Are You Old Enough to Remember Those Jaw-Dropping Manufacturer Demos?

I don't know if you'd call it jaw dropping, more along the lines of marketing by manipulation. Seems like every dealer had those switch boxes where they could switch out speakers, amps, what have you. Who knows what tricks they had up their sleeves, subtle loudness/gain differences, placement of equipment, subtle remarks, agreement with virtually anything you might say especially if it was in favor of the more expensive piece. Even as a novice audiophile I came to understand this all a game of manipulation, just let me listen to the equipment I want to listen to, with the music I choose, and let it just play, I'll come to my own conclusions.

For me in my mid-twenties, it was hearing the Magnepan Tympanis in the back room of Audible Difference in Palo Alto. The only time I felt that the musicians were in the room with me. I have been chasing that same high for the past 40 years.

@bigtwin 

"Funny that after all these years I'm listening to 7 foot tall panels. 😄"

For 35 years I've had 6'-4" Alpine White towers (that I designed and built) sitting in the Living/Listening Room.

I watched Kirkmus do his thing and heard the results.  His system works very well but the process is crazy long and tedious.  It would be something reserved for only favorite records.

In November 1979 I was in San Diego attending the Geological Society of America meeting as a grad student, and a dealer demonstrated the Hill Plasmatronics for me. I still have the one page color brochure. What a nice guy- the owner of the shop didn’t think twice about demonstrating the speakers to a 22 year old enthusiast. And, I thought that they sounded great. Just wildly impractical! I wish all stores were so accommodating now! Can’t remember the store name, unfortunately.

@waytoomuchstuff   i believe you are correct.  Funny that after all these years I'm listening to 7 foot tall panels. 😄

Mr Kissmuss wearing white lab coat while doing demo for vynil cleaner.Its a long process . Fremmer is next to me . He is having a ball talking to Him. Iam also enjoying it. This is at axpona.

@bigtwin 

"They pulled the grills off the front and inside were a couple of the Bose double cube speakers.  It was hilarious."

The folks at Bose certainly knew their audience and were masters at marketing to them.

After spending some quality time with small speakers accompanied by competent subwoofer, I came to the conclusion that the lion's share of the girth and weight of a serious full-range speaker system was the section required to make bass.  Thus, my observation that if you took a large, full-range speaker, took a chain saw to it and removed the mid/high section, that mid/high section would have been fairly small.  So, sub/sats can be a legitimate approach to high fidelity.  Ultimately, there are physical limitations if the goals are pretty lofty (and, expensive), but for the most part if your "sats" can produce adequate energy to below, say, 80 Hz, you've got something real to work with.

During Winter CES, I was strolling around the "HIgh End Audio" corridors and heard (and felt) something that sounded like live percussion.  As I approached, the sound seems a little familiar to me.  Oh yeah, the Sheffield Drum Record.  This is recorded music I'm hearing!! The sound drew me into the room, and there it was ... the M&K Satellite/Subwoofer system.  This was my first experience with a "big boy" sub/sat (actually dual powered subs) that played really, REALLY loud.  

The demo "worked" and we became an M&K dealer and had good sucesss with this set up.  It aged well, but gave way to newer thinking and alternative brands.

@salectric 

"I was so impressed that I bought a pair of A25 within a week."

I missed the demo, but I do recall how impressive these speakers are.

@larryi 

"Before I could object, the desler cranked the volume till the meters on the amp were pinned at +3 db (700 watts?)"

If my math is right, those peaks were somewhere north of 132 decibels with that amp/speaker set up. Surprised you didn't have scorched eyebrows to accompany permanent hearing loss.

"The plasma glowed a blue color which was fascinating and pretty to look at.  You could faintly smell ozone even with the nitrogen gas feed."

I love the smell of burning plasma in the morning.

The dealer driving Klipschorns with a Phase Linear would have fit right in at this year’s CAF.  A number of rooms had ridiculous ear-splitting volumes.  Maybe it’s because baby boomers are all going deaf.

The worst demonstration I witnessed was a dealer showing off the prowess of Klipschorns.  These extremely efficient speakers were hooked up to 350 wpc Phase Linear 700 amps.  Before I could object, the desler cranked the volume till the meters on the amp were pinned at +3 db (700 watts?).  The concrete block room shook like crazy.  I never returned to that shop.

 My memory is a Dual demo, but it wasn’t  the turned upside down one.  It was playing the Telarc version of the 1812 Overture with real canons.   I think it was an early digital recording. When the canons blew while playing on a “normal” counterbalanced TT it blew the tone arm clear off the record.  The Dual played right through without a hitch.  I bought a CS606  from this demo.  Still in operation today at my son’s home.

Although not jaw-dropping in a "trickery" sense, two things stand out in my mind. These both occurred in the late 70's or early 80's Those were the glory days when good stereo stores were plentiful in most metro areas. I was in Kansas City at the time. The first was when I had a chance (as a novice) to hear a pair of Klipsh corner horns, The second was a demo of the ADS digital delay system. That one especially blew my mind. Amazing how startling the collapse of the sound field was when it was switched off.

One demo has stuck in my mind for the past 40 years.  It was set up in an empty storefront in West Edmonton Mall.  At the time, the largest indoor shopping center in the world.  Anyway, the vendor had two huge floor standing speakers on an elevated stage and about 50 chairs.  The room was packed and the system was just booming out the tunes.  Naturally, everyone was wondering what the speakers were.  Then came the big reveal.  They pulled the grills off the front and inside were a couple of the Bose double cube speakers.  It was hilarious.  

At Capital Audiofest, a few years ago, a local D.C.-area dealer set up a room with a really tiny tube amp, a laptop for a source, and tiny ProAc Tablettes for the speaker.  A lot of people commented on how great that modest system sounded.  The first thing most listeners did when entering the room was to look for the subwoofers; there were none.  What was hidden was the DAC used in this setup.  It was an Audio Note DAC 5 Signature that cost more than ten times the rest of the entire rest of the system.

I don’t know if you would call it a gimmick but the best demonstration at a hifi show for me was at a DC show in the spring of 1970.  The good folks at Dynaco were demonstrating the new A25 speakers by hiding them behind a screen that covered the entire side of the room.   After playing a song or two, someone turned on some lights on the other side of the screen showing the speakers.  I was amazed by how entire wall seemed full of sound and gave no hint as to where the speakers were located.  I was so impressed that I bought a pair of A25 within a week.  The A25 can still hold its own today.   Truly a classic design.

I recall the upside-down turntable demo.  For me it was at a hifi show in Philly during the early 1970s.  

I saw the Dual turntable demonstration you described.  It wasn't the playing upside down that was amazing to me.  It was the huge up and down motion of the spring-hung table.  The motion was smooth, so that is why the playing was not disturbed, but it was still quite amazing to see.

The other gimmick demonstration I recall was at a dealership selling Bose speakers.  They had a box speaker mounted on the wall that was about two feet tall by about 16-inches wide, by 8" or so deep.  It did not sound particularly good, but, it was plenty loud.  The person presenting the speaker then press a button on a remote control and the speakers on the wall, which were dummies, opened up to reveal some extremely tiny speakers hidden inside the box that were doing the actual playing.  Cute.

Another impressive demonstration was not one with any gimmicks, but, it was still quite a show.  It was the first demonstration of the Hill Plasmatronic speaker (ionic tweeter that uses an electrode to ionize the air around the electrode to create a plasma that expanded and contracted to generate sound).  The speaker was a scary looking thing that was attached to a 100 lb canister of nitrogen gas (the gas is fed into the area around the electrode to create an ionized nitrogen plasma; if nitrogen was not employed, oxygen would be ionized in sufficient quantities to create a large quantity of ozone which is bad for one's health and would quickly corrode and destroy the electrode in the tweeter).  The plasma glowed a blue color which was fascinating and pretty to look at.  You could faintly smell ozone even with the nitrogen gas feed.