Thanks for your suggestion, Zybar. In theory, I should be familiar enough with that room by now that I can rotate two systems. There's a strong floor-to-ceiling standing wave that emphasizes the 70 Hz region, because the floor and ceiling are both very thick solid concrete... but I think I know how to deal with it.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, JohnK. I'm still hoping to come up with the magic $2000 speaker, but you're right there's an awful lot of competition in that price ballpark.
Nullspace, I guess my only request would be that you include no more than one Diana Krall song... and that preferably towards the end of the demo disc. Seriously, what might be most useful to you is this: A demo disc made up of songs that will tell you what you want them to within a very short time. Often time is sort of at a premium in a room, and usually I allow one song per person, unless everyone else in the room likes his disc and wants to keep listening to it (and for all you Jethro Tull fans, "Thick as a Brick" counts as more than one song!). But if you can take the remote and go through the first 15-20 seconds of six or eight highly revealing songs, that would probably give you the most possible information when it's "your turn". And maybe when you're done, someone will request to go back and listen to this or that song all the way through. Maybe after those six or eight quickies, have a few tracks that you'd really like to listen to all the way through if time permits.
I will probably have after-hours audition sessions for people who want to come back and listen to a particular speaker system. In addition to hopefully two "big" demo speaker systems that will rotate from one day to the next, I might have one or two smaller, less expensive systems on static display only during show hours but available for demo after hours.
Looking forward to seeing ya'll in a few weeks!
Duke
