Totem Mani-2 speakers

Anyone have any experiences of them? I heard them at a dealers the other day whilst demming a Rega P5 and thought they were awesome. Absolutely stunning bass for such a small speaker. Rather pricey though but I am tempted to dem them at home just to see if that bass is reproducible in my room. They're apparently notoriously difficult to drive (even more so than Dynaudios, even though they use Dynaudio drivers) but my amp gives about 400W into 4ohms so that shouldn't be a problem :MILD:

Michael.

 

Michael,

are you sure they use Dynaudio drivers?

If it's the same type of unit used in the Monitor 1, then they may look very similar, but are made in Canada and are nothing to do with Dynaudio.

 

Positive. They look identical, the dealer said so and the Stereophile Review confirms it. They each use two Dynaudio 17W 75XL drivers in a push/pull configuration with a volume of air trapped between the drivers IsoBarik style. The tweeters are SEAS.

Here's a pic:



Gorgeous looking IMO.

Michael.

 

Very nice indeed ive heard some ruarks which used seas tweeters and found the treble to be very airy and detailed.

Ultra

 

Michael,

For that kind of money I think Dynaudio C1 is a killer... probably the only commercial available first order design that can make a statement against higher order metal drivers designs...

I don't know of any other tweeter that can be crossed so low with such a gentle slope (which means a useful response down to 900 Hz as an absolute minimum) and yet producing such a transparent sound.

That way the woofer is allowed to work more favourable within its pistonic range with better dispersion characteristic (less beaming), enhanced by the inverted driver array (woofer on the top) to compensate for the lobbing effects.

Therefore you have a minimum phase characteristic design, with fewer components in its crossover and with (hopefully) not so critical thermal compression, so common to first-order designs, by means of typical Dynaudio's "oversized" voice-coils.

It sounds fast and accurate with great bass impact for a standmount speaker. A great set of compromises... I whish I have the money.

 

Import them - much cheaper than a euro purchase.

 

BD, the C1s are quite a bit more expensive and in any case, their bass extension can't touch the Mani-2s. The C1s also look as ugly as hell. In any case, I'm not really interested in pistonic range and lobbing effects (where did you read about these?), I'm interested in how they sound in my room. Speakers is one area for me where subjectivity still rules I'm afraid. The C1 may have great bass for a standmounter, the Mani-2 has great bass full stop. If you'd heard the Mani-2s you simply wouldn't have believed that was possible from a standmount. -3dB at 29Hz is something that even some subs don't manage (even though they claim they can).

Michael.

 

If you really want '-3dB at 29Hz' why not just buy a decently sized pair of speakers? The attraction of a good pair of small speakers is that you avoid most of the room problems and get to hear more of the music.

(I think you need something like ATC150s to do a proper job...)

Paul

 

You're right of course Paul. When I start seriously looking to upgrade my speakers I'll look at some big speakers. ATC150s are waaay too expensive for me. I just thought the Mani-2s were very impressive.

Michael.

 

Of course, if you want -0db at 15hz, get a velodyne sub and be done with it Even the ATC150s could do with a helping hand in the very low bass region.

 

A decent sub is an option I'll explore aswell Robbo

 

According to popular rumour s/h ATC actives can be had for less than the Totems...

I'm quite happy without any 'very low bass region', it's strange how bass lines are so clear to hear.

Paul

 

Paul, I know what you mean about "very low bass" and certainly I can follow bass lines clearly and distinctly with my Dyns but there's something inescapably satisfying, almost addictive, about hearing the 32Hz (I think) organ notes in Saturn from Holst's Planets (or similar) powerfully sounding out rather than the rather weak hint of them you get on most systems. And I'm not talking about having an indistinct booming that rattles the room but clear, well defined deep bass notes.

Sure, the majority of music doesn't go there but it's just so nice to have for those few occasions when it's called for.

Michael.

 

It's called harmonics isn't it Paul - not strictly accurate though

 

Surprisingly (for me at least) quite a lot of music actually does go there! Of course, if one hasnt heard it one doesnt miss it.......

 

Obviously I have heard it. My last system was nominally flat to 20Hz, but the room inevitably interferes. My preference at the moment is to avoid the problem rather than concentrate on it.

As for harmonics one of the nice things about the ESL is that it doesn't distort, it just rolls off. So you get a clean 35Hz just not a huge amount of it. I don't find this a problem. YMMV.

Paul

 

Michael,

Lobbing effects and thermal compression are the major drawbacks of first order designs, because the drivers are forced to overlap over a wider range of frequencies outside their ideal pistonic motion and they become more directional, eventually they start to bend and beam. These can be clearly heard either as a bloated midrange, poorer image definition and subjectively overly "relaxed" sound (that people usually like... Sonus Faber anyone?) or as a overly bright sound usually described as "detailed". At some extent that can be measured by means of off-axis (both vertical and horizontal) frequency/dispersion response, and clearly seen with Laser Vibrometry images of the drivers.

You need top quality and expensive drivers with great linearity over a wide band in first-order designs, and even then you need some kind of crossover correction for the best driver integration. That's why Meadowlark designs are inherently flawed... and why Thiel designs loose most of the virtues of inherently simpler first-order designs. If you look into Thiel's crossovers you'll end up finding even greater number of components (that form correcting networks) than, say, a normal fourth-order design. You cannot use metal drivers in first-order designs because they ring like hell outside their optimal operation band.

Then you have the thermal compression arrising from the heat generated within the voice coils when the drivers are pushed too hard outside its operation range (far greater excursion from the tweeters and much quicker movement than woofers can support). This temperature rising translates into voice-coil impedance rising, so the power transfer from the amp is drastically reduced leading to dynamic compression, and in addition the impedance becomes different from that which the crossover was originally designed for.

C1's tweeters, as you can see, have big heat sinks.

As for the Mani 2 isobaric configuration, you have two major problems. The first one is the fact you have air trapped between the woofers which are placed back to back in a push/pull arrangement where they are connected out of phase. Since the air is trapped inside a small space between the woofers there won't be proper refrigeration to the voice-coils, so you'll end up with far greater thermal compression. The second problem is common to all parallel connected drivers (covering the same frequency range)... they will never work at exactly the same time. You'll end up with time smearing or blurring. This you cannot see from a flat frequency response (within speaker's bandwitdth) perspective. You can have flat frequency response from the speaker yet without time choerence. That's why stationary signals, like sinusoids, are of limited interest. I guess we have to look at the speaker impulse response... the better the impulse response the better the speaker will sound. The ear can detect arrival time differences in sound as low as 5 or 6us (microseconds)... do we have flat frequency responses up to 200 kHz (1/5us)?

Of course not! THAT WAS MY BIG MISTAKE... flat frequency response is a by-product of time domain accuracy. When you have time domain accuracy you necessarily have extended (not limited) flat frequency response because (music) transients are broadband signals! Although, we can only hear TONES up to 16kHz (or 20kHz for some)... but pure tones are very rare in nature.

(TD's "perfect" amp has traditionally measured frequency response up to 1MHz!!!)

Of course there is also a compromise for what you can get from a larger single driver... that's why I like 3-way designs with bigger single woofers or 2-way designs with single woofers not bigger than 6.5".

The MA's 20se that you have heard are a 2-way design and they also have -3dB @ 30Hz using a single 6.5" woofer. So why compromise with an isobaric arrangement?

Physics laws... you cannot ignore them!

 

FWIW I love the Mani 2 except when lifting up stairs. They play music and go low enough. Power hungry beasts but apart from that they did it for me.

Mind you I prefer the Winds

 

Michael,

did you listen to some CD's or was this just the result of you hearing some proper bass courtesy of a tt?

 

Talking about cheap loudspeakers has anybody heard about Nubert?
In Germany they seemed to be rated quite highly for there price.

You have to buy the stuff directly at Nubert (no dealers) and it seems that they are orientated mostly for the german market. (no english website)