Totem Model 1 Vs. Hawk

All this talk about the Hawks needing large rooms and large amounts of power is garbage. They're very easy to work with, and in Vince's own words "you can set them anywhere and they'll sound great". They're doing just that in my 14x14 room, and have sounded great with a wide range of amplification. Sure, a flea-watt tube amp will suck with them, but with 86db sensitivity there are far worse offenders out there.

Maybe its a he said she said thing...

The I-5 is almost a perfect match for the Hawks...if I owned the Hawks thats the exact amp i would pair it up with.

Grakesh,

The Hawk is a tiny speaker. Some may even call it cute. Despite its small size and being a very simple two-way design, this speaker really does require a very large room to strut its stuff. This is not to say you cannot get away with using this speaker in a 15x15 room. You just have to understand that over-all the space would not be large enough to let the Hawk do its thing.

I experienced this many homes. Even in my own house, this speaker really started to open up when placed in a 20x20 living room that was open to a dinning room, hallway, staircase, you name it... When placed in a 10x10 room, the Hawk was just horrid.

The Hawk is inefficient so you will need an amplifier that sports high amperage and a watt minumum of around 60 per channel. The Sim I-5 is an excellent 'budget' piece of equipment for the Hawk and can match well. Still, you are only getting a faint idea of what this speaker is capable of. Idealy, you will need to run a BAT (vk60?) amp, a nice Lamm pre amplifier with a fairly compotent source (vinyl, redbook, pick your poison)...

Please bear to mind that I am approaching this from the standpoint of achieving top performance from this speaker. Totems over-all play nice with a lot of equipment, but to get that extra ounce of magic from them takes some patience and experience. The Hawk is the most difficult Totem to work with.

Unfortunately, I have very little experience with the Mani-2 aside from a few brief listening sessions - which I hardly consider applicable for giving advice or opinions. It's a great speaker.

The Forests are great speakers because while they require some pretty beefy electronics, they are incredibly versitile speakers. You can throw a wide variety of electronics at these speakers, along with a huge assortment of media... and the Forest will play it all without bias and sound pretty good to boot. Now, its tone and signature is quite different from the Hawk - so if possible, take a listen and see which signature more suites your fancy.

I second G Hunter on use of the Hawk in small rooms. I use mine in a 11 by 12 room (There is a large opening on one side which I sometimes close.

I agree that the hawks do perform pretty good in a larger room. There reviewer of "The Audiophile Voice" placed the Hawks in a 13X20 room and quote...

"Over all, the hawks are more natural sounding than any other full-range system i've had at home"

and

"The hawks can play at realistc levels closely matching what would be heard from an orchestra in the middle of the concert"

But I do have a hard time believing that they can't perform well in a smaller room. Maybe you loose a little imaging but the dynamics gained would make up imo.