Should a dealer have a state of the art room to show their state of the art gear?

caesar

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May 30, 2010
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Most of the dealers I've been to, do not. Makes me wonder how much of the gear's magic is lost because of this.
 

JackD201

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In my opinion it would be ideal. The question is, in this day and age, is it practical from a purely business standpoint. On one hand a potential client might walk in, like the stuff and still buy it elsewhere like on the net or out of State where there are lower taxes or something. On the other hand, suppose the dealer has an ideal room, his client loves it, and takes it home and finds his own listening space is robbing him of the greatness he heard. I did my room as best I could but then again I own the space so I'm not paying rent or paying off a mortgage. Audio isn't even my main source of income. If one looks at the total contribution of SOTA sales to net income. One would find that the higher volume mid-price audio offerings and HT installations are typically quite a bit more. It's what keeps the doors open. These don't require spaces quite as large nor do they require spaces much better than a typical client's domicile acoustically speaking. I just thought I'd throw that in the discussion because a lot of people have the misconception that high end dealers are rolling in dough. With such a small market, big ticket items aren't exactly flying off the shelves. Add to that a slow global economy..........

Over here though, the ones that are doing well in SOTA sales all have very, very good show rooms so I would say it helps, at the very least, to assure your clients that you do know what you're doing and that you're in it for the long haul.
 

jadis

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Apr 28, 2010
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Like Jack, I say 'ideally'. And if not SOTA treatment, at least moderate treatment, addressing echo and bass node problems. It doesn't have to look SOTA, for I believe it's not really in throwing big money to say the room is SOTA but I believe a few basic principles that apply to room treatment is at least necessary.
 

JackD201

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Yes Phil. It's happened a few times when I've been asked, "It sounds fabulous here but what happens when I take it home?".

If you've actually been to the person's home, you know what the honest answer will be. Saying, we can fix your room too. Isn't much comfort. Being in a fully tricked out environment can be very intimidating and even discouraging. That shrinks the market even further. That's when having a second smaller, simpler showroom really comes in handy. The bulk of our sales come from the "small room".
 

Bruce B

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Acoustic treatment does not cost alot. If dealers/reviewers spent half the amount that they do on cables alone, blah...blah....blahh... I know I'm preaching to the choir.

Look at how good some of the rooms at RMAF sounded with minimal treatment and only 24hr. to set up. it's my opinion that if they care enough to go through the work of presenting their speakers/equipment in the best possible light, then they have earned my respect and business.
 

Johnny Vinyl

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May 16, 2010
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In an ideal world yes, but it isn't very practical. I also don't think that the consumer expects it. This may sound strange to many of you, but I'm never going to be able to duplicate their SOTA room in my own home ( as is the case with the vast majority of consumers). Rather than having a SOTA room, I'd much prefer any dealer giving me a chance to audition in my home, preferably without any kind of restocking charge.
 

Bruce B

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But what people don't realize is a great sounding room is not expensive and can be done with careful setup and planning. With a little bit of money, it can be a SOTA room with a very high WAF. Acoustical treatment can be hidden and incorporated into the wall and decor.
And remember, the better the room, the less you'll need to spend on equipment!
 

Johnny Vinyl

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But what people don't realize is a great sounding room is not expensive and can be done with careful setup and planning. With a little bit of money, it can be a SOTA room with a very high WAF. Acoustical treatment can be hidden and incorporated into the wall and decor.
And remember, the better the room, the less you'll need to spend on equipment!

I agree with you wholeheartedly on this point Bruce! And I truly wish we'd see more dealers giving that part of the equation more importance. Unfortunately I haven't seen much of it.
 

amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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Since there is no agreement on what room treatment should be, I don't see how that can be a requirement for a dealer. Sure, putting the speaker in a bathroom would not be right :). But there is something to be said about a dealer who sticks acoustic treatment without proper modelling and understanding which does more to damage the speaker's sound than not.

And there is this danger that some issues have been taken away that you would want to know about. Let's look at some speakers that have raised response in high frequencies due to poor sound power response. Now take some thin treatment and it would help reduce that peak. Would you want that? I would not. That kind of non-broadband treatment would be totally wrong for a well designed speaker and hopefully does not exist in your listening room. So why would you want to hear the speakers with it?

I think the core issue here is that audio has no standard of "rightness." Speakers play a very colored sound in any room they are placed and one way or the other, you are hearing something that is very different than what will be in your home.

Now if the original point was about the rest of the set-up, yes. I believe in having a performant chain up stream of the device as to not that be the limiting factor. But for acoustics and speakers, unless we all agree on the same approach, any answer would be as wrong as it is right! :)
 

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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But what people don't realize is a great sounding room is not expensive and can be done with careful setup and planning. With a little bit of money, it can be a SOTA room with a very high WAF. Acoustical treatment can be hidden and incorporated into the wall and decor.
And remember, the better the room, the less you'll need to spend on equipment!

And the opposite can be true too :) There was a NY dealer who will go unmentioned that commissioned a room about 20+ years ago and paid 150K for it's construction. It was one of the worst sounding rooms I've ever been in :( I think they called it the "zero" room and it truly was a zero.
 

Johnny Vinyl

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And the opposite can be true too :) There was a NY dealer who will go unmentioned that commissioned a room about 20+ years ago and paid 150K for it's construction. It was one of the worst sounding rooms I've ever been in :( I think they called it the "zero" room and it truly was a zero.

Ahhh....makes the whole idea of creating such a room rather pointless. You thought it was a big fat zero.....I'll bet others though it was great.
 

MylesBAstor

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Ahhh....makes the whole idea of creating such a room rather pointless. You thought it was a big fat zero.....I'll bet others though it was great.

Outside of the employees-----NO :)
 

Johnny Vinyl

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So how's a dealer to know when or if he's set up the SOTA room to go with his SOTA gear? Bottom line...can't be done, so why waste the investment.
 

MylesBAstor

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So how's a dealer to know when or if he's set up the SOTA room to go with his SOTA gear? Bottom line...can't be done, so why waste the investment.

I think that it shows that the science of acoustics isn't as perfect as it seems :)

Like Cyril Harris trying to apply acoustical equations to large halls like Avery Fisher (and others) and sounding dreadful. Same goes for small rooms. In fact, in conversations with Art Noxon, we often discussed how rooms that shouldn't work, do work or there are just as many exceptions to the rules as there are that fit the rules :)
 

JackD201

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Like engineering, acoustics is as much art as it is science. Elegant solutions are the simple and efficient ones. Of course that requires that there is a clear objective. Since it is the objectives that differ from individual to individual so differ the targets and solutions. When planning my room I could have chosen to go with control room or mastering room specs but I purposely didn't and opted for something similar to DIN (was it 4?) with a touch of bass lift in the low and sub bass region (for when we want to Part-ey :) ). I didn't save much more than the price of a piece of equipment in doing so. Construction costs are very low here. I chose it because I wanted the room to play a part in the overall presentation. If I was a professional like Bruce, I definitely would want to hear more of what's on the recording and less room coloration and would have chosen accordingly.

Again, I agree with Bruce that with careful planning building a good or even great sounding room doesn't need to look bad. The only thing is that unless you own the place or have the type of job security or income that will guarantee that you won't be moving anytime soon, that is an endeavor quite difficult to commit too. Even a professional reviewer with probably the best selling book on high end audio has had to leave his purpose built room. His new room has had folks on forums raking him over the coals. I bet that's nothing compared to how the poor guy feels about the loss of his old place when it comes to the sound quality he's getting now.

I also agree with Myles that, at least in this forum, nobody neglects acoustics so our collective baseline is much higher than the average homeowner. The trick then, in my opinion only of course, would be to have a demo room, that the main target market could identify with and be comfortable in. Since we've all seen pics of Amir's store I think his is a good example. He's got a SOTA theater but he's also got very comfortable areas where he sets up the "simpler" 2 channel systems. These areas make you feel like you are in a home albeit an upscale one.
 

lydon

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Jul 9, 2011
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Yes they should. It can also be an expensive proposition for the dealer because with very expensive state of the art equipment say like the Wilson Alexandria X-2 series II, the room will more than likely be tailored to that specific piece of equipment strengths and down play whatever its weaknesses maybe. An ideal environment for all designs to be showcased at there best, may be pushing it. But then I am not the expert in such endeavors. Anybody know the truth of the matter?
 

MylesBAstor

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Also something no one has brought up: the leading High-end companies do not just give their gear to any old dealer. They usually undergo some sort of credit check and many manufacturers will actually visit a dealer to see and hear how their gear sounds!
 

microstrip

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May 30, 2010
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A dealer should have a good room where the systems sound good, if not clients would run away immediately, but not an excessively good sounding one. Otherwise, most consumers would be very disappointed with the sound they get when they take the system home and would return it ...

We can not forget that the great majority of consumers does not have dedicated listening rooms and do not want to see visible room treatments in their homes.
 

Gregadd

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Apr 20, 2010
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I am not sure the term SOTA applys to room treatment. You treat the room to deal with the problems presented.

From what I see the dealers design a room and fine tune it as needed.
 

Believe High Fidelity

[Industry Expert]
Nov 19, 2015
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I would say yes. And to that point if they are to provide value to the clientele' that come for their expertise if they are just there to provide a listening space and put gear on the floor that just equates to having a lot of money not value.

To some of the other points if you have a great room and take it home I don't think has any merit. You want to know what the product is capable of and you do after hearing it in its best environment. If you take it home to an untreated room and it doesn't sound as good how does that change any equipment that your put in that space?? Maybe I am not understanding that perspective.

If the room conditions are not very close to ideal then I would go to an audio show in a hotel room with less than ideal conditions to evaluate all of my purchases and forget the local dealer. They need to add value and a business that can't address something as important as room acoustics has likely little to offer as a whole...

(back from the dead)
 
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