Totem Hawks vs. Forest

I used to sell totem and own the Forests. All in all the Forest is a significantly better speaker. The drivers have been changed a couple times from introduction, they now use a seas tweeter and ATI mid-driver. Harmonics, rhythm, and overall sound is better then the model 1 IMO. The only speakers that best it are the Mani-2, Wind, and Shaman. You will need much more amplification and better upstream components to extract maximum performance out of the aforementioned. I have my Forest matched up with a Simaudio I-5. Check out my system. The Hawks are nice, but the Forests are a considerable step up IMO.

The model 1 is no slouch, but if your musical preference varies like mine, the Forest is the more flexible speaker. I listen to a lot of classic rock, new age, celtic, electronic, classical, jazz and the Forest never ceases to impress me. The Model 1 is superb on vocals, jazz, and acoustic…of all the listening tests, demos, comparisons when selling these speakers the forest always seemed to pull ahead in all departments.