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Re: The problem with Hi-Fi dealers (long--me too)

I also had a disgusting experience at this place in Palo Alto called Audio Perfection. I went there with a friend who is also in college, dressed casually in a t-shirt and khakis (my friend was wearing jeans). I asked the sales guy if I could listen to their speakers, and right off the bat he put me on edge. He said, "What price range are you looking for? We have speakers that are $300, and speakers that are $30,000"

Like, DUH, I know there are speakers that are $30,000.

So I told him around the $1k range, and he lead me to their Paradigm Studio Reference series. They were set up, ok that's an exaggeration--they were lined up in the home theater room with plasma displays showing movies on all sides of the room. When we started up a CD the sales guy didn't even turn off the plasma screen in front of me. You don't want to know how badly Chopin mixes with a video feed (no sound) of Wild Wild West.

I was vaguely annoyed already, but I decided to suffer quietly because after all we did drop in unannounced on a weekend. I closed my eyes to hear the music (and to block out a silly-looking Will Smith). Chopin was starting to sound pretty good when the air conditioning turned on. Ugh.

At least the sales guy had the decency to apologize for that, but he didn't do anything about it. I asked if we could compare the Paradigm Studio Reference 60's which we were listening to, to the 100's. He switched them and we listened.

After we satisfied our curiousity about the bass capabilities of the 100's (not bad) I started asking questions about time/phase coherence and the crossovers in the Paradigm speakers. My sales guy was starting to look annoyed and he called over the other sales people to ask in a kind of peremptory tone of voice. They didn't know and could only say that "Paradigm voices their speakers in an anechoic chamber and designs their crossovers accordingly", and told me to check out Paradigm's web page. Obviously they thought that using the big word "anechoic" would shut me up. I thanked them anyway and sat back down to listen. (I'm friends with the auditory perception professor at UC Berkeley who runs the Hearing Lab and who has his own anechoic chamber).

Then the sales guy asked me if I wanted to switch back to the 60's, and I told him it didn't matter. (The 100's sounded pretty much the same except with more bass). This is what really got to me: the sales guy reacted, saying rhetorically while giving a certain *look* to the other salespeople in the room, "Oh, it doesn't matter, eh?"

At this point all four salespeople were in the home theater room, standing behind us with their arms crossed with all three plasma video screens flashing around us, air conditioning whirring away, and I couldn't possibly enjoy the music.

So obviously I left and never came back again. I spent my $1800 on Vandersteen 2CE signatures at The Audible Difference down the street and avoided the temptation to show these idiots at Audio Perfection (what a snobbish name by the way) the receipt for my new speakers.

F*cking bastards. Like I read elsewhere on the 'net, they weren't audiophiles selling audio equipment, they were uneducated salespeople who had been selling toasters just the previous week and happened to graduate from Circuit City.

Andrew


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