Totem Shaman vs Wind

I owned the Shamans and have heard the Wind . While the Wind is a great speaker , the Shamans are in another league. Fast transparent and coherent for a 5 way speaker! I loved them and would suggest auditioning them in your system as they need alot of clean power to perform to their potential. You can bi amp them to outrageous results . Totem makes great speakers and with either one , you will be very happy. Excellent customer service to boot. Vince and Lucy make up one of the great teams in all of audio.

I spoke with Vince on the phone a few weeks ago regarding upgrading my Hawks, and he suggested that the Mani-2 was a very finicky speaker but when it was setup correctly and driven with the exact cables and components it would rival speakers costing four times as much. He even admitted that Totem's own cables weren't nearly good enough to drive them properly!

Perhaps you should call Totem directly and discuss this with them? I've always found them to be very open and willing to talk to their customers.

I walked by a hifi room one day years ago, and the most amazing orchestra was playing in that room; just drew me in like magic tendrils. Turned out to be no orchestra in sight, but a pair of Totem Winds. Nothing else ever reached out to me quite that way, but I have no room for them myself.

Ghunter; did Vince get into any short list of good amps to pair with the Manis? I hope to work my way up in that direction...

I didn't ask him too much about a list, rather specifically about my current Audio Research VS110 (100wpc) and the VT220 (200w monoblocs) that I'm thinking of upgrading to. He said that although the VS110 is around the minimum power that he would like to see in front of a Mani-2, it would still work nicely without needing to upgrade to the more powerful mono amps.

More importantly (to my decision, that is) he mentioned that he'd like to see an ultra-high performance cable like those from Harmonic Research ($3k+) with the Mani-2 to get their full potential out.

I'm now trying to decide between a finicky speaker like the Mani-2 and the more easily set up Wind. After years of putting up with the extreme finicky-ness of a Naim system, I'm really leaning towards the simpler route. You may have more patience than me :)