[JLM]

Why don't retailers of "the good stuff" provide a decent room to audition in?  Some manufacturers have a well designed, properly set up room, but nearly all of the environments used for retailing that I've seen and read of are criminal when designers are sweating one brand of cap versus another and the stuff ends up getting shown under nearly the worst possible conditions.

I've only been to one shop that had a good room to audition in.  (That room was designed and furnished to emulate a typical residential environment.)  Most are overstuffed with equipment.  (Which means the room is filled with woofers/midrange drivers acting as passive radiators that will distort the actual bass performance.)  Rooms are poorly sized and/or shaped with no treatments.  Signals are sent through miles of cabling and switching boxes.  Equipment is perched on shelves cantilevered off the walls.  And half the time I know more than the sales staff who are making excuses faster than I can get out of the room.  Almost any of us could critique these setups to death.

Everyone complains about the environments at the trade shows.  So why don't the vendors come early and do a proper set-up?  Or scope the place out before hand to pick out rooms that would work better?  Every show you hear/read of vendors doing last minute tweaks and then blowing into town at the last minute.  Seems more like school boys trying to hide something than mature decision making to me.  I'd rather hear results than excuses.

The best concept I've run across was a guy who sold out of his basement and was open only by appointment.  One customer at a time.  A typical residential room was used to audition in.  Equipment was provided on consignment.  Extra equipment was kept in another room.  Naturally his stuff sounded wonderful and he sold a ton of stuff considering it was a part time job with a very small investment.  

Another concept to ponder would be take a customized 5th wheel on the road and offer both weekend public and weekday/evening private showing times.  Vendors could periodically participate and hear from us "real world" customers that can't make it to the big shows.

I know it's expensive to properly retail audio the way we traditional do it(largely due to the very low sales volumes), but why even go that route if it can't be done right?

[PhilNYC]

Everyone complains about the environments at the trade shows. So why don't the vendors come early and do a proper set-up? Or scope the place out before hand to pick out rooms that would work better? Every show you hear/read of vendors doing last minute tweaks and then blowing into town at the last minute. Seems more like school boys trying to hide something than mature decision making to me. I'd rather hear results than excuses.

There are a lot of factors involved with regards to tradeshows.  The two biggest factors are room acoustics and power quality; in the case of room acoustics, most of the hotels that these shows are hosted at do not allow exhibitors to use any kind of pins/nails/adhesive to put up room treatments.  At the Hilton New York (for the Stereophile show), they charged exhibitors $250 for *every* pinhole found on the walls because of the expensive wallpaper used in the rooms.  With regards to power quality, you've got 40 other exhibitors plugging in a ton of components into the same non-dedicated circuit and blasting their systems at the same time...at HE2005, we had a voltage meter on the power conditioner we were using...in the evenings when everyone was gone, we were getting something like 119-120 volts from the wall...during the show, it would drop to as low as 107 volts.

Beyond that, there are other factors...like when you set up the room, there are 2-3 people in the room, but during the show, there are 10-15 people in the room, changing the acoustic properties from what things have been tuned to.  You're also trying to tune the room to sound good for the widest sweetspot possible (sacrificing "the best" sound in a narrow sweetspot), because you don't want people outside the sweetspot saying it was horrible.  Or just the simple fact that most hotel rooms are very square in nature, causing big room modes, etc.

In the two shows I've done, we were only given access to the room one day before the show, and after moving all the equipment into the room, we spent 8+ hours getting things set up; and we certainly weren't the only ones....

Just my two cents...

[Double Ugly]

Might it be that most don't know how, and/or don't understand its importance?

Most folks who've had a fair amount of exposure to music and equipment know what they like, but knowing what it sounds like and being able to replicate it time and time again are two different beasts.  I know people who have very definite ideas about how a system should sound, but they're clueless when it comes to making it sound that way.  One of those is a dealer who's been in mid- and high-end audio for several years.  

I want to believe it isn't apathy, but ignorance.  A few of the exceptions to the rule - our own John Casler, PhilNYC and (former dealer) Julian Turner - demonstratively understand the concept.  They understand not only the importance of hooking the client with the appearance of the system, but also with the first few notes it produces.

I just find it difficult to believe that so many would go to the effort and expense of setting up brick-'n-mortar establishments, but yet not care about how the systems within sound.  My linear logic can't force my arms around that line of thinking, so I'm left with ignorance, e.g., they simply don't know.

[Bill Baker]

I know it's expensive to properly retail audio the way we traditional do it(largely due to the very low sales volumes), but why even go that route if it can't be done right?

 You make a very good point. Recently I have been getting a lot more traffic in my store and those who have visited know my room needs some work. For myself, it has been difficult as I always have several sets of speakers, amplifiers, etc. running to burn in after modification. My room has always primarily been a "working facility" but things are changing. Being involved in more than just the retail end makes things even more difficult. I had to see if the retail showroom idea was going to be justified. I have to have showrooms, a room full of work benches for modification work, a woodworking shop, a dedicated room for veneering, a paint booth, etc. I also have to devide my time for all these different angles.

 As many know, I recently moved into a much larger building and I am in the process of reconstruction of my showroom for more of a dedicated listening enviroment. There will be two dedicated listening rooms. One being about 450 sq. ft for the larger system/speakers such as the Usher D2s and the SP Tech Revelations with the other around 300. I am not one that will go overboard with overly treated rooms as I want them to refect the average home enviroment. This type of reconstruction takes time and money but I already realize it must be done to properly represent the products in my line-up.

 Brick n' mortar dealers have it tough these days competing with the Internet and it is always a risk for someone thinking of starting a new commercial store. You have to figure out what system(s) to set up properly, taking into consideration that any person walking through the door will want some changes made before auditioning after you have already warmed the system up prior to their arrival. I work on appointment as this gives me the chance to get an idea of what one will want to audition when they arrive so I can have the system of interest already together and fired up. Changes can be made from there.

 Then there is the inventory. You could have 10 pieces from one manufacturer on display and someone is always going to want to audition the one piece you don't have. I figure if I can have at least one model that best represents a given line, i'm off to a good start.

 In closing, some of us try as hard as we can but there are always obstacles. I promise you in my case it is not due to a lack of effort.

[Ethan Winer]

Jim,

> Might it be that most don't know how, and/or don't understand its importance? <

That's the truth! There are two "high end" audio shops near me, and neither has acoustic treatment in any of their listening rooms. When I ask them, they say they barely care and their customers don't care at all.

For anyone who plans to attend HES 2006 in LA next month, I'll be sharing a pair of suites with Rives and RPG, with one treated to the hilt and the other empty. Both rooms will otherwise be indentical, with the same gear and even the same music playing. Hopefully this will be adequate to hit people over the head with the enormous improvement bass traps and other treatment offers.

--Ethan

[MaxCast]

I wonder what the average size room is around here.

Anyway, if I were a brick and mortor store I'd have a typical width room extra long with systems set up on both ends of the room.  I would have some extra equipment on the sides, etc.  If I had gear inbetween the speakers it would be set up for easy swapping.  Maybe a false wall behind the speakers to hold extra equipment.   No couches.  For the price of a couch, you could buy mucho room treatments.

I'd also have room treatment, apsoption and diffusion because I'd sell them too.

[JLM]

I blame part of this problem on customer ignorance too.  To more customers than I'd like to admit, high-end means big, expensive looking stuff that can do loud dinosaur stomps.  To the rest of us few the market fragments into various camps (SET versus big iron amps, single driver/high efficiency speakers versus traditional designs, etc.) that thins the sales out even more.

And of course there's the tire kickers that "waste" the retailer's time.  (I put waste in quotes because some sales eventually result from these visits.)

I can't believe vendors are so bull headed that they won't try to reserve the room an extra day ahead, pay for damages, and bring a power conditioner with them in order to really impress at a show.  But amp guys don't believe in speakers let alone isolation, cabling, or room treatments.  Speaker guys are even worse.  And on it goes.  I went to one show where one of the bigger vendors didn't even open his room until the show was almost half over and then it was poorly setup and sounded horrible.  What's the point in that?

I'm amazed at how desperate vendors must be for retailers based on some of the poor selling jobs most shops provide.  It's little wonder audio sales continue to slide.

[JLM]

Maxcast,

Room size?  Good question.

IMO it's not even mid-range audio if you can't reach 30 Hz to cover the bottom key of a piano and develop a soundscape.  That's hard to do in a 10ft x 10ft spare bedroom.  Probably 200 sq. ft. is a minimum.  My listening room is 8 ft x 13 ft x 21 ft (273 sq. ft.) aka Cardas.  But that hardly leaves room for more than two systems (on opposite walls).

Bigger is better, but only if the room gets taller too.

[Double Ugly]

Ethan,

For anyone who plans to attend HES 2006 in LA next month, I'll be sharing a pair of suites with Rives and RPG, with one treated to the hilt and the other empty. Both rooms will otherwise be indentical, with the same gear and even the same music playing. Hopefully this will be adequate to hit people over the head with the enormous improvement bass traps and other treatment offers.

*THAT* I'd love to hear.  Afterwards I hope you'll let us know how folks responded to the differences.

[brj]

For anyone who plans to attend HES 2006 in LA next month, I'll be sharing a pair of suites with Rives and RPG, with one treated to the hilt and the other empty. Both rooms will otherwise be indentical, with the same gear and even the same music playing. Hopefully this will be adequate to hit people over the head with the enormous improvement bass traps and other treatment offers.

That sounds like a great idea!  Unfortunately, I can't make HE2006, but I'd love to visit such a demonstration.  Any chance you'll set up a similar demonstration at RMAF or other audio shows?

For reference, what level of gear are you expecting to use for the demo?  I guess I'm wondering how much the benefit of room treatment changes with the quality of system components.  The concern is that if you use exotic quality demo gear, people will only think room acoustics are important if they have similarly priced gear, rather than components that are within reach of the majority of audiophiles.

[Ethan Winer]

> Any chance you'll set up a similar demonstration at RMAF or other audio shows? <

Richard Bird of Rives is arranging this show, but if he does more elsewhere you can be sure I'll tag along too if invited!

> I guess I'm wondering how much the benefit of room treatment changes with the quality of system components. <

I don't know yet who else is involved to provide the loudspeakers and amps and other gear. It probably doesn't even matter. The room has far more effect than anything else, even the speakers in most cases.

>  The concern is that if you use exotic quality demo gear, people will only think room acoustics are important if they have similarly priced gear, rather than components that are within reach of the majority of audiophiles. <

Yes, and that would be very wrong. I hope they'll use very normal and mundane components. Of course, then the "snobs" could say the test was invalid because it didn't use whatever brand of overpriced stuff they happen to own.

--Ethan

[John Casler]

Ethan,

I too think that a "GREAT" idea and hope I get a chance to stop in and see you, and hear the difference.

[Bill Baker]

Yes, and that would be very wrong. I hope they'll use very normal and mundane components. Of course, then the "snobs" could say the test was invalid because it didn't use whatever brand of overpriced stuff they happen to own.

 I think this needs to be addressed from both angles. My intentions (after treating my rooms) are to have not only the higher priced reference systems but also the affordable systems set up to show that room treatment is a component within itself no matter what the overall cost of the system.

 If I can show what a properly treated room can can do to enhance the performance of even inexpensive systems, a consumer will be able to realize the potential effects on thier expensive, exotic system(s).

[bhobba]

Brick n' mortar dealers have it tough these days competing with the Internet and it is always a risk for someone thinking of starting a new commercial store.

Yes Bill that is true.  But buying audio (especially speakers) unheard is a big problem.  I feel very comfortable about my purchase of the Timepieces but would have much preferred going to a dealer and hearing them.  Sure that increases cost as Bob found when he set up a dealer network, but done correctly that need not be great - witness the modest increase Bob did on his Timepieces.  Only guys like you can solve the problem by stocking a small range of reputable brands not marked up excessively and demonstrated in a typical domestic environment.  That way the intending purchaser can be well served.  And people interested in genuine Hi FI -  not the mass marketed stuff, or poser priced ultra expensive gear, quickly learn, as I did, a few hundred dollars spent traveling to such a dealer, rather than the local store sown the road, is money well spent.  It is an issue of consumer awareness - which is why Focal can sell $50,000 speakers that, to many people, are surpassed by the $10,000 revelations.

Thanks
Bill

[Bill Baker]

Bill, I wish more people thought along those same lines. Well said!

[JLM]

That's what I liked about selling on of a basement by appointment only.  Weeds out most of the tire kickers, with virtually no overhead.  And if you can swing getting the equipment on consignment the investment is extremely low.  Homelike environment is a given.  Some of the guys here probably have enough equipment laying around to open such an operation.

[Bill Baker]

And if you can swing getting the equipment on consignment the investment is extremely low.

If it were only that easy. Smaller dealers like myself still have to invest in inventory for the floor. Unless you have a good (rich) investor or family money, it takes some time to get a good amount of product in a showroom. I can assure you I do not fall in either catagory. For myself it was a LOT of time and patience.

Homelike environment is a given.

 I agree. How many consumers have perfect listening rooms?

 

Some of the guys here probably have enough equipment laying around to open such an operation

.

 I know some hobbiest that have more laying around than some "dealers". It's too bad that someone can start up a so called "dealership" and be able to sell products they never even seen let alone heard of. Luckily, these types don't last long.

[PhilNYC]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here...

If the only way to properly evaluate a component for purchase is with a home-trial, why is it important that the store have a good acoustic listening environment?      

(for the record, I do try to get the best listening environment I can in my demo room; just offering some food for thought...)

[zybar]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here...

If the only way to properly evaluate a component for purchase is with a home-trial, why is it important that the store have a good acoustic listening environment?      

(for the record, I do try to get the best listening environment I can in my demo room; just offering some food for thought...)

Great point!

I would rather the dealer have a good in home audition policy than listening room.  

George

[PhilNYC]

And if you can swing getting the equipment on consignment the investment is extremely low.  

On the other hand, I know a few dealers (home-based and storefront) who get slammed for saying they represent a brand, yet don't have the full product line available for demo...so the investment can actually relatively high if you try to keep demo units of everything available...