Has anyone heard the Totem Acoustic's Wind?

I walked by a retailer's hi-fi room one day, and the beautiful, huge, compelling music issuing from the room just reached out and hauled me in. It was some big orchestral piece playing on a pair of Totem Winds. I knew and liked the Totem sound already by then, (I own a venerable pair of Sttafs, may get to Mani-2s someday) but this was something else again.

I don't seriously aspire to this particular speaker - a bigger room in a bigger house would have to come first. Therefore, I haven't done serious comparison with the heavy competition in that size and price bracket. But nothing ever reeled me in quite like that.

Ironically, the retailer in question unloaded the entire Totem line not long afterwards, in favor of Vienna Acoustics. To each his own...

If you're looking for an easy way to upgrade your Hawks, add a Totem Lightning sub. True, it won't give you any more soundstage or detail like the Wind will, but it sure does cost a lot less and gets the Hawks out of the "bookshelf" comparison area and solidly into the "full-range high performance" category.

I personally would rather go the route of a full range speaker than a speaker + subwoofer route, if music is the primary concern. Some people love their two ways so much they'll stick with them and add a sub, but imo a high quality full ranger has a coherency than subs + speakers lack. It takes experimentation to get the best integration of sub-woofer and speaker - it is possible, but is it preferable to a full range speaker, if you have the room and can spend the money? Not really.
Reality can kick in a practicality may dictate a sub, for cost, placement or even home theater integration reasons, but when it comes down to pure music, I will pick the coherence of a full range speaker anyday.

For counterpoint, once my sub was set up properly I would never go back to a system without it - only a handful of speakers sound as full as what I have now, and at that point there are cost and aesthetics starting to creep into it. IMO coherency issues are indicitave of an improperly set up system.

Sonance, I think you might change your mind if you hear a *properly* dialed in musical subwoofer from the likes of REL or Totem. I get the strange feeling your experiences have been with home-theater subs.

I agree w/ both Sonance and Ghunter.

A quality true full range speaker will be better for music than a poorly setup speakers + sub combination. However, if you're looking at subwoofers such as Velodyne's Digital Drive series, Revel B15, Ultima30, Rel Stadium, etc..., you'll see that a well placed and executed subwoofer will work as well and in most cases, better than a "full range" speakers w/o a sub.

For example, Totem Hawk + Velodyne DD12 combination will produce a very flat frequency responce from below 20Hz to 20kHz. I highly doubt you can find a true full range speakers (Wind goes down to 24Hz supposedly) that can do the same for the same price.

The important question to ask is, do you really need a truly full range (20Hz-20kHz) sound? If the answer is yes and you love the LFE on movie tracks, I think a subwoofer will make a huuuge difference in the experience and more than worth the investment.

It all comes down to personal preferences and needs, but w/ today's quality subwoofers, we really don't need to worry too much about the integration with main speakers. The subwoofer matching technology has come a long way and I believe they've gotten it right now.

Sorry to stray off the topic a bit, but for me, if I had the money, I'd add a quality subwoofer even if I had the Totem Wind loudspeakers.