Montreal Audio Fest 2023

When I asked Totem's Vince Bruzzese, at last year's "static" launch of the new Bison series, what the impetus was to create the Bison range, he said it came down to wanting to create something special to mark the company's 35th birthday but also that of the Model 1, which came out in the year of the company's founding, 1987. "I wanted to bring us back to Model 1 territory," Vince said, "where people were wowed and saying, 'oh my gosh, I spent how much in the past and never got this?'"

The Bison series includes the two-way Bison Monitor ($2250), which Vince told me is like the Model 1 but a bit larger and more capable in many ways, along with two floorstanders: the shorter two-way Bison Tower ($2850) and the taller two-way Bison Tower T ($3750). The low-frequency response for the three models are specified as 40Hz, 33Hz, and 31Hz, respectively.

I've always liked the house sound of passive Totem speakers (I haven't auditioned the active ones)—woody, rich, natural, full—and in this room, where I had the chance to listen to both the standmounts and the Tower T, powered by a Yamaha A-S2200 Integrated Amplifier ($4499 US), which in turn was fed by a MoFi Electronics turntable with MasterTracker cartridge ($2999 US), all cabled together with AudioQuest cabling. I heard, across a couple of vocal and jazz LPs, the same ingratiating, satisfying, wholesome sound I associate with the Totem brand but perhaps more of it. These models impressed me with their big, warm, pure-toned, substantial presentations. They struck me as providing a lot of music for the money.

I remembered something Vince said at the Bison launch that made me smile. "These speakers aren't just giant killers, they're giant satisfiers." From what I heard in this room, he may be right.