New TOTEM ACOUSTIC speaker line - "Element"

Cool! Drivers that don't need crossovers to achieve excellent and predictable mechanical roll-off. Good job Totem!

I had a great time with Vince at CEDIA. It was the last day of the show he must have spent two hours with me showing me stuff. Alas, he always uses open show floor to do that and it is so hard to judge audio quality that way. Does he have a room this time?

Well, I listened to them. And this time happily, Vince had a (hotel) room rather than show floor. As usual though, Vince had put zero room treatment in there. And more so, wants to show off that these speakers sound good without one. Nor that they are very location sensitive.

These are very nice sounding speakers. They have a level of nimbleness that one does not normally associate with cone speakers. Clarity and openness was remarkable for box speakers of this size and dimension. Walking out and listening to other speakers in similar size was extremely disappointing. I know the words I am using get used to compliment many speakers . But you owe it to yourself to listen to these. The have a level of fidelity that is surprisingly high.

He even showed us the bookshelf version and it also put out remarkably high level of bass performance and lost little in resolution and clarity (it had one woofer vs two in the other).

BTW, the design is not strictly crossover free -- it is only the woofer that is so. Vince said the tweeter has a crossover to make it blend better with the woofer.

Here are some pictures. Sorry, they are with my point and shoot camera and unprocessed . The small unit we heard is not in the pictures (it was behind us when I took the pictures).





And here is the Accuphase electronics driving the speakers (CD source):

I don't make any definitive judgements at shows, but you could say that if it sounds good in the often untreated rooms w/not ideal placement, it'll probably sound good at your house. The new Totems sounded good, very present in a show with much stuff so laid back and refined they'd be my choice installation for a morgue. A lot of stuff too made you think that getting good sound is almost monumentally difficult. These strike as more or less plunk 'n play. I'll be posting a show report on Positive-Feedback.com shortly