Alot of great ideas!
When I mentioned the one speaker/system in a room- I forgot to mention there would be a couple of rooms.
What I am trying to say is: since my experience has shown me that when entering an audio salon never blew me away with amazing sound when what I have at home is so much better why not have a business with a couple of rooms but in each of the room with a different flavor of course have it set up with components that match very well and produce an incredibly realistic sound like never heard before.
Just think about how the trickle-down technology has led the mid-fi equipment to sound pretty damn good. When I walk into bestbuy I am surprised at how good the lesser expensive stuff sounds, it is so good for the money, really. The audiophile salon has to really blow the peoples minds in that amazing presentaion. That is more likely to happen when the room is dedicated to one set up with no other idling speakers there to resonate when a demo is given with the other speaker playing.
And I would treat that room with acoustical traps and diffusers to get it perfect, who cares if you risk scaring off the customer with too much ancillaries, chances are they will not notice it but the music will defenitely be noticed!!
One system but amazingly impressive, downright explosive, head-turner, shockingly amazing. And all this with each room at different price points.
When we audiophiles go to expos, don't we seek out the rooms known to be as the best in the world, are we not there to hear what could be the best sound possible to discover what potential could be had.
I went to a couple shops in nyc recently, and I can only think of the one system that was set up properly, it even beat out the wilson sophias, maybe because one was digital and the other analog. But as you can see, the wilson are one of the highly recognized companies but verity fidelios sounded better to me at least. JMHO. But it wasn't just the fidelio's, shindo and gerrard may be the key players.
That's the way in my mind to run an audio salon, leave a lasting impression.
I still believe the source is significant, and if the prospective customer can't afford the $ tag of the whole system the salesman can remind them it's a steping stone, and that a temporay solution can be used such as this: the first step would be sell the speakers/amp as a package and a cd/preamp combo as a temporary source. And later on the better preamp and cd player or turntable can be purchased to bring up to snuff the sound in the customers home to match what was heard in the showroom.
