Totem Acoustic Metal V2 floorstanding loudspeaker

I am keenly aware of the privilege I hold being a semi-pro reviewer for Hi-Fi+. During my stint with the magazine without question, the most exciting journey I have been fortunate enough to embark upon is my now several-year relationship with Vince Bruzzese’s Totem speakers. I have had the good fortune in past issues to review several of Totem’s loudspeaker products over a diverse range of pricing and have thus become well acquainted with Vince’s design goals, design execution and signature sound pallet that in my opinion is second to none. So here I sit in my listening room marvelling at what some might say is Vince’s finest work to date, the £17,000 Totem Acoustic Metal V2 floorstanding loudspeaker, and I can’t help but think what a nice capstone this makes for my Totem reviewing quest.

I have now spent well over half of my audiophile years building my system slowly (as one does) with one Totem speaker or another seemingly always present in my stereo chain. I hope my rich experience with Vince’s speakers can help illustrate an accurate picture of Totem’s mountaintop.

All cards on the table, as you may or may not have known I purchased my review samples of the Element Fire V2 monitor that I last reviewed a few years ago. I was an unabashed fan of the Fire V2 monitor speakers, and for my system and listening environment, it was an easy choice at the time to put my money where my mouth was after writing a glowing review. Over the resulting couple of years (including more listening hours than I ever thought possible due to the pandemic lockdown). The Fire V2 monitors have never overstayed their welcome and I continue to be floored by the value and spectacular listening experience they provide on a regular basis. So with actual skin in the game, if anyone out there has a stake in jealously minimising the upside of Totem’s vastly more expensive Metal V2 Floorstanders it might very well be me.

Apart from the obvious size difference between the Element V2 Fire monitors and the Metal V2 floorstanders one does not have to burn out their left brain to see quickly the two speakers look strikingly similar. The Metals look like what you would easily imagine happening if you were to start with the Fire monitors, add another 7’’ torrent driver to the mix, and built the seductively non-parallel cabinet down to the floor. We are just getting started here listing the similarities: both Fire and Metal are finished in the same head-turning multicoat polyester and both sport Totem’s improved 1’’ dome tweeter with a 3/8’’ thick front aluminium faceplate and a finned aluminium alloy chamber. Both speakers pride themselves in ingeniously eliminating any crossover whatsoever in the low-frequency path. Both Fire and Metal have Totem’s newest internal bass tuning design that doubles the frequency response in the first audible octave. Both are bi-wire ready with platinum WBT four-way connectors, and lastly, they are both internally borosilicate dampened. With so much sharing is a reviewer to conclude that the Fire and Metal are merely the same then? One of these guys costs about £10,000 more than the other, so what gives?