Buying "Sound Unheard"

Late with my response again. Arrrrgh, where does the time fly? Well, anyway, my suggestion is to get your primary system up and happy making with only auditioned gear, then play with unheard/unseen gear on a piece by piece basis. I auditioned a good bit for my primary system, but bought my entire secondary system on line. Like them both, recognize their respective weaknesses, and can now comfortably fool around with parts and pieces in both. The one component I find toughest to consider on-line remains the speaker - it's so critical to the whole system sound, and so difficult to gauge whether someone else hears things similarly to me. I read alot of recommendations for Spendors, but when I actually heard them I was hugely unimpressed. No one ever even mentions Silverline SR-17s, but for my system they are wonderful. Still, I shouldn't be surprised to one day find myself buying a used pair of Dunlavys, or a new set of NewForm 645s, or whatever happens to float my boat that day. I treat it like gambling - the wise man never gambles, but your average shmoe can get by if he can remember to never gamble more than he can actually afford to lose. Unlike the wise man, every once in a while, the average shmoe wins big.

chas

One element of all this is, as they used to say at Apple, the journey is the reward. Just about every component I try in my system teaches me something about how I hear, what I like and don't like, what matters most to me (today, anyway), and what the hell everybody else is talking about! Dan.

It's not just rural areas! i live in the center of philadelphia and i have a very difficult time auditioning equipment due to my work schedule (6 days of work, 3 nights of school) most of the better audio shops do not have night or sunday hours so i wind up narrowing down possibilities using forums like this and then travelling to a shop i can find that is open on sunday. it blows my mind that there aren't open on sunday.