Topic: A one night stand with a high end pair of speakers...

[Weirdness]

Being a sales rep in the electronics industry has its perks every so often...

Was in a store today, noticed that they had a pair of speakers boxed up and ready to ship to a dealer a couple of hours from where I live, coincidentally a place that I am going to be visiting in the morning.  Figured I'd offer to drop them off, and seeing as they were already a demo pair, they said that I was welcome to play around with them if I felt like it.  It's not often that I get this kind of opportunity, so how could I resist.  Anyways, these puppies are a pair of Totem Winds, made by a small speaker company from Quebec Canada.  They retail for around $9000 a pair up here, a price tag that I would consider to be high end for sure.  Anyways, they're quite impressive overall, great bottom end and imaging, very even handed and balanced to say the least.  Very realistic and refined at the same time.  Fortunately, they don't blow my more modest Mission 783's away by four times the price, but it's a blast to have some fun with gear that you can't afford.  All that I can say is that you should always insist on the in home audition as you never know what kind of impression a piece of gear is going to make in your system. I mean, these things sound great, don't get me wrong, but if I were going to shell out that kind of cash then there are alot of options and the system and room that they have in the store will not be at all the same as your own more likely than not.   Regardless, I must say that this audio thing is a very fun hobby, there's so much great music out there and so many great pieces of gear to listen to it on.  One thing comes to mind though, you can't beat live music.  If you're in the right spot and the sound is just right, you can't reproduce that magic, no matter how much coin you throw down. 

[Tim]

+T

enjoy the toys and I agree with you 100% about everything else

[Nick's Picks]

Cool...
totems are nice.  i've always wanted to hear their monitors.  Rainmaker?  or something like that..  Ive read lots of good things about them.

9K speakers...
you might be hearing the limitation of the rest of your stereo once you get into that price caliber.  I mean, if you pair up speakers like that with anything less behind them..then you're only hearing limitations, and not true points of excellence.
not bashing your system at all. ...my stereo couldn't do justice to a pair of those.

[Weirdness]

Yeah, my rig is fairly modest, but my Cyrus integrated/power bi-amp combo is that last of my gear that I would ever trade or sell.  Cyrus doesn't have much of a reputation in North America but it is fantastic gear, very much in the vein of Naim and Linn, all solid state, not the kind of thing that smacks you over the head with sound, but rather having that classic british flavour.  Just upgraded all of my sources, and added a new phono pre to boot.  No lack of power or musicality per se, just somewhat underwhelming given the price tag.  I suspect that the speakers didn't have the proper number of hours on them to be fully broken in, supposedly they need around 500 and I doubt that they had 50 on them, so that plays a big part as I learned with my Missions. 

As a sidenote, when I dropped the speakers off, they were running an Audio Aero Capotle($12,000CDN) cd player, a pair of I believe parasound monoblocks, top of the line Nordost cables all around through a pair of the higher end B&W's and man, did it sound awesome.  That CD player is the cat's ass, it's hard to describe just how silky yet crispy this thing was, unbelieveable to say the least.  Should be for the cash, but it also works as a preamp with multiple inputs and I believe a 24/192 DAC having digital ins on the back as well.  Maybe if I start saving now, I'll be able to pull it off by the time I'm 65...

[Nick's Picks]

really..who needs a lexus!

[jpschust]

what kind of table/phono pre/arm/needle combo are you running?

[BobW]

what kind of table/phono pre/arm/needle combo are you running?

     Vinyl rolls off the last octave and a half of music to prevent rumble. The high end isn't noteworthy either.
No way to test a set of speakers.

There's also that wierd thing about use causing the media to ever-so-slightly melt changing playback characteristics over time.
It's a big investment for a depreciating asset.

[Weirdness]

I'm running a J.A. Michell Tecnodec, ingognito rewired  Rega RB300 arm with the expressimo counterweight and stub.  The cartridge is a Nagaoka MP50 Super Sapphire, you won't find any info on this one as it has been discontinued for quite some time.  The pre is a Graham Slee Graham Amp 2.  Great piece, plain vanilla box but now that it's broken in it's making some serious music compared to the phono pre in my integrated. 

Far as vinyl goes, I don't think that it's quite so cut and dry to say that it's a poor investment or an inferior medium for that matter.  There are lots of arguments for and against, but to make such broad statements???  I have a Joni Mitchell album that has better bottom end than about anything I've ever heard on my system, rolled off or not. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter W/Jaco Pastorious if anyone's interested.  Awesome shit.  Also, the cartridge itself seems to be the main culprite in terms of how much highs or lows you're going to get.  I picked up a Goldring cartridge to start off with the new table and it had amazing top end to it, completely different character to the Rega one that I was using previously.  The Goldring however,  had a very weak bottom end to it, the complete opposite of the Rega which was bottom heavy while being fairly muted on the top end.  Plus, look how many cheap records there are out there that are in great shape, how can you beat $2 or $3 for a classic Little Feat album or something like that?   Anyways, to my ears the analog vs. digital thing is not at all that simple at all, each has a distinctly different character which I enjoy for different reasons.  The dynamics that vinyl gives you makes listening to music so much more emotional and dramatic than a typical CD with pegged levels which slams you so hard that you lose alot of the air between the high and low peaks.  Have a good listen to Revolution #9 on a good analog rig sometime and you'll see how different the two can sound.  Then there's the whole argument of converting original analog masters to digital and all of the negative things that can happen in doing this the wrong way...

Regardless, I listened to several well produced CD's as well as several pieces of vinyl, all of which I was familiar enough to be able to easily distinguish the difference between my speakers and these ones.  It's not like I was testing them out in a lab or something to see if they really performed up to published spec or anything, just having some fun auditioning them in my home environment.  Listening to most live field recordings to test out playback gear isn't the best either as it's almost impossible to get that punchy sound that a well produced studio cd will give you, but if that's what is familiar to you then it's a good way to get a feel for what the system itself sounds like versus what you are used to hearing out of that particular recording...

[Nick's Picks]

I looove vinyl.
just cant afford a system to do it justice.  But i've heard a $20k turntable through good gear, and it was unlike any musical presentation i've ever heard at any other price.

well, maybe the emm labs rig I heard once in Boulder CO was equal...or maybe even better.

[BobW]

I get to stop in Sound by Singer every so often. Hard to find better gear to play with.
Even with Andy's best toys, I am nonplused by vinyl.
YMMV, but I trashed mine ages ago.
Andy loves his vinyl.  I say he's just used to the flaws.

Anyhoot, enjoy what you enjoy !   

[cdevs]

     Vinyl rolls off the last octave and a half of music to prevent rumble. The high end isn't noteworthy either.
No way to test a set of speakers.

spoken like a true engineer.

(hops on high horse)

Call me a bleeding heart, but for me, great music is really all about emotion, passion, involvement. I listen for soul. When we listen to, say, Sarah Vaughan or even Greg Brown through a playback system, are we listening to the music or to the gear?

I spent a lot of time hanging around in a high-end shop (Ocean State Audio) when I was in college and it was an eye-opener. I remember the owner talking about the pair of Spendor BC1s (IIRC) that he would put on after we'd listened to everything else. He'd mate them up with the Sota Sapphire and play jazz. His most memorable quote:

"These speakers image like shit, the bass is kinda sloppy, the highs aren't extended...but I just can't bring myself to listen to anything else once these are hooked up.""

Bottom line was that the harmonic richness of those Spendors was so compelling, so soulful that all of the other wonky stuff became unimportant. And that's what good vinyl is all about. Great vinyl has so much more soul than your average digital source that it's not even funny. My 2 bits.

[BobW]

     Vinyl rolls off the last octave and a half of music to prevent rumble. The high end isn't noteworthy either.
No way to test a set of speakers.

spoken like a true engineer.

(hops on high horse)

Call me a bleeding heart, but for me, great music is really all about emotion, passion, involvement. I listen for soul. When we listen to, say, Sarah Vaughan or even Greg Brown through a playback system, are we listening to the music or to the gear?

I spent a lot of time hanging around in a high-end shop (Ocean State Audio) when I was in college and it was an eye-opener. I remember the owner talking about the pair of Spendor BC1s (IIRC) that he would put on after we'd listened to everything else. He'd mate them up with the Sota Sapphire and play jazz. His most memorable quote:

"These speakers image like shit, the bass is kinda sloppy, the highs aren't extended...but I just can't bring myself to listen to anything else once these are hooked up.""

Bottom line was that the harmonic richness of those Spendors was so compelling, so soulful that all of the other wonky stuff became unimportant. And that's what good vinyl is all about. Great vinyl has so much more soul than your average digital source that it's not even funny. My 2 bits.

Yup, you caught me. I am an engineer of sorts.
I also listen to most of my music through a 10 watt SEP EL-34 amp driven to the point of distortion and compression, most likely.
I have many other options, this is just a preference.
I see your two bits.