A Teachable Moment
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| Posted on August 5, 2020 at 18:54:58 | ||
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Posts: 7336
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
 Because everyone is home, on weekdays, we set up a table in front of the speakers. There, someone can work or study. Without any prompting, our 12-year-old daughter, Tessa, stood up, and proclaimed, "I've always liked these speakers."  She was referring to the Totem Element Fire, which we've had since early 2014. We pressed her for why, and Tessa answered, "You don't know they're there." She further explained that that was two-fold. One, we smartly got them in the "Ice White" finish, which (a) looks nice, and (b) visually disappears. Two, Tessa said that, no matter where she sits, stands, or lies within the living room and kitchen, the Totem Fires allow her to "see" the music: "And when I see the music, I can [determine] if I should look deeper into it." This was the perfect opportunity for us to educate Tessa about speakers, and how we came to select the Totem Fire. When Tessa was an infant, we had Totem's smaller The One. When she was able to walk, she would clamber to the stands, and press her ear against The One's woofer [she wasn't tall enough, to reach the tweeter]. As good as The One was, we told her that our 19x15 furnished and crowded room could hold a larger loudspeaker. Unlike most other brands, Totems are meant to point straight ahead. Thankfully, that means NO messing around with toe-in. It also means that you are not confined to a narrow "sweet spot;" most Totems remain sonically stable, from almost anywhere in the room. And unlike SAs, our household listens from all over the room. So it came down to the identically-priced Totem Forest Signature (floorstanding) or Element Fire (bookshelf). We did not like the Forest Signature in Cherry or Mahogany. Ideally, we'd want it in Ice White. None of my audiophile friends had or could find the Forest Signature in white. They did, however, have the Element Fire in white. So when one audiophile wanted to move up from the Element Fire, I bought it off of him. Lesson: making audiophile friends not only gets you to share music and experiences, it opens up opportunities to buy used but still very good products for a fraction of their new retail price.  Tessa has always known that we play lots of 80s and 90s popular music, because that is what we grew up with. Her mom and I met in 1988, when we were both attending San Francisco's academic public high school. I was a scrub, but my future wife was a fiery nerd girl. Our friends tried to find music which was good, yet not all that popular or well-known. We'd go out to play team sports. During the pauses, when switching between sports, we'd congregate on the side or on benches. Someone always had a boombox, and that's how we challenged ourselves to learn about different types of music. Over on Rocky Road, you hear me cite rock instrumentals from the likes of Joe Satriani, Marty Friedman, Stuart Hamm, Vinnie Moore, and Yngwie Malmsteen. We also had the obscure Maximum Security, by Tony MacAlpine, and loved "Key To The City." We also told Tessa that our school was weird, in that, if a girl played an instrument, she would be funneled into the orchestra. But if a guy could play an instrument, the staff tried to recruit him for the school (jazz) band. Tessa's mom played violin for the orchestra, and could recognize some of the techniques guitar shredders used, in neoclassical metal. We also took this opportunity to explain to Tessa that a speaker is at the end of the audio chain. So not only do you have to choose a speaker which matches your room and listening habits, the speaker is at the mercy of everything upstream. So when Tessa thinks that something sounds good, yes, the speaker is putting it out into the room. But the credit goes to the sources, which are responsible for generating the music in the first place. We told Tessa that, if you put a lousy receiver in front of the Totem Fire, all the Fire does is tell you what you're feeding it.  As for the Totem Fire, we do not have a biwire speaker cable. The Fire has enough resolution, that you WILL hear the difference, between the speaker cable going first to the tweeter, versus going first to the woofer. And yes, you can hear differences between the various biwire jumpers you employ. Tessa may or may not become an audiophile. But we've armed her with information about audio concepts. So whenever it's safe to go over to other homes, she'll know (a) the speaker's role, and (b) that the speaker lies at the end of the audio chain. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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