Without getting into both the physics and engineering - both areas of expertise for me - I can tell you that the "bookshelf" sized Totem Mani 2 is perhaps one of the finest speakers I have ever heard.
Expensive? Yes
Quality? Absolutely
Everyone's Choice? Absolutely not
I would say that they far outshine my M80's and previous AX3's in sound quality, but are far more expensive than either.
Here again, and as I was trying to point out above, speaker choices and their assessment are very subjective, i.e "beauty(and audio) is in the eye of the beholder".
Unfortunately, and especially considering their price point, my experience with Totem is quite the opposite. Because I was never really satisfied with what I was hearing, in the past few years I have purchased and eventually sold a number of centre channel speakers at various price points including the second from the top of the line Totem "Rainmaker" which sells for around $1000, yet is quite small in size. Totem offers no large centre channel models in their line.
Frankly, of all the speakers that I owned and tried in this centre channel group, it was the most expensive, yet, in my opinion, the most disappointing of the bunch. It has excellent build quality, yet, I had hoped for considerably better performance. Totem has made a lot of claims about this particular model, yet, in the end, it sounded just like any other $200-300 small unit many of which are made by the normal mainstream manufacturers. It is sitting in my basement collecting dust, eventually replaced by a VP180, in my mind anyway, just reinforcing the idea that even with a centre channel speaker, nothing beats a full range model.
