Totem Winds

I have owned a pair for the last two years. They are expensive speakers to own. They will reveal every deficiency in your equipment and cables and you will begin a long upgrade odyssey. They need PLENTY of power - I am running them with a Spectron Musician. They are very sensitive to the speaker cables you use. I have had better success with silver cables. I am currently running ZU Ibis biwire cables. Their jumpers are a steal and a necessary upgrade if you don't want to spring for biwire cables. I have mine set up fairly close to the wall and they sound fine. The speakers really shine in the midrange. You will hear detail that you can rarely find in other speakers. The soundstage is enormous. It is incredible what they are able to accomplish without using some exotic technology. For the money, I can't find anything else that compares.

my amps are mcintosh mono's 501's so clean power wont be a problem. also all my interconnects and speaker wire are audience e24, these are wonderfull. i will be matching them up with either a shindo monbrison or a mcintosh c2300 preamp. so i should be right were i want to be as far as set up. i did demo these with my interconnects and speaker wires and the shindo set up along with the mcintosh set up at the store and both sounded amzing. im glad you said you had them up againts the wall, i was a little worried about that. i will have them about 18 inc or so from the back wall, not the recommened 3 feet.

Thanks for the conversation this morning. I was looking for your email with your contact information to set up a demo on Saturday.

I would really urge you to let me come over and see what we can get out of the Dali Helicon's which really are magnificent loudspeakers which would be a much less expensive proposal then swapping them to the Winds.

The problem you mentioned with the bass if anything should be more of an issue with the Winds deeper bass response of 24hz vs the Dali's 31hz response.

You have to consider that when you heard the Winds they were setup in the middle of a much larger room, this is a setup methodology prescribed by Audio Physic which strives to nullify the room response by making the speaker equidistant from both the front and rear walls and removes any corner loading. This setup can work wonders however for most people it is not possible to do.

Also looking at your comments I can see one possible limiting factor with your present setup which is the cables, I am actually an Audience dealer and I have listened extensively to the Au 24 they are nice cables but they do not have the transparency or sound-staging of the better cable brands, if we just change your cables you will be shocked how much better you system will sound.

I would recommend you look at the following products for room tuning:

Shakti Holograms
Acoustic System Resonators
Walker Audio Valid point anti resonant devices
Walker Ref HDL zobel networks
Possibly an anti vibration base for the CD player and tube preamp.

I would always try to maximize the equipment you have before making any radical changes.

As I mentioned the Wind is a lateral step over the Dali if you are going to make a change move up to a radically better speaker.

PS I have heard the Sophia's and quite frankly they are good and I wouldn't rate them higher than the Winds either.

You need to come over and hear some of my setups to see what really magic can be created, I will personally guarantee you will see some new possibilities. Call me on the number I gave you on the other email if you want to talk tomorrow.