Pbgalvin wrote: Moderator - sorry but I disagree with you. After reading reviews etc my first experience with GeT Ones was at a dealer and I wasn't impressed.

Disagreements are encouraged here.

I should have added to my point that I was excluding bad demos (whatever the reason), if the demo is no good you can't make any valid comparisons. And comparisons is all that you can really do unless you have an acoustic memory unlike normal humans. The point I was making is that if a speaker is being compared to other speakers, the comparisons hold up regardless of the room the speakers are in. If speaker A sounds better to you than speaker B when you get a demo, speaker A will sound better in your room too. That was my point. If the dealer can't manage a decent demo, shame on them. And it is not unheard of (obviously), regardless of how much effort we put into training them and showing them how to do it right. Fortunately, the vast majority do it well.

I also don't believe that most dealers will eat the time and expense to provide a free in-home trial. Especially for our products, which are not terribly expensive or hugely profitable. Maybe for those $120,000 speakers you saw though...

Yah it's a bit tricky for someone interested in any given speaker to get a quality listen to them.

Some people just buy based on reviews or reputation - my dealer told me that most people don't even listen in their listening room before buying. Very strange to me.

An on-line company that's no longer around had a couple of interesting things they did.
One was to have a couple of demo pairs in circulation, with a running list of who received them next. And to save shipping they didn't go back to HQ, but rather demo listener A when done would ship them to demo listener B.

A maybe more likely to get implemented thing was they encouraged owners to allow people to come by and listen to their setups. So in-home demos of people who owned them and didn't mind visitors. I've done this before and wouldn't mind doing it again. We could start another forum topic for this if you / others think it's a good idea....

Pbgalvin wrote: Yah it's a bit tricky for someone interested in any given speaker to get a quality listen to them.

Some people just buy based on reviews or reputation - my dealer told me that most people don't even listen in their listening room before buying. Very strange to me.

An on-line company that's no longer around had a couple of interesting things they did.
One was to have a couple of demo pairs in circulation, with a running list of who received them next. And to save shipping they didn't go back to HQ, but rather demo listener A when done would ship them to demo listener B.

A maybe more likely to get implemented thing was they encouraged owners to allow people to come by and listen to their setups. So in-home demos of people who owned them and didn't mind visitors. I've done this before and wouldn't mind doing it again. We could start another forum topic for this if you / others think it's a good idea....

Agreed, especially if not near a major market. The days of a (or more) great hifi stores in every town are long gone unfortunately. When I was selling hifi gear in my college days there were four stores in our one small town. Now there is none.

Reviews from highly regarded sources are actually one of the best criteria these days, and certainly better than a listen at a store that does a poor job at the system setup and demo. I have had to get stuff on faith from good reviews, never been disappointed. And of course many people just don't want to be bothered with selecting themselves - which works fine if they are relying on a good dealer to do the product selection for them (I of course don't agree with that, but everyone has different priorities).

If retailers continue to disappear, some changes in how products are available for audition will be inevitable. Hopefully, I will be retired by then and it will be somebody else's problem

Moderator wrote:

Pbgalvin wrote: Moderator - sorry but I disagree with you. After reading reviews etc my first experience with GeT Ones was at a dealer and I wasn't impressed.

Disagreements are encouraged here.

I also don't believe that most dealers will eat the time and expense to provide a free in-home trial. Especially for our products, which are not terribly expensive or hugely profitable. Maybe for those $120,000 speakers you saw though...

Moderator, I agree with you about that last paragraph. I think that most dealers won't offer the free in-home demo unless you ask nicely and you have "history" with that dealer. I was stunned when the local dealer offered to let me take home a $1800 used amp to evaluate for 3 to 5 days. In all my years of buying, he was the first one.

It's been a learning experience reading about those that have arranged a free in-home demo.

Finally, also appreciate the way you have allowed the various forms here to disagree....there is learning in disagreeing politely. It's nice to see the respect among the posters here.

Del

Moderator wrote:

Pbgalvin wrote: Yah it's a bit tricky for someone interested in any given speaker to get a quality listen to them.

Some people just buy based on reviews or reputation - my dealer told me that most people don't even listen in their listening room before buying. Very strange to me.

Reviews from highly regarded sources are actually one of the best criteria these days, and certainly better than a listen at a store that does a poor job at the system setup and demo. I have had to get stuff on faith from good reviews, never been disappointed. And of course many people just don't want to be bothered with selecting themselves - which works fine if they are relying on a good dealer to do the product selection for them (I of course don't agree with that, but everyone has different priorities).

Pbgalvin, I agree with that last paragraph where more and more of us rely on "highly regarded sources" for reviews. I have always relied on my ears and my wife's who has a better grasp of the mid range to treble range than I do but I really supplement with reviews prior to walking into a store.

Del

I think one of the ways to “position” a speaker, especially first listen to a brand, is to ask the dealer to play other speaker brands in the same price range to get some perpective on relative strengths/weaknesses.

When I first went to our Austin GEt dealer, having read about the then new T2 but never having heard a single note from them, I did that. Fell in love with the GEt sound. Have since asked to hear other speaker brands vs GEt models I hadn’t heard before. Good to have reference points... always amazed at the consistency of that GEt sound across all their products.

It would be nice if speaker companies and dealers had home “test drive” options more often, like car dealers often do. I do like Pbgalvin’s suggestion of speaker models being available on a first come first served basis for Home demo’s.
These ARE some pretty big investments.

Rick