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Totem Acoustic Sky Loudspeaker

Totem Acoustic Sky Loudspeaker

When I consider the loudspeakers from Totem Acoustic, I think of designs with unalloyed speed, quick-twitch transient reflexes, and crystalline transparency. For me, Totem loudspeakers have always captured the musical intimacy and the fragility of the live moment like few other small affordable speakers. There’s a good reason for this. From its beginnings nearly thirty years ago, founder, president, and designer Vince Bruzzese has taken the same approach to building small transducers with wide bandwidth and high output—an approach first realized in 1987 with the now iconic Model 1. Simply stated, there is always a lot of music going on each time I light up a Totem.

Sky continues a bloodline of fine compacts from the Canadian firm, and appropriately coincides with Totem’s 30th anniversary later this year. Visually, the Sky is classic Totem—clean, seamless, rigid cabinetry with beautifully finished veneers. Sky is a two-way, bass-reflex design with a rear-firing port. The driver complement is unusual in a couple of ways. The soft-dome tweeter is a large 1.3″ unit with a hefty neodymium magnet that gives the transducer the ability to operate linearly at lower frequencies than smaller soft domes typically do, minimizing compression and distortion. The design also permits higher output and extension to 30kHz. The 5.25″ midbass is a long-throw design (longer than any similarly sized driver Totem currently produces), with an oversized three-inch voice coil wound with flat wire to avoid air gaps. It boasts an astounding power-handling rating of 500 watts, giving it the ability to play lower with greater dynamics and output. The Sky’s vault-like cabinet employs lock-mitered joints and uses a borosilicate dampening that controls energy release yet maintains a certain cabinet liveliness. The hard-wired crossover is a first-order design at 2.5kHz and uses only one Litz large-gauge, air-core coil. 

Solid, twin-pair, gold-plated terminals adorn the back panel, and magnetic grilles make for easy removal. Sky is available in three finishes: satin white, black, and mahogany veneer. (A personal note: The grilles could use slightly stronger magnets—I found the merest touch tended to dislodge them.)

The goals of the Sky project, according to Mr. Bruzzese, were foremost to “be easier to drive so it didn’t require extremely powerful amplification,” and to “provide even deeper bass than models we have with similar dimensions.” He paid particular attention to on- and off-axis response to not only create the wide stage the brand is known for but also to allow users to place Sky “just about anywhere [they] choose within their home.”

Turning to sonics, the Sky was prima facie evidence of just how much small speakers have evolved. Lay to rest any memories of the li’l screamers of yesteryear—all peaky white-hot speed, a rising top end, a 100Hz bait-and-switch bump masking a stunted bass region. The Sky is not a speaker that will bite on top and turn listless in the bass. Sky was all about a more full-bodied and warmer musical balance rather than the cheap acoustic tricks that tend to rapidly wear out their welcome. While it may be light on its feet when the music demands, it also impressed me as firmly grounded—images stable, rooted, and unwavering. Tonal balance was very good, neither forward nor laid back and recessed. Additionally, there was a coherent of-a-piece quality communicated by the tweeter and woofer. The soft-dome tweeter was superior in its grain-free refinement and speed. And upper-midrange and top-end transient and micro-dynamics were excellent, as I’d expected from the oversized tweeter. On occasion a random percussion cue or upper-octave brass note would reveal a sunny splash of surplus treble through the sibilance range, but this was a relatively minor deduction. Overall tweeter performance represents a level of resolution that favorably separates the Sky from much of its sub-$2k competition.

 

 As the speaker is only a foot tall, I wasn’t surprised that the Sky’s output levels and dynamics were limited when pushed to the extreme. But given the right room (medium to smallish) with strong amplifier support and sturdy floor stands, the Totem Sky just clears its throat and lets loose. And boy does it ever! On the full orchestral version of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” it had a pure midrange and startling presence. While the lower strings of cello and bass violin lacked the full weight and drama of the live event, the Sky still made a heroic effort and provided tuneful bass cues and resonant energy that were honest and organic rather than manufactured or suggestive of aggressive port tuning. Commendably, the port went about its business in near silence with little in the way of localization artifacts. Thus a well-recorded acoustic bass, for example, maintained pitch precision and resonance qualities that were consistent in the mid and upper bass ranges. Often when small speakers attempt to reproduce these octaves, they produce lumpy results where response dips and rises with each note.

The Sky is no pile driver in sub-80Hz macro-dynamics but it’s honest, with clean pitches and good balance. It grows a little shy and self-limiting on deeper macro-dynamic excursions. As if standing at the edge of a cliff, it delicately backed off during Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. But considering its size the Sky is one gutsy little transducer that’ll race headlong into challenging crescendos and dynamics without shying away.

On male and female vocals I found the Sky to be a performer that projected much of the chest and physicality of the artist. On a tune like Tom Waits’ “Come on Up to the House,” the contrast between the Sky and some other compacts was like the difference between sitting listlessly in the pews listening to a dull sermon and hearing an inspiring speaker and rising to your feet in appreciation. The Sky was just as full-blooded on Waits’ “Georgia Lee” with its noisy antique piano and barnyard atmospherics complete with tape hiss and chirping birds. The speaker couldn’t quite capture Waits’ full chest resonance—that would be too much to expect from any one-foot loudspeaker—but vocal presence was generally very good overall. Soundstage scale and dimension was impressive for a twelve-incher. The Sky didn’t reproduce music in miniature. Thanks to its nicely honed midbass, it managed to reproduce a high-resolution track like Malcolm Arnold’s Sussex Overture with considerable ambience, acoustic weight, and an image size well beyond the modest confines of its enclosure.

A caveat: There are two sides to the Sky personality worth taking note of. It plays easily and pleasantly with lower-priced low-to-medium power electronics—perfectly at ease, but also a bit dry with a whitish top, its limits more perceivable. Fact is, what it really needs to take flight are higher-quality electronics. After all, that’s what those big voice coils and long-throw diaphragm are all about, right? Strap on seventy-five to a hundred watts or more of high-end power and watch the Sky soar. When that occurs, a hard-hitting, heavily tweaked studio track like Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” rises from the ashes with renewed dynamic vigor and slam. Similarly the Traveling Wilburys’ vocals during “Handle With Care” grow significantly more textured and realistic. And on Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” the atmosphere surrounding the singer becomes airier and more defined, while Elton’s backing vocals have greater clarity, definition, and texture. The drum fills and cymbals also gain a shimmer, liveliness, and immediacy that, for me, were all the encouragement I needed to start playing air drums along with Nigel Olsson. Totem’s Sky is proof that high-performance audio happens in all sizes, shapes, and segments. The message that most resonates is that listening to a small-footprint compact doesn’t condemn the listener to a diminished musical experience. Hats off to Totem’s Bruzzese and his continuing quest to coax big-time performance from a small two-way by harnessing the virtues of speed and transparency. My forecast: I can’t imagine any music aficionado not taking to the Sky after hearing this loudspeaker. A fine and impressive effort.

Specs & Pricing

Type: Two-way, bass-reflex
Drivers: 1.3″ soft-dome tweeter, 5″ mid/bass
Frequency response: 48Hz–29.5kHz
Crossover: 2.5kHz
Sensitivity: 87dB
Impedance: 8 ohms
Dimensions: 6.35″ x 12″ x 9″
Price: $1850/pr.

Totem Acoustic
9165 Rue du Champ d’Eau 
Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
H1P 3M3 
(514) 259-1062
totemacoustic.com

Associated Equipment
Sota Cosmos Series IV turntable; SME V tonearm; Sumiko Palo Santos cartridge, Ortofon Quintet Black, Ortofon 2M Black; Parasound JC 3+; dCS Puccini; Lumin S1 Music Player; Synology NAS; MacBook Pro/Pure Music; ATC SCM19A, TAD ME-1K; Audience Au24SX cables and power cords, Synergistic Atmosphere Level Four, Nordost Frey 2 and Audience Ohno; and Kimber Palladian power cords. Audience USB, AudioQuest Carbon firewire, Wireworld Starlight Ethernet; VooDoo Cable Iso-Pod. Audience aR6-TSSOX

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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