Small living room speaker options.. Totem Arro?

By the looks of this thread, few have heard the Ascend Sierra 1 or 2. At the price point of 850, one would be hard pressed to find a bookshelf that equals the Sierra 1. The bass output for a stand mount is better than any other bookshelf I’ve heard. It’s that good, and beat out some tower speakers I’ve got as well. The secret to the Sierra is the Bamboo cabinet. Bamboo actually has a tensile strength superior to steel. They are so rigid there is no box resonance whatsoever.

Those of you who don’t really know what noise that adds to the signal probably have been putting up with crap sound and not knowing how bad you’ve had it. A speaker free of resonance is actually a pretty rare thing under $2500. They can reduce it somewhat, but it takes a lot of money in the budget to get rid of it completely. Brands that are in the retail model typically sell JUNK if you’re spending under $1500.

The other secret to the Sierra 1 is the 5 1/4 woofer. It has the throw of a subwoofer. You should see how far it extends without breaking a sweat. In room frequency response is around 39 Hz, unheard of in a bookshelf of any size. The Sierra 1 trashed both the Paradigm Monitor 7 and 11 that I had. The tweeter is really nice, about as good as you can get in a soft dome. The speakers handle an honest 200 watts. Try that with any other brand of bookshelf.

Then there is the Sierra 2. Same exact cabinet, but with a 6 inch driver and a Raal ribbon tweeter, from the best manufacturer of ribbons in the world. Throw away all of your previous knowledge of ribbons, the RAAL model here is jaw dropping. When I first got the Sierra 2 I put them up against Paradigm’s flagship Signature S6 with the beryllium tweeter. This speaker was over $5k new. The midrange of the Sierra 2 was superior, I could not believe it. The highs were basically a tie, and this from a sub $1500 speaker. Of course, the Paradigm tower had more bass, but in all other categories, the Sierra 2 either matched or beat the Paradigm Sigs.

Ascend Acoustics is the biggest secret in speakers. I am not affiliated with them, just a customer that’s finally found the best deal in speakers. Unless you’ve got $6k+ to spend on speakers, don’t waste your money. Or at least try out the Ascend Tower at $2-3000 first.

The problem with Totem is, they are overpriced for what you get.  Better sound and performance can be had for much less.  You pay a premium for those good looks.

The Totem Signature 1's consist of decent drivers, a good crossover design and box.  Specs include a bottom end of 50 Hz and a max wattage rating of only 120.  They were overpriced at 2200, and I remain skeptical that a 12" high speaker can punch at the 5000 level.  

Well nothing means nothing, in that case.  I do believe you were indulging yourself in hyperbole with the 5K statement.  Its a free forum, and talk is cheap, but Totem markets their looks in a big way and it's a big part of any of their price tags.  

Still if you're happy, that's what really matters at the end of the day.  In the last year I've auditioned 9 pairs of speakers in my system, including some Totem.  They just did not compete with the better options I listened to.  YMMV.

The tweeter, and the R&D budget allocated to its design, is no less important to the rest of the speaker.  And a dome tweeter will only go so far and do so much.  The metal dome tweeters in most of Totems lower line up( to about the Hawks)  have various compromises and trade offs to do with a limited budget when a speaker is being marketed in the retail system.  

Totem makes striking choices in voicing each model, and either you like them or you don't.  I found some frequencies over emphasized and just not natural.  But I prefer a flat frequency response, and let the music and the producer make the decisions, and let the speaker not add or take away from that.

We live in the year 2017, and a speaker, these days, that can sound like live acoustic music is actually more common that not.