Totem hawks good for low volume listening?

There have been quite a few threads on equipment for low volume listening--I would recommend searching through them. In my experience, the quality of the amplification matters as much as the speakers for good low volume sound. That being said, a simple crossover and full range drivers tend to let more information through at low levels. You may also want to go for a headphone system for your low volume listening, which will probably sound the best for relatively less cost.

Do speakers with higher sensitivity ratings generally excel at lower volumes vs. speakers with lower sensitivity? Is that the spec I should be looking at? Thanks for all the suggestions.

I completely agree with Akg_ca that Totems need hi-current, high wattage amps to drive them effectively. I haven't heard Mcintosh or Musical Fidelity with Totems so I can't comment on how well they'd work. I sold the Hawks b/c I decided to go with a 300b SET amp and the Hawks were nowhere near sensitive enough. I moved to Tekton Lores and now own the Lore-S which have taken away the urge to change/upgrade speakers...at least for awhile until I decide to go back to solid state ;o) Best of luck in your decision!

I have the Hawks. I do most listening at low volume, I
think they sound great at low volume. I think they need
alot of power though, my Plinius 9100 matches real well
with them. Just a little more volume does make them sound
a little better though. I would be more concerned at high
volume, with the small woofer I can't really push them. I
also have Polk LSi15s, they can handle a beating, but can't
match the natural sound of the great Revelator paper woofer.
The 9100 does 120 per into 8 ohms. My room is a little bigger than yours.

Eslaudio: Just curious. What speakers did you replace the hawks with?

Would a Mcintosh Power amp mate well. How about Musical Fidelity M6prx?

Thanks.

I've personally had ARROS and FORESTS. In either case they need hi-current and high wattage amps to drive them: TOTEMS are all power hungry. From my experiences I had to bi-amp them to perform best.

TO YOUR POINT: No, I do not think that TOTEMS excel at low volume listening. Rather they excel when "let loose".
Because I listen to a lot of classical and female vocals, low level listeng nirvana was also my Holy Grail.

Yup... I finally found my low level listening Holy Grail, but only after I capitulated, admitted this was not going to work to my satisfaction, sold off the Totems, and sold the all the matched hardware; and replaced them all with REGA R9 speakers driven by REGA OSIRIS integrated amp / REGA ISIS valve cdp...sweet!

Good luck!

I owned the Hawks for a number of years and think they're a very special speaker--particularly at their price point. That being said, you really need to run them with some good solid state power in order to fully unlock their range, imaging and detail. I variously paired them with McCormack, Simaudio, and Odyssey amps in the 125-175 wpc range and got great results. A quality tube pre also goes a long way to making them sound their best IMHO.