Totem Acoustic Forest Signatures

Saluti, Lampone. Ho provato a tradurre la tua nota del 1 Dicembre usando Google Traduttore. Spero sia comprensibile. Possiedo solo le Foreste originali. Impossibile commentare il valore del costo maggiore per le Signature. Forse qualcun altro può.

Using Google Translate. Lampone’s Dec 1 posting (Italian to English):

"Thank you for posting! I have the Forest standard and I would like to go to the Signature ... The price difference is 2500 € ... Are the Signature so superior .... ??? Greetings to everyone! Ciao"

My response to Lampone...
Greetings, Lampone. I tried to translate your December 1 note using Google Translate. I hope it’s understandable. I own only the original Forests. Can not comment on the higher cost value for Signature. Maybe someone else can.

Ciao di nuovo, Lampone. La mia amica Nutty (proprietaria di Forest Signatures) ha qualche input per te. Sottolinea che nessuno può rispondere per un altro se vale il prezzo più alto per le Signature. Solo le tue orecchie e la tua economia personale possono affrontarlo. Nutty raccomanda in primo luogo di considerare se quei soldi extra sarebbero spesi meglio ottimizzando gli attrezzi che supportano le Forest standard. (So che le mie Forests rispondono sempre bene agli aggiornamenti nella catena di distribuzione che li alimenta). Se non disponi di dispositivi audio per spendere soldi, e se il tuo sistema sta estraendo tutte le Forest standard da dare, quindi considera l’upgrade dei tuoi altoparlanti alle Signature. Più hai ottimizzato il tuo sistema con le Forest standard, più beneficerai degli aggiornamenti trovati nelle delle Forest Signature.

Above as per Google translate of the following:
Hello again, Lampone. My friend Nutty (who owns Forest Signatures) has some input for you. He points out that no one can answer for another whether the higher price for Signatures is worth it. Only your ears and personal economy can address this. Nutty recommends first consider whether that extra money would be better spent optimizing the gear supporting your standard Forests. (I know my Forests always respond well to upgrades in the equpiment chain feeding them). If you have no audio gear to better spend money on, and if your system is extracting all the standard Forests have to give, then consider upgrading your speakers to the Signatures. The more you have optimized your system with standard Forests, the more you will benefit from the upgrades found in the Forest Signatures.

Lampone, 

Welcome to the forum!

Ghosthouse, 

Thank you, as always for the assistance.  

N

Hey Boys -

Merry Christmas! Messing around with speaker cable and wanted some input. I’ve been happily using CVT Terminator 1 biwire for almost a year without even thinking about it, but based upon comments earlier in this thread and elsewhere, I decided to experiment with single wiring using Shotgun S1 and a nice set of aq jumpers I had laying around doing nothing. Counterintuitive as it may be, I do feel like the soundstage is bigger, especially deeper, and bass is even better than it was when biwired, BUT, I’ve been driving myself nuts between the aq jumpers and the plain silver bent paper clip jumpers supplied by Totem AND, more to the point, between going with both speaker leads into the woofer inputs, jumping to the tweeter inputs (which gives me that dark sexy sound I crave), and using the totem recommended diagonal (which is clearly more accurate/better balanced, but seems to lose a little of that special “magic”). I realize I’m picking nits at this point, but as they say, the devil is in the details. I’d love to hear your experiences if you experimented with the different wiring schemes on your sigs, before I take the easy way out and just go back to biwiring.

Thanks.

NSC

Mcfavre4 - welcome to the thread. I have quite a bit of experience with a pair of pre signature, biwire model 1s. They were my dad’s speakers and I borrowed them from him when my vandersteens went down (for the third time). My several months with the model 1s is what led me to purchase the Forest Signature - I wanted what the model 1s were doing, only more, bigger and deeper. The Forest Sigs seemed to be the perfect choice, I borrowed my dealer’s demo pair and, well, he never got them back. So from my perspective, if you like the Model 1, you will LOVE the Forest Signatures. I know that was just a generalized love letter for the Forest Sigs, so please let me know if you have a more specific question I didn’t answer.

As far as my post from yesterday, right now I have the Shotgun S1 hooked up to the woofers and the CVT Terminator 1 hooked up to the tweeters - i.e., a true bi wire configuration, taking advantage of the Plinius’ double output jacks. While I preferred single wire with jumpers to the internally biwired cable, going to a true biwire configuration was an eye opener. Everything opens up, the back wall disappears and all hint of strain or distortion just disappears (talking here about the very low level stuff that you don’t even know is there until it is gone). I’m not suggesting that it makes any sense to do what I’m doing with the level of cable I’m doing it with, it’s almost certainly overkill, but one of the benefits of being in this hobby for over 40 years is that you learn how to sniff out a keeper, so you accumulate some good stuff over time - why not put it to good use? What I am saying, and this comes right out of the vandersteen playbook, is that, in my experience, the sound you get with true biwiring is incomparably better than what you can get with the internally biwired cable to which many of us default for our biwirable speakers. Indeed, for me, in my system with the Forest Sigs, the internally biwired cable was the worst option, easily bettered by the single wire with aq jumpers, but even that delicious combo was again easily bested when I removed the jumpers and added a fully separate run of similar cable to the tweeter. Right now I’m thinking it can’t get any better.

NSC