class.

The crossover for the Cesti T speakers is a simple design. It uses second-order slopes for both the high-pass filter and low-pass filter. As such, there looks to be only a pair of inductors and a pair of capacitors on the board. The Inductors and capacitors are sizable and look to be up to the task. As stated above, the rationale for such a simple crossover is that the cones are so much alike that they will be able to blend easily, so there is no need for a complicated crossover with steep slopes.

As with the crossover, the cabinet construction is also relatively simple, but there are a few noteworthy details. The paneling looks to be just short of 1” thick, perhaps ⅞”. There is no real bracing in the upper part of the cabinet, but there is a solid board bracing the lower section, perhaps to reduce the internal volume for the 4” drivers. The 2” driver is sealed in its own compartment in some kind of plastic rounded cone. This rounded cone shell looks to be shaped to diffuse any standing waves. The Cesti T towers have a port on both the front and back of the speaker, and port plugs are included with the packaging for those who want to reduce the bass response. There are some shallow waveguides carved around each cone on the exterior of the cabinet. One interesting thing about these waveguides is that they are not symmetrical on each speaker, but the waveguides do mirror each other as a speaker pair. One half of the waveguide opens up on one side of the cabinet while the other keeps contained in the front baffle. This is intended to allow broader dispersion of sound on one side of the speaker, which can be used to either minimize side-wall reflections or heighten them, depending on the user’s preference. The binding posts have a little divider between them, which is a nice touch that helps to prevent strands of cable from accidentally touching the other polarity and causing a short. I wouldn’t mind seeing this on more binding posts in the future.   

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Tower Speaker Measurements and Analysis

For our measurements, the Cesti T speakers were elevated at a height of approximately 4 feet with the mic height level with the 2” driver and 2 meters away in a large, open area. This gives us a window of 7 ms before ground reflections hit the mic, and that allows us usable data down to 150 Hz before resolution is completely lost.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T loudspeaker response (2 meters outdoors)

The above graph show the direct axis frequency response of the Cesti T tower speakers and also the Listening Window curve, which is an averaging of the direct axis response with the vertical responses 10 degrees above and below and horizontal responses at 10, 20, and 30 degrees outward. These responses are unsmoothed. From low frequencies to high, we see that the Cesti T speakers have somewhat elevated bass with respect to the mids. This elevation gently tapers off into the midrange frequencies where we see a nicely flat response up to 8 kHz, and we also see what might be a slight comb-filtering effect from the drivers interfering with each other, but it is very mild and was not something I could hear. At 8 kHz we run into a sharp spike and another much wider spike stretching from 13 kHz to 18 kHz. These spikes are without a doubt the causes of the bright nature of the speaker on axis. They are caused by cone break-up, and this is when the cones begin to bend above certain frequencies. It looks like the 8 kHz spike is caused by the 4” cone breaking up, and the 13 to 18 kHz spikes are caused by the 2” cone or perhaps a combination of both cones. The Listening Window curve, which is an average of the direct response and axises close to the direct response, show that the treble spikiness abates only slightly when these responses of the front of the speaker are gelled together.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T speakers horizontal frequency response +/-90 degrees from axis: 3D view

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T speakers horizontal frequency response +/-90 degrees from axis: 2D view

The above graphs show the horizontal response of the Cesti T speakers, measured at 10-degree increments out to 90 degrees. Here we see a very nice, wide, and uniform dispersion up to 7 kHz. A severe dip crops up above 7 kHz at 40 degrees and farther angles. The high-frequency response spikes become very pronounced as the off-axis response sags in these outer angles. The break-up modes can be seen to cause raggedness in the treble frequencies at nearly all angles.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Polar Map

The above polar map depicts the horizontal dispersion of the Cesti T speakers, but in a different way then the ‘waterfall’ graphs above it. In this graph we can see some waist-banding around the mids near the crossover region, although nothing severe. The breakup modes can be seen to spread a lot of acoustic energy at off-axis angles. This would account for the sibilance heard at toed-out frequencies, even when the direct-axis brightness was reduced from the change in angle.

One interesting thing that can be seen when we rotate the polar map 90 degrees is the effect of the asymmetrical waveguide on both sides of its axis. I have drawn a line through the direct axis to emphasize these effects. We can see the left side of the graph projects acoustic energy more widely than the right side, and this is because the waveguide is broader on the right side of this model and expands out more from the driver. The waveguide contains the acoustic radiation in a tighter pattern on the left side. The effects become apparent above 7 kHz, and the asymmetry of the waveguide doesn’t look to be influencing the speaker’s behavior very significantly below that point.

The axis I would recommend to the listener is 20 degrees on the side of the ‘closed’ end of the waveguide, for this reason:

At 20 degrees angled to the closed end of the waveguide, the response is really quite good, and I would advise users to have that angle facing the listening position, which, in many cases, would have this speaker facing straight ahead in parallel vectors. The problem remains that acoustic reflections from room surfaces can still bring in some of that elevated treble response. I will repeat that on recordings that do not lean heavily on these high frequencies still sounded very good- perhaps a little forward but detailed without being edgy. The addition of a reasonably good tweeter and a much steeper low-pass filter would go a long way towards correcting these problems, but it would seem to be against MarkAudio-SOTA’s design philosophy at this time, which is a pity.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Impedance and Phase Response

We can see that the Cesti T speakers are tuned to about 50 Hz from the saddle between the peaks in the bass frequencies. The Cesti T speakers do not pose a stiff electrical demand on amplifiers. Impedance never dips under 5 ohms at any point. Impedance does consistently hover around 5 ohms for the treble frequencies, but even here the phase angle is never severe, so this should be an easy load for any amplifier. Sensitivity was measured as 86.4 dB for 2.83v at 1 meter, which isn’t very far from MarkAudio-SOTA’s spec of 88.5 dB for 1 watt at 1 meter, given the impedance curve. This is not an unexpected sensitivity spec for a speaker of this design. This speaker does not need a heavy-duty amplifier to get loud, not that it can handle a lot of current anyway. Again, we should mention here that users should pay attention to the power-handling specification provided by MarkAudio-SOTA.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Tower Speaker Conclusion

To wind down this review, I will briefly go over a few of the things I like about the MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T speakers and also a few of the things I wish they did better. To start with, I will say that their greatest virtue is their midrange sound. To my ears, the midrange was crystal clear, and many vocals sounded lifelike and three-dimensional on the Cesti Ts. It is in this frequency band where MarkAudio-SOTA’s design philosophy pays off. I also dig the aesthetics of the Centi speakers; they are stylish without being over-the-top or ‘loud’ in appearance. They are not large or heavy either, so they will not dominate the room. Since they don’t have to be toed-in to sound their best, they can stand parallel with other furniture in-room without losing sound quality. I recommend using them facing straight ahead instead of angled toward the listener. I like the idea of asymmetrical waveguide edges whereby you can ‘customize’ their sound using acoustic reflections from the walls by swapping the left and right speaker’s positions. Room acoustics will always be a big determinant in the end sound of any system, and in this clever design feature, MarkAudio-SOTA is using that to their advantage.  

Let’s now discuss some of the things I wish they did better. Their biggest problem is the treble spikiness that is a consequence of the cone break-up modes. On recordings that use lots of compression or recordings that divide their dynamic range for an even spectral balance, this can bring about some very noticeable sibilance - and that is even after they have been positioned so the most neutral axis is facing the listener. On axis, the speaker is very bright which, on the wrong recording, can be searing.

Something else I want to mention here is that these are not high-dynamic range speakers. This is not a ‘con’ really but is something that should be emphasized at this point in the review. These are not party speakers, and they would make for a poor fit for someone looking to blast some heavy-metal for some head-banging. As was said before, pay attention to the power-handling specifications; they are very specific for these speakers whereas on most speakers they only serve as a broad guideline. That being said, the Cesti T speakers are likely able to get louder than what most people are comfortable with, so for nominal listening levels and some higher volume listening, the Cesti speakers should be adequate.

These speakers also are not meant for deep bass. If a subwoofer is not being employed, I would stay away from material that has strong low-frequency content below 50 Hz. These speakers are not meant for blazing dubstep or hip-hop music that has deep bass. In my free-air testing, I tried to measure distortion by running 30Hz-24kHz sweeps at 90 dB and 95 dB. The low frequencies of the 95 dB sweep deformed one of the metal 4” cones. I should mention that is a stressful test, but the point was made that these speakers are not made for loud deep bass.

To my ears, the Cesti T speakers sounded good for orchestral recordings, jazz, contemporary instrumental recordings like ethnic music, solo vocals, pianos, strings, and so on. However, on recordings where compression was significant so was this speaker’s sibilant signature. I think that if I tried to listen to radio or many satellite stations like Sirius XM, the sibilance would become very pronounced since compression is used so heavily in those kinds of broadcasts. I will say I enjoyed most of what I listened to on the Cesti T speakers, but I would not give them a full-throated recommendation, because the per-pair cost of nearly $3,500 is rather steep for a speaker with cone break-up problems of this nature. I would recommend them if you don’t tend to listen to recordings of the type that tend to heavy-compression, like much of modern rock music, pop music, electronic music. If your tastes run toward more ‘refined’ recordings, and you live in an apartment or condo where music can not be blasted, they may be a great fit for you due their rich midrange sound and their stylish appearance, low weight, and small footprint. If that sounds appealing to you, give them a try, since they can be returned for a full refund in 30 days if you do not like them. I think for certain people’s tastes, the Cesti T loudspeakers will hit their ‘spot’ nicely.

MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Loudspeaker Review
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MarkAudio-SOTA Cesti T Tower Speaker Listening Tests

So How Do They Sound? 

In my approximately 24’ by 13’ listening room, I set up the speakers with equal stand-off distances between the backwall and sidewall, and equal distance between speakers and listening position, with the 2” driver at ear level. A Pioneer SC-55 receiver was used in ‘Direct’ mode, so no tonal processing would interfere with the speakers’ natural sound. Subwoofers were used in some instances to assist in low-frequency playback with content with strong bass dynamics, using an 80 Hz crossover frequency. Speaker distance from listening position was about 10 feet. Most of the below listening was done with the Cesti T speakers facing straight ahead rather than toed-in.

Music Listening 

As always, I like to start with a clean vocal recording, as vocals are where we will most easily detect a problem with the sound, since our hearing is so heavily tuned to the sound of the human voice. For this review I used Enya’s ‘The Celts’, a CD I have had for many years and have heard countless times. Enya’s vocals are awash in reverb on some of the tracks, but others are very clear and intimate. There is also some nice recording of live instruments in addition to synthesizers, with some very beautiful piano and violin arrangements. The vocals on this album were rendered exquisitely by the Cesti towers. Imaging was quite good, with stable positioning of the instruments and vocals, at least in the tracks where a shortage of effects allowed precise stereo imaging. The Cesti T speakers pronounced the slight harmonic shimmer of Enya’s voice that a darker speaker would subdue. I enjoyed ‘The Celts’ on the Cesti T speakers and felt they did a fine job with this classic recording.

For music on a larger stage and something with more traditional instruments, I turned to what is likely the most current popular recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Virgin’s recording performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. This is a widely available and inexpensive album that is highly regarded for the performance and also the sound quality. There is nothing I can say about the Brandenburg Concertos that hasn’t already been said a thousand times over, so I will refrain from commenting on these well-known compositions. I will say that this recording of these famous Concertos belongs not just in every Bach collection, but everyone who would have even a rudimentary collection of classical music. The Cesti T speakers nailed the imaging, with a convincing soundstage with nicely detailed instrument signatures. Woodwinds sounded centered with some depth, which is what one would expect in a typical orchestra. String instrument placement sounded like it was spread out across the stage a bit more, with a clavichord also taking center stage. I would say that the Cesti towers caught the delicate character of many of these instruments without losing the grandeur and cohesion of the larger orchestra.

An album with music that ranges from simple and minimal to rich and dense is ‘Night Silence Desert’ by Kayhan Kalhor and Mohammad Reza Shajarian. I do not have a deep familiarity of classical Persian music, but the liner notes explain that this disc is a mixture of classical Persian styles. Keyhan Kalhor is the instrumentalist with Reza Shajarian as vocalist. They are backed by a troupe of players of a variety of traditional Persian instruments. The recording itself is quite good, with clear placement of instruments and singer. It sometimes engages in extreme panning for effect but mostly holds a fixed placement of the various players. The Cesti speakers placed the instruments well when they were mixed in a conventional recording style but also conveyed the intended effects on those instances where the sound engineer decided to have some fun with panning and an ultra-wide stereo image for certain instruments. The Cesti’s rendition of Shazarian’s voice was rich and lifelike. Listening to ‘Night Silence Desert’ was a pleasure, and this album as reproduced by the Cesti speakers made me want to dig into classical Persian music more. 

I switched gears to something a bit more rambunctious at this point, so I threw in Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’ album to see how the Cesti towers sounded with something rowdier than the previous content. I can happily report that Billy Idol sounded pretty good on the Cesti speakers. Billy was squarely anchored to the center of the soundstage with the guitars, bass, and percussion raging all around him. ‘Rebel Yell’ is a fun but short album so I threw in some other stuff such as Depeche Mode.

On Depeche Mode, I found the Cesti speakers to be rather sibilant. The S sounds in David Gahan’s voice were quite pronounced, as were the snare drums. This was consistent in track after track. Curious if this was something I had missed in ‘Rebel Yell’, I replayed some of the tracks from that album, and it wasn’t there. However, switching back to Depeche Mode and several other rock and also electronic dance music, I did hear sense a sibilant character on many of these types of recordings. ‘Rebel Yell’ seems to be an exception, as though it is mixed with the treble a bit depressed compared to these other recordings. 

‘Rebel Yell’ also sounded quieter when switching back and forth from the other rock music, and it occurred to me that ‘Rebel Yell’ might have been mixed for a more natural sound then the heavy compression that occurs in more modern rock and pop music. Examining some of the tracks in ‘Rebel Yell’ as a waveform in a digital audio editor, it was clear that if any compression was used in its mix, it was a relatively mild amount, unlike so much other popular music these days. However, we are still left with the fact that the Cesti T tower speakers do have a sibilant character with recordings of this nature, whereas many other speakers do not.

When I first received the Cesti towers, I placed them toed-in to face the listening position and ran through a sampling of different music to get a sense of their sound. It became apparent that these speakers were on the ‘bright’ side of loudspeaker voicing, so I angled them to face straight out so the listening position was off the direct axis. That seemed to alleviate much of that brightness. What I found out later, when I queued up Depeche Mode, was that this straight-ahead positioning was not a cure for sibilance on music where the frequency range of sibilant sound is fighting for dynamic range against all of the other sound in the recording. We will examine the reasons for this characteristic more when look at the frequency responses in our measurements section. 

Movies and Television

One movie I thought would be right up the alley for the Cesti T tower speakers is Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic ‘The Doors,’ which contains a superb sound mix with music nearly from the beginning of the movie to the end in a variety of acoustic environments. Music is mostly pieces from the Doors, with many of them sung by Val Kilmer himself in a dead-on impersonation of Jim Morrison’s singing. There are also some orchestral bits, ethnic music, and a few songs by other rock groups. ‘The Doors’ sounded great with the Cesti T speakers. Dialogue was clear and intelligible against the background music and environmental sounds. The music itself sounded great on the Cesti speakers. This is the kind of movie that the Cesti T speakers are made for and is what they excel at. I deferred from playing a monster action summer blockbuster, since I didn’t want to risk sending elevated levels of deep bass frequencies to the Cesti speakers. They are not made for reproducing massive explosion sounds or content like that. The dynamic range of the Cesti T speakers isn’t bad, but these speakers will not tolerate much abuse in that vein. These speakers will handle dialogue and typical acoustic music at healthy loudness levels, but not blast effects-driven movies or bass-heavy electronic music, although such content will not endanger the Cesti T speakers at modest levels.

Something else I watched on the Cesti T speakers was the third season of Amazon’s ‘Bosch.’ Bosch is a police drama about a tough homicide detective in L.A. While that might sound like an awfully generic scenario, the show itself is very expertly made, and the protagonist is well-drawn and given depth. The sound mix is not out of the ordinary, which is why I chose ‘Bosch’ for the Cesti T speakers. One thing I listened for was to hear if the sibilance on some of the rock recordings could be heard on dialogue in the sound mix of a typical drama, but it didn’t seem to crop up. Dialogue and music sounded natural and even. The opening credits were punchy and tuneful on the Cesti T speakers. The ambient sounds of Los Angeles was not lost in the dialogue or action scenes on the Cesti T speakers, and the sound mix of the show felt distinct but also cohesive. The Cesti T speakers made for another absorbing season with Detective Bosch, and my only complaint was that it ended too soon, and now another year-long wait begins for Season 4.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value