Totem Acoustic’s Inner Spirit In-walls Shine

Hailing from the Canadian Province of Quebec, Totem Acoustic is a 20-year-old speaker manufacturer that operates on the premise that performance and value aren't mutually exclusive.

Over the past few years, Totem has kept somewhat of a low profile in the custom community, but that's about to change. The company has built some real momentum recently, thanks to its Inner Spirit in-wall loudspeaker.

The Inner Spirit features a sealed-box aluminum enclosure that houses the company's DST woofer and a Seas soft-dome tweeter. Internally, these drivers are fed signals from a first-order crossover that utilizes air coils and polypropylene-foil capacitors.

Totem sets the crossover point for the drivers at 2.2 kHz.

According to the company, all this technology produces a frequency response of 50 Hz to 25 kHz at an impendence of 8 ohms. It's also fairly easy to drive, with a sensitivity rating of 87 dB.

We recently set up a pair of Inner Spirits in the CE Pro offices in a system with a Sherbourn amp, Bryston preamplification, a Cambridge Audio CD player and cabling from Monster and Transparent.

After running the speakers through a break-in period, we kicked things off with a couple of Steve Morse's covers ("Freeway Jam" from the Jeff Beck tribute album, "Freeway Jam: to Beck and Back," and "La Villa Strangiato" from the Rush "Working Man" tribute album).

We also listened to the Frank Sinatra-Count Basie album, "Sinatra at the Sands," and Kevin Midgley's "Closed for the Season" disc.

I initially thought the speakers were going to be fun, and I was right: they're killer.

The highs are extended, the midrange is clean and the bass, while not deep, is firm. The speakers' strong points include their fantastic imaging and wide soundstage.

During Morse's "La Villa Strangiato" cover with Mike Portnoy on drums and Billy Sheehan on bass, the speakers shined. This dynamic recording features a real heavy bottom end, held down by Sheehan's somewhat murky tone.

The speakers did a good job of staying with the transients of the rhythm section, while letting Morse's gritty, chunky tones float to the center of the room, where pinch harmonics rang like chimes and chromatic runs were able to breath in space.

My one recommendation when using the speakers is to really let them break in because they're bright when first taken out of the box. Try to mate them with electronics that complement their attributes -- they'll really shine.

If Totem's in-walls can rival freestanding performance, I can imagine what the company's freestanding line will do.