Has anyone heard the Totem Acoustic's Wind?

Spacekadet, the Winds are in a different league compared to the Hawks IMO. There soundstaging capability and effortless portrayal of the space leaves you feeling 'you are there'! I beleive they are worth the price, but agree with Sonance, that that is a lot to pay for a speaker sight-un-heard.

I never owned the Mani-2, but the Tabu. Same physical size, but missing the second inner driver. Personally, I preferred the Tabu's smoother presentation to the added bass of the Mani-2. The Forrest replaced the Tabu, but all of these are at a level below the Wind IMO.

I haven't heard the Wind with a large orchestral/symphony recording, but from what I heard listening to quite a few live jazz tracks left me with the impression that these speakers would have little problem reproducing anything!

I am a huge fan of that Totem sound, and for me the Wind's are the 'holy grail' in which someday I hope to reach!

Feel free to email me if you have any more questions. If you are considering them, and spending that kind of $, it would be worth a couple hour drive to at least here them in person.

I walked by a retailer's hi-fi room one day, and the beautiful, huge, compelling music issuing from the room just reached out and hauled me in. It was some big orchestral piece playing on a pair of Totem Winds. I knew and liked the Totem sound already by then, (I own a venerable pair of Sttafs, may get to Mani-2s someday) but this was something else again.

I don't seriously aspire to this particular speaker - a bigger room in a bigger house would have to come first. Therefore, I haven't done serious comparison with the heavy competition in that size and price bracket. But nothing ever reeled me in quite like that.

Ironically, the retailer in question unloaded the entire Totem line not long afterwards, in favor of Vienna Acoustics. To each his own...

If you're looking for an easy way to upgrade your Hawks, add a Totem Lightning sub. True, it won't give you any more soundstage or detail like the Wind will, but it sure does cost a lot less and gets the Hawks out of the "bookshelf" comparison area and solidly into the "full-range high performance" category.

I personally would rather go the route of a full range speaker than a speaker + subwoofer route, if music is the primary concern. Some people love their two ways so much they'll stick with them and add a sub, but imo a high quality full ranger has a coherency than subs + speakers lack. It takes experimentation to get the best integration of sub-woofer and speaker - it is possible, but is it preferable to a full range speaker, if you have the room and can spend the money? Not really.
Reality can kick in a practicality may dictate a sub, for cost, placement or even home theater integration reasons, but when it comes down to pure music, I will pick the coherence of a full range speaker anyday.

For counterpoint, once my sub was set up properly I would never go back to a system without it - only a handful of speakers sound as full as what I have now, and at that point there are cost and aesthetics starting to creep into it. IMO coherency issues are indicitave of an improperly set up system.

Sonance, I think you might change your mind if you hear a *properly* dialed in musical subwoofer from the likes of REL or Totem. I get the strange feeling your experiences have been with home-theater subs.