Where do Totem speakers rank with other high end speakers?

[RGA]

This "pressure gradiaents" stuff as the source of "3D: sound like BS. How ridiculously loud to you have to play to get pressure gradients? How come some "large systems" can do it and others not? I think this is a crock.

No it's not at loud levels - it's there regardless of level.

"Air" around the instruments is mainly just good resolution, not an artifact. Also, you need a good speaker certainly, but differences in "air" vary very much with the amplfier.

I believe it's an artificat of many systems - it's not heard in any live music and with high resolution systems that signature isn't present yet everything else is - it's seamless. The best argument Ihave read for this originated in Positive Feedback...

"Many listeners speak of a playback system's resolving power in terms of its ability to articulate detail, i.e. previous unnoticed phenomena [noticing more air for example]. However, it is more likely that what these listeners are responding to when they say such-and-such has more "detail" is: unconnected micro-events in the frequency and time domains. (These are events that, if they were properly connected, would have realized the correct presentation of harmonic structure, attack, and legato.)

Because these events are of incredibly short duration and because there is absolutely no analog to such events in the natural world and are now being revealed to them by the sheer excellence of their audio, these listeners believe that they are hearing something for the first time, which they are! And largely because of this, they are more easily misled into a belief that what they are hearing is relevant and correct. The matter is aided and abetted by the apparentness of the perception. These "details" are undeniably there; it is only their meaning which has become subverted. The truth is that we only perceive such "detail" from an audio playback system; but never in a live musical performance.../...Grain creates the perception of more events, particularly in the treble region, because they are made to stand out from the musical texture in an unnaturally highlighted form. In true high-resolution audio systems, grain disappears and is replaced by a seamless flow of connected musical happenings. [cf. "As Time Goes By" Positive Feedback Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 4-5, Fall '93]."

And I think you can see where this is in the market. Many speaker makers have have several lines. Not to pick on B&W but their entry speakers with Tweeter on top have a similar/same design as the next model up - but I remember readin their literature where it would talk about the superior tube tapering to reduce ringing. In other words if you buy the more expensive model it will reduce the ringing (which is tweeter induced grain). Reduced not cured I might add. So you keep going up the lines. Then in a few years there will be another fix with an entirely different technology that will be fixable from one line to the next. I don't know if that's how they still word things but it was there and it explained much to me. I would rather a tweeter design that doesn't create ringing in the first place. Why creat a problem and then a solution to fix the problem when it's not better than most of the plain jane silk dome. They have "air" as well. and that goes away in their upper models with better electronics. The micro events are less detached. So I agree with the above quotes for the most part.