Kex - wow you leave the board a few hours and suddenly the influx of OT.

I don't think the point is to have to listen to JBL in the best acoustical environment since most people don't have that - The Future SHops are not ideal - okay but it's not ideal for all th other brands - you should always be able to get a sense of how a speaker sounds - Sarah Mclachlan is sarah McLachlan in the bath tub or Queen Elizabeth theater or at an outdoor concert etc etc. What I think is important is to compare the speakers in the same acoustic environment and see what happens. A recent discussion going on about phase coherence etc going on at AA makes the same point - our ear filters out much of the crap and focuses in on what we wish to hear same as in a crowded room as it is in a room with a lot of echo - none of that shows up in measurements because they are woefully inadequate compared to what the human brain is capable of with regards to hear location.

Kex - you are in Canada now no? Paradigm is in a big box chain called AudioVideo Unlimited - Paradigm is better than JBL. You're in the east and I don't know if A&B sound is out there but all of the high end dealers have dumped Totem and they have gone to A&B Sound. I odn;t think it necessarily says anything about the quality and I don;t believe it's because people want to own boutique brands(some are better than others in both camps). High end dealers here simply don't carry Paradigm because they are not high end speakers - Soundhounds carries Wharfedale/Paradigm as good budget speakers and with the V2 I can't argue with that. As Terry said you need to carry a lot of selection so that people can make up their own mind and people want what they read about in last months stereo magazine - he noted that there are speakers you carry to sell and speakers you carry to own. Then there lines like Totem they carry in name only - he said it was useless they got dropped by Dynaudio on the drivers - they sold 6 Totem products all year - they sold 6 AN products in one day. So he keeps them becuase basically you can compare them in an A/B session which helps sell their biggest selling line in AN. ANd Totem takes up little space. They dumped ML and the Big Nautilus speakers because they kept coming back - sooner or later the faults became noticeable - the same set of N801's were brought back by three different customers - that's tough on a dealer so now he carries the smaller N803 and N805.

They have 6-7 people this year scouting at CES looking for brands to carry.

I think Polk ran into financial trouble - they simply never were THAT great - and if you're a marginal high end brand like a Totem and you're selling 6 speakers a year at a huge dealer - then somewhere aloing the line you gotta eat - so you call up A&B Sound and Future Shop where you'll instantly be the prestige line at those places(Energy Veritas as well at A&B Sound). The problem is is that High end shoppers tend not to bother with A&B Sound and Future Shop and average Joe is probably not going to want to drop $3k on a standmount or $800.00Cdn on the Mite. These speakers are good I like the Rainmaker among others - but they're really small and average Joe likes big bass - and none of these cn produce bass with credible SPLs and if it's all about home theater - then the energy C series is cheaper and will do it H/T just as well. Which is why at least at this store Totem's prices are hacked and the manager told me they do the worst of all they carry in sales. If that is true across the board I don't see a big future for Totem - unless they cut corners - and then what's the point.