Happy trails to you as well jond!
Totem Forest Signature Impressions
It's been a long road since the late 90's and my first High End system...Dunlavy SC-5's and Levinson gear. Then it began. The obsession with trying to improve my system...over and over and over and...yup, got the bug and a one way ticket to the audio merry go round! So lots of gear and many speakers later, I have always held out hope that one day I would find that magical conduit through which I could be connected to the emotional sinew of the music. I had owned a pair of stock Forest speakers while in temporary housing around 2004-2005 but gave them up when I moved to my next home. Those Forest's have never completely left my thoughts or my heart. After my recent foray into the rarified air of pricey components but one more time, I found myself yet again unsatisfied. What to do? I sold it all and decided to revisit the past but with a twist....Forest Signatures driven by a Krell Vanguard Digital amp and sourced by a BlueSound Vault 2. I heard this setup at my local dealer and I was flabbergasted at just how right the music sounded. Cash was exchanged and CD's were ripped and the listening began anew....it was like hearing my first really great stereo again when I was a kid. All my music sounded like it was alive and full of emotion! All that makes listening engaging sprang forth from the Forest's..3D soundstage, palpable imaging, tonal accuracy, crazy dynamic swings and phase correctness like I never heard. Everything just sounded right and true and in balance. Music lives and breathes again for me through my Totem Forest Signatures. They are true music makers...and they surprisingly play large, low and loud. There are bigger speakers and there are more expensive speakers...but there are none better at communicating the essence and emotion of the music. It took me awhile to see the Forest's for the trees, but Im sure glad I gave Totem another listen.
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Old thread I’ve stumbled into (as ususal), but I echo @dave_b’s thoughts and experiences. The Forest Signatures are an under-appreciated gem that, with the right amp (and, past a certain point, that’s really a matter of personal taste), will give you years of pure musical pleasure, and do all the neat audiophile tricks to boot, without ever bringing attention to themselves (NB - they WILL let you know when something upstream is amiss, and they will clearly reveal cable changes and other miscellaneous tweaks, which means that they are indeed transparent, while maintaining that sense of "music first"). Outside of a pair of quad esl-63 (which sounded glorious but had their own unique ’issues’), these have been my favorite all around speaker ever - and that includes Wilson Watt3/Puppy2, Vandersteen Quatro, Joseph Audio Pearl, among many others. It may be trite to say, but there is something sppecial about the way a well executed two way presents music. I suppose it’s the single crossover with the two drivers in such close proximity (a virtual point source?) that appeals to my ear, at least in part, but that’s for another discussion. Sure there are speakers that will go higher in the treble or deeper in the bass or play bigger in a big room, but there are few that simply exist to make beautiful music in an average home listening environment (whatever that is) like these babies. Build quality is superb (mine have the deep gloss piano black finish), and they seem naturally to connect to my room and energize it in a way that the bigger speakers never would. The imaging is so solid that I can sit anywhere and enjoy the music - no need to sit bolt upright in the sweet spot - the whole room is the sweet spot.Not cheap at $7,400, but considering the field they play on, they’d be competitive at double the price. In fact, the cynic in me believes the only reason that they aren’t the toast of the town is that they’re not expensive enough to be taken ’seriously’ by a certain type of high end consumer, and they end up in systems with amps that aren’t quite up to the task - they need a high quality amp with a very stiff power supply; Pass, McIntosh, YBA, SimAudio and Plinius all come to mind - something you would think of for a $15-20k speaker, as opposed to something you’d normally mate with a $7,400 speaker. YEMV, etc. |
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