|
As this forum is rarely used anymore, we've locked it. Feel free to browse and read. Questions? Please reach out to us directly. Cheers! |
|
 |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
Elaine Benes
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 1416
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 9:16 pm Post subject: Totem speaker...wow.... |
|
|
I just now got around to demo'ing a center channel Totem speaker I bought from kijiji because it was a great price and I'd heard good things about Totem...
WOW !
This thing is AMAZING !
How can a single speaker make such a huge diffence ???
Why aren't all speaker makers getting it this right ??
Vocals are so *right* they seem to be in the same room, and even though this is a relatively small speaker, its got as much "presences" as my PSB center channel that is almost double the physical size, and very highly regarded...
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
jeffslife
Joined: 17 Apr 2010
Posts: 4190
Location: ohio usa
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I am running a Polk RTI A9 for a center. Keep your little speaker.
_________________
We are ALL job creators !
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Easy there, Jeff. The RTi A9 is a really good speaker - even great for the money. But, it's still a mass-produced tower speaker with inexpensive made-in-China drivers and crossover components that probably don't cost $150 per speaker. To put that in perspective, that means it's equipped with roughly $20 drivers. A tower speaker is also pretty limiting in that most rooms would require an AT screen to use it as a center channel. I didn't realize you'd gone AT… What screen material are you using?
Totem is a very well-regarded mid-fi product, some equipped with Dynaudio drivers, a single one of which costs about what all the drivers together cost to make an RTi A9. I've sat through a few Totem demos, and I was quite impressed with what I heard. In the Totem demo I heard, they were extremely dynamic with a surprisingly high-SPL capability without sounding compressed, and that was in a huge room. In fact, there are a couple of Totem speakers I'd be very happy to have in my theater!
What model Totem did you run across, EB?
D
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jeffslife
Joined: 17 Apr 2010
Posts: 4190
Location: ohio usa
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I didn't mean nothing by it. I thought it was another spammer pushing product.
_________________
We are ALL job creators !
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Elaine Benes
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 1416
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
The center channel, Mite "T"-C
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
draganm
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 8990
Location: Colorado
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 9:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
about the last person on this forum I would expect to appreciate an " audiophile" speaker but OK 
As Steve pointed out it's the quality of driver & the crossover, but also the cabinet design, construction, volume, etc. A speaker cabinet can resonate and cancel out or exaggerate certain frequencies, it can put some or most of the frequency range out of phase with the room, it can create "beaming" at certain frequencies (usually the mid-range) which kills the sound-stage (spaciousness) of the audio presentation. If the cabinet shape, mass, volume, internal bracing, or baffling is not carefully designed ot match the drivers the above problems are usually there.
So what your paying for isn't just the parts, but the design. Someone had to actually test the dam thing in a special room for hundreds of hours , making small adjustments to the crossover or cabinet, then re-testing. The size of the speaker is almost completely irrelevant. You can have a very small speaker that fills a normal size room with very accurate and spacious sound, Or a huge box that also fills the room with lots of noise.
If you got to Stereophile and read how they test equipment it quickly becomes apparent how extreme some of this audiophile stuff can get. Not to say that every expensive/exotic piece of gear is automatically and excellent piece. They have slammed a lot of expensive stuff because it just tested badly, either in the listening room or the lab or both. They also have a section for manufacturers to either dispute the findings or respond as to how they plan to address them in the future. So they're not out to just rip on stuff but actually help improve it.
As to the original post though, buying used audiophile equipment is one of the best values out there. You can buy stuff that was handled with kid gloves because the people who buy this stuff are so anal it's not even funny. My Quad 22L's came with White cotton gloves from the manufacturer . You almost always get the the original boxes and packing materials, and you know the original owner drove those speakers with quality amps that didn't clip.
in the case of Totem, you can get a pair of bookshelf's from audiogon for 400 bucks asking price. I would offer $300. + shipping considering these were $575. pair new
http://app.audiogon.com/listings/monitors-totem-dreamcatcher-black-ash-2014-01-12-speakers-77381
and here's the seterophile review
lab measurements , you can't get much more scientific than this
http://www.stereophile.com/content/totem-dreamcatcher-loudspeaker-measurements
listening test, notice that these sepakers tested a little on the "bright" side, so if you like your music really loud maybe not the best choice, but still compare to bookshelf's in the $1K+ range
http://www.stereophile.com/content/totem-dreamcatcher-loudspeaker
no asian parts here 
| Quote: | The two-way, biwirable, rear-ported Dreamcatcher is designed and manufactured in Canada; its drive-units are designed by Totem, but made and assembled in Europe. The 1" titanium-dome tweeter, manufactured by German Acoustik, is mated to a 4" Scan-Speak woofer. Totem founder Vince Bruzzese feels very strongly about sourcing his drivers in the West. In the past, he got his small woofers from Peerless in Denmark, but switched to Scan-Speak when Peerless started manufacturing in China. Bruzzese also pointed out that the tweeter used in the Dreamcatcher costs him €16, more than 15 times as much as most similar Asian-made tweeters.
The Dreamcatcher is built using lock-mitered construction, a technique derived from the construction of heirloom furniture, which Totem claims contributes to a speaker cabinet's rigidity, longevity, and visual beauty. The speakers are available finished in Black Ash or genuine Mahogany ($575/pair), Cherry ($625), or White ($650). My white samples were quite attractive, blending with my room's décor without calling attention to themselves.
When I knocked on a Dreamcatcher's cabinet, I could sense no trace of cabinet resonance—something I expect to experience only with much more expensive speakers. Totem strongly recommends that the Dreamcatchers be listened to with their grilles removed. I listened with and without the grilles, and heard a negligible difference; grille-less, there was a touch more transparency. I was further encouraged to leave the grilles off because they made the Dreamcatcher look cheap; naked, the speakers looked like much more expensive speakers. Totem also recommends that the Dreamcatcher be given 40–50 hours of break-in before any serious listening is begun. (My review samples had already had over 100 hours of break-in when I received them.) As usual with bookshelf models, I placed the Dreamcatchers on my steel Celestion Si stands, which I've filled with sand and lead shot.
Sound
The Dreamcatcher has been one of the most difficult speakers I've reviewed, with a sound very different from that of any other affordable speaker I've heard. It took me many hours of listening to get to the bottom of what made this little speaker tick, and to find the appropriate words to describe its performance.
It's easiest to describe what the Dreamcatcher doesn't do. The laws of physics dictate that there is a limit to the bass extension possible from a small bookshelf speaker. Although the Dreamcatcher didn't sound bass-shy to me, we'll see where John Atkinson's measurements reveal its lower limit to be. It's also not physically possible for a speaker this small to create the high-level dynamic slam of a larger floorstanding loudspeaker, especially with recordings of dramatic orchestral works. Finally, the Dreamcatcher didn't strike me as being the most well-balanced speaker—its high-frequency reproduction is very extended compared to its limited bottom-end extension. The Paradigm Atom v.5, for example, has a much better-balanced sound in which its subjective HF attenuation seems to match its lack of bass extension. But the Dreamcatcher never sounded bright, and its extended HF performance didn't emphasize the lack of low bass, for example, as did the original ProAc Tablette when I last heard it.
Those minor caveats out of the way, I can comfortably say that the Totem Dreamcatcher's performance was just about flawless throughout my listening. From its taut, tuneful, perfectly clean midbass to the highest frequencies, there was no trace of coloration or distortion, and the ability of the pair of them to throw a wide, deep soundstage, even when I sat off axis, was beyond reproach. And for such a tiny bookshelf, the Dreamcatcher was able to reproduce, with dense orchestral fortissimos, a reasonable sense of high-level drama without compression or strain. Even in my large listening room, it behaved like a much larger speaker.
Five attributes of the Dreamcatcher combined to create a breathtaking level of realism that I'd never heard from any other bookshelf speaker. First, the degree of resolution in the midrange let me listen deeply into each recording to uncover an extraordinary amount of detail. This, combined with the best low-level dynamic reproduction I've heard from any speaker—a completely linear integration of loudnesses from pppp to p—made the Dreamcatcher an extremely realistic re-creator of all voices and acoustic instruments. And unlike most bookshelf speakers of this size, which tend to have a subtle thinness in the lower midrange that adds a touch of politeness to tenor saxophones and male voices, the Totem had a rich quality in this region that reminded me of a much larger speaker. Fourth, the integration of this quality of midrange with the Dreamcatcher's detailed, extended, and pristine high frequencies was the best I'd ever heard from a small bookshelf, and more akin to what I'm used to hearing from more expensive electrostatic speakers. And finally, the Totem's perfect reproduction of all transients, with lightning-fast attack and recovery but no trace of sharpness, gave a startling level of realism to all percussion instruments and plucked strings.
The Dreamcatcher's magical combination of these attributes let me hear into recordings in a way I've rarely been able to with any component I've reviewed. It's one thing for a speaker to let me hear, in a familiar recording, new things for the first time; it's another if that recording is the Beatles' Abbey Road (CD, Apple 3 82468 2), and yet another if I hear something new in every track (footnote 1). Using my Creek Destiny combination of CD player and integrated amplifier, I played the entire disc, marveling at all my new discoveries. The resolution increased further when I substituted my Lector, Audio Valve, and Audio Research gear for the Creek duo and listened to the CD again. Throughout the entire listening session, I felt like producer George Martin listening to the playback of the master tape in EMI's Abbey Road studios. In "Come Together" and "The End," I marveled at the pitch and dynamic inflections in Ringo's tom-tom and bass-drum work: It was very clear exactly where on the skins he was hitting the skins. And the Totem's subtle dynamic capabilities made it very easy to compare the vocal phrasing styles of John Lennon in "Come Together" and Paul McCartney in "Oh, Darling."
With the Totem, I realized for the first time to what degree Abbey Road is a keyboard-driven album. I found the layering of piano and synthesizers in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" subtle and ingenious, and had a similar reaction to how Paul's piano phrasing in "You Never Give Me Your Money" dovetails perfectly with the guitar and bass figures. My favorite keyboard arrangement, however, is the three-way arpeggio interplay of guitar, harpsichord, and synthesizer in "Because"—through the Totems, each instrumental line was clear as a bell. And for the first time, I focused on the electric guitar played through a Leslie amp (a technique more often used by Pink Floyd than by the Beatles) in "Here Comes the Sun," and how that texture subtly supports the broken chords on acoustic guitar in the front of the mix. Finally, the Totem's overall reproduction of Abbey Road hit me emotionally, reminding me that I was listening to this gorgeous music in the 30th-anniversary year of John Lennon's death. In the end, it made me sad.
But the Totem had gotten my Beatles jones working, and during one of the many annoying snowstorms in New York City this past winter, when my entire family was trapped in the house, I cued up The Beatles in Mono (CD, Apple 5099969945120) and listened to the entire boxed set in one sitting. Although I enjoyed using the Dreamcatchers to analyze every detail of the band's evolution, my wife was less enthused. During a recent dinner party to celebrate her birthday, I again cued up the Mono Masters disc from this set, but my wife's reaction to the music contained a hint of A Clockwork Orange: "Is that all you ever play around here—the Beatles?" My son Jordan said, "How about some Lady Gaga?" So we cued up "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)," from the Lady's The Fame Monster (CD, Streamline B0011631-02), at about 90dB. In my large listening room there was plenty of bass-synth slam and tuneful rhythmic bounce as, once again, I analyzed every detail of the layered electronic instruments in this track. Although I feel that Lady Gaga is a very talented singer and pianist and an even more talented composer, the Totems very clearly revealed that her greatest skill is in arranging.
The Dreamcatcher's aforementioned transient capabilities combined with the seamless integration of its midrange and high frequencies to make it a natural showcase for well-recorded percussion works. "Welcome Blessing," from Jack DeJohnette's Oneness (CD, ECM 1637), opens with a delicate and gradually building percussion solo from Don Alias that runs the gamut of percussive textures. The Totems completely "disappeared" with this tune; the startling realism of the widely varying transient and dynamic envelopes of Alias's bag of tricks was virtually indistinguishable from a live performance.
There was an interesting paradox in the way the Totem unraveled the differences among recordings of varying sound quality, clearly distinguishing between great and merely good recordings while still allowing me to enjoy the latter. For example, I've always been a fan of Richie Havens' Nobody Left to Crown (CD, Verve Forecast B0011631-02), but only when I listened to it after hearing Sonic Youth's Washing Machine (CD, Geffen DGCD-24825) did I realize that the Sonic Youth album is sonically far superior, even if its primary textures are those of distorted electric guitars and processed voices.
Working from home one day during yet another snowstorm, I was on the computer, two rooms away from my large listening room, where I'd cued up Louis Thiry's solo pipe-organ performance of Messiaen's La nativité du Seigneur (CD, Calliope CAL 9928). This complex work, which I've heard performed live, puts the organ through a wide range of textures—from subtle to bombastic, dissonant to consonant, delicate to complex—throughout the instrument's entire frequency range. Even heard as background music, the realism of the Totem's reproduction of the organ was so arresting that it was difficult for me to work. It sounded as if an actual pipe organ was being played two rooms away, and the music was demanding that I pay attention to it. Finally, during a high-level passage for pedals that covers the 20–40Hz range, I raced into the listening room. The Dreamcatchers were trying their best, but the woofer cones were audibly flapping—fearing the speakers were about to be damaged, I turned the volume down.
This Messiaen recording illustrated the Dreamcatcher's greatest strength: It forced me to involve myself in the experience of listening to music. Every hour I spent listening to the Totems made me want to listen for another hour. About halfway during the reviewing process, when John Atkinson told me that publication of this review would be delayed, I was elated: I now had at least another month to listen to the Dreamcatchers before I'd have to make room for something else.
Toward the end of my reviewing process, I would enter the listening room, look at the Totems, and smile. The mere sight of those little white beauties brought me happiness, and triggered memories of many hours of enjoyable listening sessions. At one point I even postulated that, should I ever decide to throw in my reviewing towel, I could sell my Audio Valve Eklipse line stage, Audio Research Reference 110 amplifier, and Alón Circe loudspeakers, get a pair of Dreamcatchers and an ARC VSi60 integrated amp (which I enthused about in the September 2010 Stereophile), and be a happy camper for many years. (Well, I didn't think about it too long, but the thought did cross my mind.) The sound of the Totem Dreamcatchers was so addicting that, whenever I removed them from the system and substituted another speaker—any speaker—I itched for the Totems' return.
Comparisons
I dismissed out of hand the idea of comparing the Dreamcatcher with bookshelf speakers also priced at or around $575/pair—the Totem's real competition is speakers costing three to four times as much. So out came the Epos M16i ($1998/pair) and Linn Majik 109 ($1590/pair).
The Epos M16i shared with the Totem a gorgeous, silky midrange, but had a bit less resolution of detail. The Epos's high frequencies were also slightly less detailed and extended, but were a bit more silky than the Totem's. At the low end, the Epos's midbass was richer and its bass extension was deeper, with a greater sense of high-end dynamic slam.
The Linn Majik 109's midbass was warmer than the Totem Dreamcatcher's and not quite as clean. The highs were maybe a bit more extended through the Totem, but were just as delicate and detailed through the Linn, and a touch silkier. The Majik 109's capabilities in high-level dynamics were superior to the Totem's, but not as good as the Epos's.
Despite the fact that the Epos M16i and Linn Majik 109 are my two favorites of all the affordable speakers I've ever reviewed, and despite the fact that both have always enticed me into a high degree of involvement with a wide range of recorded music, when I removed them from my system and hooked up the Dreamcatchers again, I smiled. The Totems were a breath of fresh air.
Conclusions
The Totem Dreamcatcher is more than a nearly flawless affordable bookshelf speaker that competes with speakers at triple its price. Never before have I heard a small speaker whose sound was so enticing and intoxicating that it made me want to never stop listening. Of all the speakers I've reviewed in the last 28 years, I have never enjoyed music more through anything else, regardless of price. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Elaine Benes
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 1416
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 10:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
Well...that review was pretty positive...maybe I'll have to keep an eye out for a pair of those Dreamcatchers...
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
|
Forum powered by phpBB © phpBB Group
|
|
