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An OnSpeakers Staff (OSS) Columnist interviews  Totem Acoustics’ No. 1 Founder, CEO, Owner and Chief Designer Vince Bruzzese (VB) ten questions.

I don’t remember exactly where and when I first became aware of Totem speakers. I’ve heard them on numerous occasions here and there, but never at my own place. During the past ten years or so, I’ve participated in several Totem demonstrations at various international hi-fi-shows. That’s how I got to know Vince Bruzzese. When Vince paid a visit to Finland recently, to see how the local importer was doing, I took the opportunity to ask him some questions that I’ve always wanted to ask but never really got a chance to. So here they are:

1. OSS: Is it true that that there’s no damping material whatsoever in Totem speakers?

VB: Absolutely. You don’t need any if the speaker is well-designed. If the internal dimensions, the proportions, of the speaker are correctly calculated, the presence of standing waves inside the cabinet will be decreased. It also means that the cabinet must be very rigid and otherwise properly constructed. If, for instance, cabinet walls have only one density, then they will retain harmful resonances no matter how thick they are. Obviously, the crossover has a role to play here too. On top of these technical aspects, the speaker sounds better without any filling – it delivers more transient energy.

2. OSS: I’ve seen people exiting Totems’ demos and wondering how on earth there’s such a big bass from such a small speaker. Now, I assume that the bass from Totem’s small speakers is not faked; i.e. not elevated upper bass. What’s the secret of the Totem bass?

VB: The secret is in the whole. When the mid-range and high frequency range are correctly realized and the sound has a proper position in space, then the bass will come naturally with proper power and impact.

We have drafted a list of over 60 factors that are important for a speaker’s performance. Three stand out. First is the possibility of choosing drivers from a wide selection of alternatives. Second is the ability of identifying drivers that have natural compatibility, synergy. And third is the control of the speaker’s phase behaviour, which is much more important than polishing the frequency response of all of its irregularities, not to imply that our speakers were somehow coloured.

Selection of drivers is crucial. I cannot imagine designing a speaker unless I had several dozens of units from which to choose. For instance, we have 32 custom-made tweeters to choose from. Despite this, most drivers need to be changed before they enter our speakers. For the same reason, we have a stock of over 50 capacitors, and even that is not always enough. The crossover of Model One has four different caps, and it’s not an accident what they are.

To find a perfect pair of drivers is also important. When the units go together well, they can be placed on the floor without a cabinet, and they sound as if created for each other even if the crossover is still at an early stage of development. One can hear the synergy immediately from a distance.

And the crossover is, of course, where the problems of phase behaviour are attacked. That’s exactly why we measure our speakers through a listening area of 180 degrees. If the crossover is well-made, then the speaker can be listened to from any place in the room and it sounds good. The sound must come from between the speakers, and the centre image must be stable independently of the listening angle. When this point-source kind of imaging is achieved, it surprises everyone and that experience stays in the one’s mind.  And it will have an effect on people’s future choices. I’m sure about this.

Another reason the drivers should match sonically is that we use only first and second-order crossovers. That means that there’s plenty of layered energy around the crossover point that can be disturbing if not dealt with properly.

OSS: If point source imaging is that important to you, why not use wide bandwidth single drivers or coaxials?

VB: We have tried them but they don’t work. Not at least for us.

3. OSS: Totem is famous for its small two-way monitors, but you also manufacture tall multi-way speakers. Having said so much positive about small Totem speakers, how would you argue for buying one of your bigger models?  I assume that the Wind is not just Model One with a sub?

VB: No, of course not. The big multi-way Totems have certain qualities that American people particularly like to have in their home theatre systems such as the bottom octave. We have been making big speakers for a long time, and Shaman, for example, has always been an excellent speaker by any criteria. But is a big Totem a better speaker than the smaller ones simply by being bigger? I’m not sure. In some respects, not necessarily. But they are all different. All Totem speakers have their own nature and character. That’s exactly the point of Totem speakers. They are not extensions of each other. They are more like different species whose individuals closely resemble each other.

4. OSS: It’s a sort of legend that many Canadian speaker companies have got off the ground by making use of the services provided by Canada's National Research Council. Did you?

VB: No we didn’t. The reason was that we didn’t feel that we could really benefit from their services. We had and we still have our own anechoic chamber and reasonably good  MLSSA-based (Maximum Length Sequence System Analyser) measurement equipment. If we want to make conventional measurements, that is. When we design speakers we are not, however, relying on theoretical measurements. I don’t know a single speaker that was designed by the measurements only, and still was a good speaker. It was clear to us from the beginning that the conventional TS-parameters (Thiele-Small – AN Thiele and Richard H Small presented several papers to the Audio Engineers Society in the early seventies outlining several parameters of speaker performance in relation to its enclosure. –Ed.) would not tell much about how a speaker would actually sound in a real-world situation. We developed our own mathematical applications that do not follow the traditional interpretations of TS. Martin Collom wasn’t exactly our hero.

On the other hand, we measure our speakers in numerous real environments and rooms, where our speakers are actually being used. And of course, auditioning and listening to speakers is always more sensible than measuring them. In fact it’s easy to hear with plain ear when a certain speaker design is successful and when not.

5. OSS: As far as I know, you use metal dome tweeters in some of your models. Metal domes have a reputation of sounding metallic. I guess you don’t agree?

VB: I know some people consider metal domes a little peaky and blatant.  And it’s true that metal domes can have peaks between 10-20 kHz. But more important than this is the ability of the tweeter to reproduce harmonics correctly up to 50 kHz even though we may not hear them. And this is something metal domes do better than most textile domes.  So if one knows what to do with metal domes there’s absolutely no reason not to use them. On the other hand, many textile and silk domes suffer from unequal manufacturing quality which impedes their effective use.

6. OSS: At the hi-fi shows you always demonstrate your speakers with a very narrow stereo-angle. Is that how you recommend that your speakers should be placed for optimal response?

VB:  No. It works in small hotel rooms but it’s not how we instruct our customers. Normal conditions for speaker placement apply to our speakers as well. What we don’t recommend is angling the speakers towards the listener.

7. OSS: Does the fact that the amplification seems to change from show to show mean that Totem’s speakers are difficult to drive?

VB:  Appropriate amplification is very important, not only for our speakers but generally. It’s clearly not the case that one and the same amplifier, no matter how expensive it is, could be an ideal workhorse for all of our speakers. Different amps match differently with different speakers. Even amplifiers such as modified Quad IIs work fine with some of our models.

8. OSS: You do lots of tuning with drivers and cabinets and you’re very rigorous about which passive components go into your speakers. Are you guys at Totem perfectionists?

VB: Well, maybe to some extent. We design our speakers by a razor edge –principle. That means that we pay attention to every single detail, and believe that it matters. If one changes even a minor thing in our speakers, and that includes the colour of the passive components, then the whole outcome will change. That may sound amusing, but that’s how it is. We recently demonstrated the point to a group of scientists who had difficulties in believing their ears. We also need to care about the details because we cannot allow the quality of our speakers to vary from one pair to another or over time in the case of one speaker. Totem speakers sound the same now and after five years. Not many speakers do. The ’fatigue’ of the drivers between 6 months and two years is a quite common but mostly ignored phenomenon.

9. OSS:  I’ve frequently seen funny rocket shape cones placed on top of Totem speakers. What function do they serve? Are they a necessary condition for obtaining the best sound from your speakers?

VB: In some listening environments there may be some unevenness in the response that takes place around three HF-notes. With these tuning pods, beaks, that situation can be ameliorated.

Normally one is enough, and should be placed on the right hand front corner, but two can be used too.

OSS: Can you measure their effect?

VB:  Oh yes. You can see their effect in the response, and the magnitude can be as high as 0,5 decibels. They also reduce cabinet resonances a little. We sell the beaks separately to those who think that they can benefit from them, but we don’t insist that they should be used with our speakers. Totem speakers sound fine without them too.

10. OSS: What’s the origin of the name Totem?

VB: Before Totem came to existence in 1987, I had designed a speaker that the world later came to know as Model One. At the time, one very good friend of mine went through a crisis in his life. I gave him the speakers knowing that listening to music through them could be of help. A few months later, he came to see me, obviously feeling better now, and he suggested that we should name the speaker Totem. Totem means an entity that chooses an individual and then guides that person during his or her life.

The time I spent talking to Vince Bruzzese of speakers and everything convinced me that the name represents the company in a more general fashion. The firm has certain principles it is not willing to compromise. Here’s Vince again:

VB: Totem speakers are all manufactured in Canada as a matter of principle. Purely commercially, that’s crazy. Think of our speaker cabinets, for example. They are made of three-layer MDF, each layer having different density, and wood-veneered both from outside and inside. The joints are special and hard to do. Even our smallest speaker, Dreamcatcher, has these qualities. Money-wise the production should be transferred to areas where their making would cost 4-5 dollar each. But we have no plans whatsoever to do so. It’s out of the question. Instead, we are strongly motivated to keep the woodwork done where it’s done now because people at the factory have a long tradition and the required know-how.

Of course no company can manufacture speakers with losses for a long period of time. And it’s true that with the least expensive models we have had to work hard to find solutions that would allow us to stick to our quality requirements, and do it in an economically reasonable manner. But there’s no doubt that we are moving here under very thin margins, and that’s a problem for us because some of our speakers are very small and people don’t always realize why they cost what they cost.