I’ve owned the TOTEM FORESTs and the ARROs in prior systems, so I know their strengths and warts very well.
MY TAKE:
Upgrade your source first before you choose FORESTs as the upgrade path in isolation,
@soix ….+1 on the cdp upgrade recommendation.
Until you do this, I doubt that just a move to the FORESTs alone in isolation will provide you with your required sonic step-up..
DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH AMP “GRUNT” ?
FORESTs are well known to be power hungry pigs…much more so than most other options. It’s all current (amps);…wpc specs are meaningless , and you are in a big room.
I had a high-current 100 wpc integrated amp that needed to be further augmented to get the FORESTs to their max. I added a matched 100 wpc power amp to make the system bi-amped (not biwired) to get them to open up to their best. Intuitively this predicated doubling up on quality build cables.
SPEAKER CABLES:
the FORESTs are wired internally with their own TOTEM TRESS wires, which are silver plated-over-OCC Cu models ( essentially a proxy or clone of CHORD RUMOURs).
If it’s high-end added extension or “brightness” you want, then silver over Cu is what they crave, I experimented with a sh*t load of brands and models, and the upper frequencies were lacking until either a TOTEM TRESS or similar silver plated all-occ proxy (that would expected to be “brighter” ) was inserted for the upper frequency drivers. Van den Hul , especially their hybrids , was the poorest speaker cable performers for me.
Curiously , biamping them with all- OCC CU quality build speaker cables on the woofers was noticeably better in my system, rather than continuing to use silver plated TRESS for the bass drivers. TRESS for the woofers was a noticeable step down than quality build all-Cu options. Much thicker all-Cu was the ticket here.
FWIW …. choose wisely.