This is a review, listening tests and detailed measurements of Totem Acoustics Rainmaker Speaker. It is on kind loan from a member. It was released back in early 2000s for around $1,000 (pair):
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The look and feel of the speaker lands in "good" category with nice use of wood/veneers which you don't see often today in small/budget speakers. As you may be able to guess, this is a rather small speaker which brings challenges usually in the form of dynamics. Not much to see on the back:
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If you are not familiar with Totem Acoustics, the brand is the darling of Custom Integration channel. Company founder and designer, Vince Bruzzese, is at seemingly every show, putting on great demonstrations. Website and show booths are covered with pictures of models which I am sure helps with the male dominated industry they target. Recent claim to fame has been crossoverless woofers but I think this one does have one.
Even though this speaker is long discontinued, I wanted to get some coverage of the brand and hence this review.
Testing was performed without a grill and with tweeter as the reference axis.
Totem Rainmaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our usual frequency response ("spin") measurements:
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Ouch! I must say I was not ready to see such uneven response replete with resonances in the upper midrange and lower treble. Near-field response shows the source being cabinet and woofer break up:
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This is probably the worst example of such abnormal responses I have seen.
We can see other signs in both impedance/phase response and CSD/Waterfall:
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Early window ironically is a bit better due to narrowing of the high frequency response (see directivity later):
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The sum is not pretty as far as predicted in-room response:
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Lack of a waveguide means wide directivity starting around crossover but then narrowing at the upper treble:
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The wider directivity in lower frequencies should give a more diffused soundstage and narrow up above as noted, help with the brightness.
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Distortion is low at 86 dB SPL:
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At 96 dBSPL I could hear strange noises but the woofer did not thankfully bottom out.
Finally, here is the step response:
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Totem Rainmaker Speaker Listening Tests
The out of box experience was not as bad as the insult on the eye that the frequency response was. Continue to listen though and the boomy low end starts to annoy while the boosted upper treble takes out hiss from tracks you didn't think had any! In an odd way though, it balances things a bit giving you a feeling of brilliance that the lower treble had taken out.
I build my EQ filters by eye and while the method usually works, it is no match to the extremely uneven response of the Rainmaker. I tried anyway:
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In most tracks, this was an improvement but in a few, I thought the stock tuning was maybe better. At shows, Vince plays techno/modern music so I tried that with and without EQ. For sure, the failures of the speaker were less evident in that kind of content (think Deadmau5).
Conclusions
Objectively there are many failures in the design of Totem Rainmaker. Resonances are a problem as is very uneven frequency response. Subjective experience is not that bad, aided by decent dynamic range and ability of the speaker to keep going instead of falling apart as some small speakers do. Mind you, it is still "bad" but just not as much of an assault on your ears as the measurements are on your eyes.
I can't recommend the Totem Acoustics Rainmaker.
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