How Do They Ever Sell Any Stuff.....?

[fscl]

Dropped off an International shipment at the local DHL and didn't want to fight the traffic back home so I stopped at our local worst buy to pick up any promising "open box / clearance" goods. Nothing.

Did find the 3D HDTV displays and had a good time having some water splashed on my face.... One of the 3D HDTV demos is over by the "Magnolia" Home Theater section where I spy a Project Debut III hooked up to a Yamaha 410W (includes phono input) and pair of Martin Logan Source 8".

Since I've never seen a Project in the "flesh", start to dismantle the tt and study the guts (is there a ball at the bottom of the spindle well ) and feel sorry missing anti skate weight, cantilever slightly bent, VTF heavy feeling (so I balance and rotate to approx 1.5gr as the wt dial is hanging loose / broken).

The Police, Certifiable is on the deck so move the arm over and begin to play....

Have this LP at home and this is NOT sounding very good at all , so shifting my head slightly left and right figure the Logans are hooked up OUT OF PHASE.

Reverse the leads to one of the Logans, toe in a bit and walk out 10' from the setup and THEN have a NICE near field listening experience.

Which makes me wonder:

DO THESE GUYS WANT TO SELL ANYTHING? What happened to quality control Shouldn't the area / floor manager AUDIT how all of the systems SOUND? Furcryssakes, this is the MAGNOLIA section......

Fred very phase sensitive and thinking of jumping straight to 3D TV....

[mysticfred]

mr. fscl - your experienced ear for hifi sound should be far superior to most shop assistants used to simply plugging in CD ipods, HDTV's etc., they obviously know nothing about speaker phasing and seem "too busy" to care anyway, so the store may benefit from an unusual interest in their Project TT's this weekend - go there next week and they will have sold out thanks to your "interference"

[aardvarkash10]

they are not paid for their brains in retail....

Stack em high, sell em cheap.

[lanny]

BB might be forgiven. Less so the "better" hifi shop I visited that had their best system set up with violins on the right.

The first time I attended CES, I sat down for a demo of one of those megabuck speaker systems comprising a pyramid of several boxes, one driver each, stacked vertically. A sonic ziggurat. It was pretty nice, until the female vocalist started singing. After the demo, I checked the snake's nest of wires behind the speakers and found one midrange module out of phase.

[Terry Robinson]

Evening all:

Yes, floor staff are not paid for their brains!

I remember once visiting a branch of a large Electronics chain down in Melbourne in order to audition some nice speakers they had on display. These were only available as a kit, and were (from memory) quite keenly priced.

Anyway, I took in a C.D. of of "Symphonie fantastique" by Hector Berlioz, played by the R.P.O., conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. The shop assistant placed it in the player and the music started to play. Terrible!

The speakers were out of phase, and left/right were wrong, as well.

I gave up and no, I didn't purchase a pair!

Cheers,

Terry.

[fscl]

Stop by to see if the Wurst want's to really clear out open box specials, (nothing interesting) and visit the same ole' vinyl in the music section.

Anyway, inspect the Project (same shoddy condition) and see the same vinyls strewn on the A/V cabinet.....

However, this time, notice the Martin Logans are at MSRP pricing..... . They were discounted when out of phase, see ^.

Sheesh, not only did I cause an online run of their SL-1200's but correcting phase probably raised some eyebrows when the speakers were leaving the store at the lower price......

Fred and how do I collect on my commission.....

[lini]

Fred: Considering how little the sales people at consumer electronics markets earn nowadays, I guess it's not really surprising that hardly any of these know much about what they're selling anymore.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

[1200y3]

The consumer market has been forced to resort to this pathetic situation to keep prices from getting out of control when the market becomes ruled by so-called "specialists". Many businesses will "beat up" customers for not purchasing from them.

So to solve many problems competition will always be needed, and is only fair. DON"T BUY EVERYTHING YOU SEE. It doesn't cost much to build ESLs, and these fancy televisons get hot, and can't use the proper capacitors due to size limits. Most miniature capacitors that are in consumer products are not even truly functioning. They take hours of continuous operation for leakage to dissappear. And you wonder why TV's don't last forever when they really are worth 100s times more than audio equipment. For electronic buyers who think they know so much, just do manual real life capacitor leakage tests. It is no different than checking batteries, and it is very fun.

[1200y3]

The outfits that least desired to see vinyl and turntables stop selling were the big department stores. They could handle the forklift loads of vinyl, so the conveniences of shipping & handling were not as much of a concern as it was with the small stores. And why would they want to change? These stores actually looked old-fashioned because they carried vinyl as much as they could, until the market forced them to stop. (Many likely never did stop carrying a small amount.) Big department stores do not want to seee such changes in the trends.

One high end stereo company used the franchise principle (which they boasted in their brochures), which is another name for autorized dealer, was McIntosh. That basically meant all dealers were members of the corporation. This kept order and bonding, reducing confusion.