totem arro

i own a pair, look at my system beside my name, the electronics has changed but the speakers have not, does that tell you something. i mostly listen to jazz, but also listen to classical and some rock, although i believe they preform well with all music. rock lovers, if listening to rock all the time, i would not buy the speaker, i would buy a rock designed speaker.....i have used tubes and solid state with them and they work well with both, you just have to be selective with buy the right power. i believe they like power, i am using them with a 75 watt int. and they are fine, i have used them with a 200 watt, and they sounded somewhat better due to the power i believe. i have used naim, krell, unison, cary, cambridge, cayin,rega....naim being the best...cambridge and rega the lowest in rating, but then still sounded very musical. hope this helped...take a look at my system....it is with the cayin tube....by the way, the anti speaker cables and connects work very well with them..dwhitt

I have to admit, I've got a bit of sellers remorse for the Arros I recently sold.
Very transparent with excellent imaging and a sound that is very "free of the box".
True, the bottom end does not go terribly low or loud, but it's very tight. You can almost feel the skin of the drum...
They seem to be quite revealing of upstream equipment, and kept pace very well with numerous amplifier upgrades.
I also found they favored the treble just a bit, so I generaly paired them with warmer equipment

o i forgot, in the picture i owned the rosewood or mag. arro, i never buy the same speaker for the second time around, i have owned linn, maggies, vandersteen,aerial,cary in house made speakers, all in large rooms, i sold my pair of arro when moving into a smaller condo, i never buy a speaker for the second time around, why? because there are too many great speakers both monitor and floorstanders, guess what? i have my second pair of arro....dwhitt

I had a pair of Arro's for a few months. They are very detailed out of the box and throw a very large soundstage with the right material. They go amazingly low for their size, and are attractive to look at. They're going for around US $1350 new, and typically for between $750 and $850 on Audiogon. Build quality is superb.

Granted that my pair weren't nearly broken in (Totem recommends 100 to 150 hours of break in time). Still I found them rather bright for my tastes. Also, the sweet spot in my room was frustratingly narrow... The proverbial ”head in a vise“ situation.

Ultimately, I sold my pair to a fellow Audiogoner (who, ironically, is now selling them on Audiogon himself... See http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1239573652&/Totem-Acoustic-Arro-(Black-Ash )

I fell in love with the Ohm Micro Walsh talls... Great bass, neutral tonal balance, and a soundstage do die for. And almost identical external dimensions to the Arro.

I like them very much.

I've heard them sound very competitive with larger conventional dynamic box design speakers from PSB and MacIntosh costing 3-4 times as much in fairly good sized listening room.

The OHMs and less expensive Magnepan mmgs are the only other speaks I know of in that price range that I am partial to.