![]() These are rhythmic performers that make the most of the insistent beat on My Right Eye while still communicating the feeling and intensity in Anderson’s distinctive vocal superbly. They have a wonderfully cohesive sound that balances detail, refinement and attack well. We start with Laurie Anderson’s Homeland on our reference Naim ND555/555PS music streamer and the Tribe Towers sound right at home. That seems like an age, but use them regularly and that time flies. This much is apparent after only a few hours of use, but if you want to hear them at their considerable best you’ll need to give them a few hundred hours. They’re so well balanced that you’d have to go out of your way to mismatch a system to make them sound wrong. ![]() These Totems are impressively unfussy in nature. Something like PMC’s Cor or even Naim’s SuperNait 3 will work a treat. ![]() Their dispersion is nicely controlled, so minute adjustments of the toe-in angle towards the listening position aren’t needed to get a decent stereo spread.Ī sensitivity of 89dB/W/m suggest that the Tribe will go loud with any decently powered amp, though the 4 ohm nominal impedance means that it needs to supply a solid amount of current to get the best from them. They sound tonally balanced close to a rear wall without being overly thin when placed further away. These Totems are refreshingly easy-going when it comes to positioning. Being lightweight is no bad thing of course, particularly when it comes to energy storage, and it also makes the speakers really easy to move around. Fit and finish is as pleasing as you’d hope for at this level, though the Tribe Tower’s relatively low weight is something of a surprise in a market full of hefty speakers. Overall build is good and the cabinet feels reassuringly rigid. The standard finish choices, also white or black but with a satin finish, look neat though. But they are functional, and should you choose one of the premium high gloss finishes – white or black at an extra £1000 – the terminal panel gets changed for something much classier. The bi-wire speaker terminals on our review samples wouldn’t look out of place on speakers one-tenth of the price. Its non-parallel sides reduce the build-up of internal standing waves, and the panels are damped by the use of Borosilicate – something unique to Totem, to the best of our knowledge. That small, angled cabinet isn’t ordinary either. The crossover for this high frequency unit is a simple first order design, reducing the degrading impact of a more complex solution. The larger than normal diameter has presumably been chosen to help integration with those two Torrent mid/bass units and that heavily dished metal faceplate helps to control dispersion. This purist approach to speaker design is carried over to the unusually large 33mm ‘laser etched’ textile soft dome tweeter.
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