Aroma:
1) You wrote it yourself:
"Albert, if my speculations regarding what happened with Magnepan or the pricing of the Dali's is incorrect, I would appreciate if you would share why you chose one speaker over the other." Yes, you did state that you had a conversation with him, but why not write the actual statements he told you here in your post and leave the "speculation" entirely out of the discussion? So were my comments unfair to you? I don't think so in the context of your speculative comment.
2) Even when a "celebrity" might get the 20.1s at half price, $7k or so, if they can already afford a system of the caliber that Albert owns, this cost savings insignificant in the whole picture. Such people do not change to gear because of the minimal cost savings here. When you live with a certain caliber audio system for a long time, it is very difficult to step back to a lesser quality system. If we get a few thousand $$ off, or half off, or even the product for free, if the sound is not at all to our liking in what we seek today, it's not going to last in our system very long anyway.
3) Even with the recent Soundlab price increase, the M1's are only about $3k more than the 20.1s. And the SLs are in a completely different league here. Concerning foolish expenditure, paying $14k for 20.1s is big time foolish when you can get the 3.6's for $4k. Next time you visit your Magnepan dealer, ask to hear these two speakers back to back and determine for yourself that either the 3.6's are way under priced or the 20.1's are way over priced. Are the 3.6's worth double the 1.6's? IMO, absolutely yes.
I am clearly not bashing Magnepan as I love the series 3.x but I just don't get it with the series 20. And the two times I had to go to the factory (10 minutes from where I work) to get tweeters replaced, the people there were incredibly helpful.
4) You continue to bring up the issue that it's not fair that you, the "unknown audiophile", is treated differently than the "celebrity". Life's too short to let something so insignificant be irritating. Again, it's a business decision that works in favor of the company. Like Nike quickly learned, put your shoe on a sports superstar at no charge and watch your sales go off scale.
And who cares what one person paid for a product vs. what another person paid. We all pay a different price for airfare, our car, our clothes, our groceries, etc., etc., etc. Why should we all be locked into paying the same price for our speakers? What we pay often has much to do with our relationship to the business.
5) On the issue of fairness, my gosh, how do I respond to your second statement here? I'm very tempted here, but I will behave myself for a change. I'm sure that many of the highly respected home dealers out there, two that I have met, Brian of EssentialAudio and GeneRubin of GeneRubinAudio, would have a very different opinion than yours here.
When a system is setup to allow far more potential of a product to be heard than an otherwise poorly setup would do, would this not result in "promoting information that was helpful" to the customer? If the system sounds poor or even mediocre, time and time again the speakers get unfairly blamed when it could be elsewhere. Or the customer thinks the entire system is terrible....and is likely to have no further interest to hear any of those products. I have heard so many poorly sounding systems in dealer shops and a few very good sounding systems. I have never heard a home based dealer have less than a first-rate sounding system. And I have never heard Magnepans sound remotely as good at any dealer as I have at various home installations. They need to quit using Bryston to demo their products as they don't show at all the potential of their product line.
What I suggest you do is to find such a local home dealer. I would not be surprised that you will end up learning far more from that person than you will at an audio "Salon".
Enough said.
John
1) You wrote it yourself:
"Albert, if my speculations regarding what happened with Magnepan or the pricing of the Dali's is incorrect, I would appreciate if you would share why you chose one speaker over the other." Yes, you did state that you had a conversation with him, but why not write the actual statements he told you here in your post and leave the "speculation" entirely out of the discussion? So were my comments unfair to you? I don't think so in the context of your speculative comment.
2) Even when a "celebrity" might get the 20.1s at half price, $7k or so, if they can already afford a system of the caliber that Albert owns, this cost savings insignificant in the whole picture. Such people do not change to gear because of the minimal cost savings here. When you live with a certain caliber audio system for a long time, it is very difficult to step back to a lesser quality system. If we get a few thousand $$ off, or half off, or even the product for free, if the sound is not at all to our liking in what we seek today, it's not going to last in our system very long anyway.
3) Even with the recent Soundlab price increase, the M1's are only about $3k more than the 20.1s. And the SLs are in a completely different league here. Concerning foolish expenditure, paying $14k for 20.1s is big time foolish when you can get the 3.6's for $4k. Next time you visit your Magnepan dealer, ask to hear these two speakers back to back and determine for yourself that either the 3.6's are way under priced or the 20.1's are way over priced. Are the 3.6's worth double the 1.6's? IMO, absolutely yes.
I am clearly not bashing Magnepan as I love the series 3.x but I just don't get it with the series 20. And the two times I had to go to the factory (10 minutes from where I work) to get tweeters replaced, the people there were incredibly helpful.
4) You continue to bring up the issue that it's not fair that you, the "unknown audiophile", is treated differently than the "celebrity". Life's too short to let something so insignificant be irritating. Again, it's a business decision that works in favor of the company. Like Nike quickly learned, put your shoe on a sports superstar at no charge and watch your sales go off scale.
And who cares what one person paid for a product vs. what another person paid. We all pay a different price for airfare, our car, our clothes, our groceries, etc., etc., etc. Why should we all be locked into paying the same price for our speakers? What we pay often has much to do with our relationship to the business.
5) On the issue of fairness, my gosh, how do I respond to your second statement here? I'm very tempted here, but I will behave myself for a change. I'm sure that many of the highly respected home dealers out there, two that I have met, Brian of EssentialAudio and GeneRubin of GeneRubinAudio, would have a very different opinion than yours here.
When a system is setup to allow far more potential of a product to be heard than an otherwise poorly setup would do, would this not result in "promoting information that was helpful" to the customer? If the system sounds poor or even mediocre, time and time again the speakers get unfairly blamed when it could be elsewhere. Or the customer thinks the entire system is terrible....and is likely to have no further interest to hear any of those products. I have heard so many poorly sounding systems in dealer shops and a few very good sounding systems. I have never heard a home based dealer have less than a first-rate sounding system. And I have never heard Magnepans sound remotely as good at any dealer as I have at various home installations. They need to quit using Bryston to demo their products as they don't show at all the potential of their product line.
What I suggest you do is to find such a local home dealer. I would not be surprised that you will end up learning far more from that person than you will at an audio "Salon".
Enough said.
John