Replacing Totems One's

06-21-09: Mr_macgee
I was wondering about the Guru's. I just read up on them and yes they are designed to be near a wall which is perfect, not sure about the wife approval, she wants wood but they have a dealer very close by...

You can get a very elegant look from the GURUs in high gloss black finish sitting on dedicated wood-trimmed speaker stands as shown here.

The Devilsound DAC has brought new life to my Totems to the point that I may keep them. I've been enjoying listening to them the last two days way more compared to the last two years, it's just way better.

Maybe you need to experiment more with your current setup. After all, if your wife wants a wood finish, the Totems are already beautiful. You may be able to fix this with better sound sources, better stands, and some experimenting with speaker placement. With a rear-ported speaker such as your Totems, you can also experiment with the port loading if you need them closer to the wall by placing something like a rolled up wash cloth in the port to increase damping and lower the resonant peak.

Which makes me wonder: if you were ready to replace the speakers until you got a new DAC, what *have* your listening sources been? And what are you using for cables and speaker stands? Maybe your Totems have simply done their job of showing the quality of signal and resonance control upstream. If you replace them, maybe you're just "shooting the messenger."

After all, high resolution is a 2-edged sword.

Keep the Totems. Bring them out into the room for serious listening. You won't get great imaging from any speaker that's back against the wall.

I didn't know your Totems weren't even elevated to ear-level.

I consider the Ayre a keeper as well.

Is the music on your Mac Mini stored in a lossless (e.g., as WAV or ALC) or lossy file format?