Totem Hawks - my impressions


I just acquired a used pair of Hawks this week and am extremely impressed with them. They have significantly more presence in the low end than my Joseph Audio RM25XL speakers and the mid-range is just magical. They have an immense soundstage, too. They don't seem to be very sensitive to set up and sound fine just a foot away from the rear wall. They are easy to move around given their small size and weight. They do need a lot of power to make them sing, probably at least 100 wpc, I would think. In my 40 years in audio, these are the best speakers I have ever had in my listening room at their price point. Oh, one other thing. With their "claw" feet, they are quite top-heavy and thus unstable on thick carpeted floors. I am getting outrigger spikes that will greatly increase their stability and mass couple them to the floor, which will no doubt improve their performance. Very highly recommended speakers!
whitestix

Showing 4 responses by 213runnin

Gosh.  I just checked out these  JBL 4429.  What an ugly speaker.  seriously.  And then you look at the price, $5000?  For someone looking at Hawks, that just about doubles the budget, no thank you.  I'm sure they sound great, but for most the price and the WAF makes them a nonstarter.

At at the $5000 price level, I'm sure there is a lot of competition, and hopefully better looking competition.  Sorry to be such a downer, but that's my honest reaction...mind you I also do have a smaller listening space.

As for me, I'm considering getting a 2nd pair of Hawks.  My pair would be fine in the theater system, but they sound so good I've got them in the 2 channel set up instead.  But now the theater, with a Rainmaker center and Totem Lynks for the rears, doesn't have a pair of totems to match color and timbre.  Maybe I should go big with a used pair of Winds...



Okay, here’s the thing, At least as I see it.  The Totem Hawk is priced point is $3500 or so.  That’s a lot of money for most folks.  

I'm sure there are 10 or 12 pairs of speakers that at the $5000 level, are better than the Hawks.   They better be, don’t you think?   Who would buy a 5k speaker and brag about it being worse than the Hawk?  No one I know.  But for $5k, it should be a terrific looking speaker.   It should sound amazing AND look amazing.  


I’ve now owned Totem Dreamcatchers, Rainmakers and the Sky Bookshelf speakers. In my system, the Rainmakers had a lot of magic, but were easily bested by the Hawks.

What a tremendous sounding speaker. There is a sense of presence, live music, and intimacy that is so captivating. I’m running them with a 200 watt amp that could be described as nothing special(Adcom 555SE -2018 version), but don’t need to over drive them as kiwi experienced. That said, any speaker can be over driven and any 2 driver design will have limits.

Totem lists the max volume peak of the Hawks to be 107 db at 2 meters in a room of about 12 x 20’. That’s very loud, and well into hearing damage range, but if hearing damage is your thing, buy some Klipsch and knock yourself out(not directed at kiwi, but anyone who prefers ear bleeding levels!)

Anyway, the bass coming out of this smaller sized tower is exceptional. The revelator driver in the Hawk is renowned in the audio community apparently. The tweeters are so much better than the Rainmaker tweeter as well. I didn’t realize it, but the Rainmaker tweets are kind of shouty in comparison, you get more texture and imaging with the Hawk tweeters.

There is a youtube reviewer called zero fidelity that goes into great detail on the Hawks, I’d suggest the video and suggest the Hawks for the speaker short list for sure.
The Hawks are priced above both, and I can say that at least compared to the Totem Sky, the Hawks have better imaging, more presence and detail, at least in my system.