life without audio dealers

There is no good substitute for looking at and hearing equipment in person. I've seen some fine looking photographs that fail to communicate certain aspects of how a piece actually appears in real life. Punching buttons, twirling knobs and generally "kicking tires" are immensely helpful.

Hearing different speakers and other equipment side-by-side is also enormously useful, even if the dealer showroom isn't a duplicate of my home listening room. When I went speaker shopping two years ago, I was able to very quickly eliminate a number of well known quality brands. Lots of people liked 'em, and they had good reviews, but side-by-side auditions at the local dealers quickly showed they were not my cup of tea. It was immensely useful in narrowing the field down to two candidates.

None of that could have been easily accomplished with direct manufacturer sales. I have done that in the past (I auditioned Ohms about five years ago) but it simply is not a process that's useful for narrowing a field. The procedure is a hassle that I find worthwhile only if you are making a final decision.

The big problem with many brick and mortar dealers is they are stuck in a difficult middle spot. Best Buy, Circuit City and the others have a pretty good lock on the middle-market where the vast sales numbers are. The audiophile end of the market has gotten increasingly fragmented with zillions of brands and buyers who, honestly put, are more and more in the obsessive eccentric category. Audiophiles make for an extraordinarily difficult and demanding customer. I don't blame many B&M dealers for turning their marketing efforts elsewhere, such as HT, or getting heavily into the overpriced and sometimes questionable accessories and tweak end of things.

Ultimately, as Adam Smith put it, the invisible hand of the market will sort things out. No one stays in business long solely on the basis of being a good samaritan. There are rent, salaries and insurance to pay, inventory to buy, bank loans to repay and the business model has to support all that. If small audiophile B&M dealers disappear, then we will have pretty much gotten what we asked for. I think that'd be sad, but then there are lots of things in my life that are not the way they used to be.

when you compare speakers at an audio dealer, will that comparison hold up in one's own stereo system ? maybe.

it is possible that while you might prefer speaker a over speaker b during a dealer demo, you might prefer speaker b over speaker a with your own components.

Let's get practical for a moment. I took a quick look over at AudioAsylum. There were roughly 1,200 models of speakers by around 300 different manufacturers. Using your logic, I would have to drag each of them home (or at least those in my price range) before I could reliably dismiss them from consideration.

Lets say you're looking for a pair of speakers in the $3000 range. There's a ton of 'em.

By your way of thinking, I will have done myself a great disservice unless I bring each and every candidate into my own listening room and give it a trial of weeks or more.

That, my friend, is impossible. I dare say that precious few full time audio reviewers have heard more than a fraction of the available speakers on the market in their own listening room.

As a practical matter, we all have to make judgment calls regarding which of the many available speakers will make the cut for our final selection process. At best, if a person gets two or three speakers into his home for an evaluation, he's done pretty good.

To think that I'm going to bring home 100 different pairs of $3,000 speakers for audition isn't going to happen. And I'm not going to look down my nose at anyone who winnows down the field with judgment calls at a dealer's showroom. I also certainly don't blame any dealer who restricts home trials to serious candidates.

It would be interesting to see how your selection process works. How do you eliminate the non-serious contenders? I find a dealer showroom demo gives me more useful information than advertising copy or a flowery review, whether professionally done or from an online contributor.

I don't buy that you're bringing "every" possible candidate, so you're eliminating them somehow. If you haven't heard them yourself, that leaves appearance, published specs, reviews, reputation and not a whole lot more.

Unfortunately a lot of this discussion seems to be turning into a black and white situation. It is almost as if some are saying that if the dealer won't deliver endless pairs of expensive speakers to their homes for lengthy trials, then a B&M dealer is of no value whatsoever.

That is a "reductio ad absurdum" argument.

Yes, it is great when you can hear equipment in your own home before buying. I've had that pleasure and it is the "10" on a scale of 1 to 10 for a buyer.

However, if I get my choice of just reading or talking about a product before I buy it or actually listening to it, I'll take the listening choice, thank you. Listening in a dealer's room is very valuable to me, even if imperfect.

Even then, one has ample opportunity to tell the dealer about your room size, layout and other equipment, along with what type of music you favor and "how" you listen. Most dealers will be glad just to take your money if you want something, but I've also found them willing to discuss concerns you may have.

(On a side note, one thing that many dealers find aggravating about certain audiophiles is their strong desire to already know everything. This often prevents them from even asking for suggestions and help, or keeps them from accepting or even considering valuable advice.)

I'm not an audio dealer (though I did manage a stereo store some 30 years ago.) The types of buyers and the egos people have really haven't changed that much in that time frame. We're still human - the world would be a great place if everyone would just do things our way.

Things are messier these days with more products on the market and more distribution options. The Walmarts of the world and internet sales have affected all businesses; the audio world is hardly alone in this regard. That has made some things better and other things worse, but here we nonetheless.