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Totem Acoustics Rainmaker Speaker Review

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 151 68.0%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 66 29.7%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 5 2.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    222

fpitas

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Such is one of the classic false audiophile legends.
Oddly, minimalist crossovers are really inexpensive. Probably just a coincidence.
 

fineMen

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He is catering to the non-measurements crowd, the ones that say measurements can't predict how it will sound like. I can see why Totem sound and their approach may appeal to some but .... to make the music come "alive", not accuracy or neutrality
The design is nearly 20y old. We didn't have the standard of CEA 2034 back then. The basis of that standard is not, but its motivation is, personal preference. Question was what frequency response, on and off axis, would lead to the individual feel of a correct playback in-room.

With that said, how could one disregard the argumentation of the Totem's engineer? Even today we have to acknowledge that most of the musical heritage was recorded using studios that, back in the day, didn't comply to the implicated modern standard of CEA 2034 spinorama. Toole complains about it to some length, and rightiously so. People were still on the way to find truth in a circle of confusion.

Anyway, I think it became quite clear already that the Totems are not something to go for today. That includes the process by which they came into existence.

edit: looked up Totem's webpage. Too much snakeoil for my taste.
 
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thewas

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The design is nearly 20y old. We didn't have the standard of CEA 2034 back then.
Some experienced loudspeaker designers already knew in the 1960s that smooth on-axis and sound power is important and there exist not few loudspeakers from these 6 decades which would make decent CEA 2034 today although it didn't exist back then as it is just one way to depict such.
 

fineMen

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Some experienced loudspeaker designers already knew in the 1960s that smooth on-axis and sound power is important and there exist not few loudspeakers from these 6 decades which would make decent CEA 2034 today although it didn't exist back then as it is just one way to depict such.
Thanks for the reply, appreciated!

I wonder how to deal with my older recordings, that were fine-tuned to match the studio's house curve which again would in case not be compliant to the quasi-standard of today. The author of 'The Book' states clearly that the contemporary 'preference' for flat is an accident. Namely it is the grand total average of all the house curves around--even today. Except for surround sound which was kind of standardized from its beginning.

To put it by an example: if, and only if the Totem's engineer had a certain room, and all studios had a similar room, and the studios would fine-tune their product to the Totem speaker, and all consumers were owners of that Totem speakers, living in smilar rooms,
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then, given the unlikely case that all had the same taste, the circle of confusion was broken and the music would be delivered to people's home correctly.

There is nothing else to the CES 2034 standard (and the Harman 'preference') except for the allowance for deviations by averaging.

To pick on the engineer because he--20ys back, tuned the Totems for a 'preference' appears to me peronally a bit philistine.

That such an approach isn't up-to-date is clearly understood, though. And that Totem deals a lot with snakeoil likewise.
 

thewas

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The author of 'The Book' states clearly that the contemporary 'preference' for flat is an accident.
Could you please show the exact part where he says that?

In the end the common basis is flat direct sound - thus anechoically flat loudspeakers - and smooth directivity, bass target at the listeners position and the amount of directivity is still not clearly defined, which would be the next steps to finally get rid of the circle of confusion.
 

thewas

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C'mon, I really read it. You didn't?
I can't remember everything I have read in over 500 pages of his book and so many of his appreciated comments in the WWW so I hoped you would remember the section.
 

fpitas

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If he really said that, it needs context. I know he is in favor of tone controls, for example. Gentle straight-line corrections at the extremes. I find it hard to believe he would be in favor of the convoluted FR of a lot of high-end speakers.
 

warpdrive

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Yeah, even 30 years ago, all of the speakers coming out of Canada that were designed at the NRC (Paradigm, Energy, PSB) were striving for flat measuring speakers and wide dispersion based on Floyds principles. Mostly they showed measurements that would be considered neutral with varying degrees of flaws, except for Totem that did their own thing. They haven't changed their tune at all, and I'm sure all of the speakers that they sell current probably exhibit the same flaws as their vintage models.

I looked at the Totem Sky model because I was in the market for a compact bookshelf and it's got the same kind of ragged FR as this model. While I don't pretend to be able to hear every FR anomaly that measurements show, I can tell it was colored. So I bought a Polk R100 instead, it was cheaper and better. The Polk measures brightly, but it's easily controllable with simple EQ or even a tone control.
 

Floyd Toole

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A preference for flat on-axis response: an accident? Hardly! A surprise to some people perhaps, but not an accident. All electronics are designed to have as close to flat response as possible - and always have been. Why should loudspeakers be different, assuming that they are part of the sound reproduction chain aiming at neutral reproduction of recorded sounds? The critical unknown factor from the beginning was precisely what measurement of the loudspeaker's output should be flat: the on-axis anechoic response, the total sound power response, the in-room steady-state response at the listening position, or some weighted combination of some or all of these? Historically, one can find supporters of all of these options, as I discussed in my early 1985/86 JAES papers. It took double-blind subjective evaluations combined with comprehensive on- and off-axis anechoic measurements to reveal that in typical small rooms it was the direct sound - the measured on-axis/listening window performance - that correlated most strongly with listener preference/sound quality. It seems that two ears and a brain have the ability to identify the first arriving sound in a complex sound field. The single microphone used to measure steady-state frequency responses in rooms cannot do this, although properly-done time-windowed FFT measurements can reveal some of the truth at middle-to-high frequencies. Once the sound has been launched into a semi-reflective (typical) listening room one has lost the ability to be precisely analytical about how the loudspeaker is performing, and therefore the guidance necessary to correct the most common kind of coloration due to resonances. Starting with loudspeakers known to be essentially neutral is a huge advantage.
 

warpdrive

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nice. a response from the man himself :)

I'm glad this forum exists, because it has allowed me to quickly separate the good products from the bad. I still rely on the good old tone control to tailor the sound to my preference but it's so much easier when you aren't dealing with a product which is severely flawed. No Totems for me thanks
 
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fpitas

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And woofers suffer breakup as they play beyond their recommended frequency range. Absolute bull twaddle to go ‘crossover less’ on woofers.
Make it a Feature though and you save on crossover parts!
 

fineMen

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The critical unknown factor from the beginning was precisely what measurement of the loudspeaker's output should be flat: the on-axis anechoic response, the total sound power response, the in-room steady-state response at the listening position, or some weighted combination of some or all of these? Historically, one can find supporters of all of these options, ...
Thanks a lot for your statement. But let me exemplify on mine. Anyway, I better withdraw my reference to your book, as you don't agree with my conclusions. My apologies.

(a) I acknowledge the preference for 'flat' as a natural technician's choice. But it would be hypothetically possible for all studios to agree on a differing, but common house curve. If this deviation from flat were also present in the households of the customers, then surely the 'right' tonality would be preserved?

(b) You mention it, what does this house curve actually mean? Is it "the on-axis anechoic response, the total sound power response, the in-room steady-state response at the listening position, or some weighted combination of some or all of these"? There were supporters of one or the other answer, implicationg that the realizations were likewise different.
As an example let's discuss the case the studio decided to have 'flat' in the "total sound power response". It would depend on the room's acoustics, directivity of the speaker and all what the "on-axis anechoic response" would look like after appropriate equalization. Most probably it wouldn't be 'flat' in the two criteria simultaneously.

Then you say, people prefer 'flat' with the "on-axis anechoic response" (listening window). That was determined by letting people listen to recordings. Which recordings? With (b) one has to acknowledge that during the production of the recording an individual house curve was used. Do we know which exactly? With (a) we would expect that a speaker is preferred that realises the same house curve at home as was used in the studio. Actually the most preferred speaker should change from one recording to the other.

If the studios wouldn't agree on a specific house curve beforehand (a), the determination of a preferred response for one speaker at home that should be good with most of the recordings would be a fruitless endevour.

But, studios agree to some degree on a common house curve. They are as similar, that it appears reasonable to take an average. Only by accident--because there wasn't any standard before (b), the average is 'flat' despite all other possibilities (a).

***

I stated my argument only to kind of excuse the presumed working mode of the Totem's designer. Back in the day that said standard for good speaker design wasn't yet present. If the designer felt it sounded good in his environment, he could hope that it would be true in people's homes also, given a representative set of test-rocordings for the evaluation. It was a similar methodolgy, namely evaluation by listening in-room with nice roecords, and judging individually on the basis of subjective (unquestionable) preference. Only that the statistics was missing?
 
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ctrl

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I stated my argument only to kind of excuse the presumed working mode of the Totem's designer. Back in the day that said standard for good speaker design wasn't yet present. If the designer felt it sounded good in his environment, he could hope that it would be true in people's homes also, given a representative set of test-rocordings for the evaluation.

The CTA-2034-A standard didn't exist yet, but even about 15 years ago when I started the loudspeaker design hobby, it was generally accepted that a smoothly downward sloping sound power frequency response curve (and flat on-axis FR, means about +-1-2dB) was necessary for a well done loudspeaker.
There were also free crossover simulation programs that automatically calculated the sound power curve.

In the YouTube presentation of Mr. Toole, which is surely known to all, he points out (from about 27:40 minutes***) when he published the findings about the connection of direct sound, SP, ER, PIR and subjective listening tests - 1986: Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preferences: Part 2.

So even "back in the day" it was more of a personal decision (or lack of current knowledge) whether the design of loudspeakers was more "science based" or more "hearing based". This different approach still holds true today and is reflected daily in the audio forums.
But please don't misunderstand, at the end of the design process there are always listening tests for fine tuning.

*** There he also explains, with an example, why it is not sufficient to concentrate only on the flattest possible direct sound, which is sometimes "forgotten" in discussions in forums (this is especially true for "normal listening rooms" where ER are particularly pronounced).
 

fineMen

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The CTA-2034-A standard didn't exist yet, but even about 15 years ago when I started the loudspeaker design hobby, it was generally accepted that ...
This is the "accidential" part. A generally accepted habit may be respected as a tribal ritual, but as I've shown, alternatives are possible, and sometimes even beneficial, see the RIAA curve for vinyl recordings.
So even "back in the day" it was more of a personal decision (or lack of current knowledge) whether the design of loudspeakers was more "science based" or more "hearing based".
I don't see the argument in this notion; it just contradicts mine without the provision of a new aspect. The new science, 2034-A standard namely, is deliberately based on 'listening' and, mind you, unquestioned 'preference', but in that case with some statistics. Reiterated, nothing else. It used common, tastefully selected 'revealing' recordings. What else did the imaginary designer of the Totems do wrong? ( Except for getting entangled in compensating one error with an other. )

btw: what is the central idea behind the contemporary statement speaker of JBL, the M2?
 
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warpdrive

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what does the RIAA curve for vinyl have to do with anything? The RIAA equalization is a encoded onto the vinyl and then the inverse curve is applied by the preamp which cancels out to flat at the output.
 

ctrl

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I don't see the argument in this notion; it just contradicts mine without the provision of a new aspect. The new science, 2034-A standard namely, is deliberately based on 'listening' and, mind you, unquestioned 'preference', but in that case with some statistics. Reiterated, nothing else. It used common, tastefully selected 'revealing' recordings.

I think you're getting a few things mixed up. The CTA-2034-A is a standard method for measuring (in-home) speakers and reporting data (using standardized methods) - nothing more. This standard does not specify at all how a loudspeaker should be tuned or designed and has nothing to do with listening tests.

At most, one could say that listening tests have imposed the need for such a standard, since a correlation between subjective evaluation of loudspeakers and their "complete" (hor and ver) measurements has been established.

CTA-2034-A is a powerful "tool" for loudspeaker design and analysis. It extends the before used non standardized evaluation methods (on-axis, angular frequency response measurements, sound power, SP DI, sonograms, ...) with standardized evaluation methods like LW, ER (hor + ver), PIR, ERDI (hor + ver),...

A completely different aspect is the connection between measurements and subjective evaluations of loudspeakers. Toole has already established this in 1986 with Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preferences: Part 2 and it was an established view among a large portion of amateur speaker designers 15 years ago.
In detail, there are quite different opinions regarding the connection between measurements and subjective evaluations, but has long been accepted by many as fundamentally true.

This only means that already at the time of the totem-acoustics-rainmaker release, the connection between measurements and subjective hearing sensation was known. Whether one accepts the results as well-founded is something else, there the opinions differ until today (however, I am not aware of any study that disproves correlation of measurements and subjective evaluation).
How the designer of the Totem-Rainmaker speaker has tuned these in the end is secondary for me, he had already at that time analysis methods (on-axis FR, angular FR, SP, DI, ...) which are comparable with today's CTA-2034-A standard, so not having the CTA-2034-A standard ist no excuse ;)

Not to use these analysis and design possibilities was then (and is now) up to everyone.
 

warpdrive

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As stated, the research was available way back when Totem started, but it was always clear to me that Vince chooses to ignore the measurements and tunes stuff mainly by ear. He says he designs using real music in real rooms, not anechoic measurements. Nothing has changed in the 30 years since I heard my first Totem speaker. Even back then, I bought speakers from a little known brand called Szabo which was designed using the NRC facilities and they were a lot better sounding than anything I heard from Totem at the time.
 
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