Totem Model 1 Vs. Hawk

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.

BTW, I managed to convince my dealer to let me demo both in my room so I will let everybody know my findings...

The same review also quoted...

"Using stereophiles test CDs with thrid-octave warble tones and frequency generator, i measured the Hawks frequency response with a "corrected" radio shack SPL meter. I found the Hawks had a flatter response than claimed in the manufacteres specs. Placing the SPL meter where my ears would normally be, 37 inches off the floor and seven feet back from the speakers which had no toe-in and were 45 inches from the back wall, I measured them with 29 test frequencies. Using 80dB at 1,000 Hz as a norm or "o dB" deviation point, with both the speakers playing simultaneously, I measured +3dB, - 2.5 dB from 31.5 Hz to 20kHz. This is the flattest frequency response I have ever measured, out performing my Quad 63 and Gradient subwoofer comination and my Watt puppy 5 speakers. What was truly amazing was the speakers were down only 0.5 dB at 40Hz and at 31.5 Hz, they were slightly up."

Maybe what rumadian is saying isnt so far fetched...i guess I will find out in the next couple days.

Maybe I can clarify my statement that they perform well in my small room. The room is treated with Eighth Nerve in the seams and corners. This was done before I bought them.