When everyone thinks it sounds good except you

Lots of times at the Owston do’s. After a few years, we had a chat about this and decided that since all the regulars now knew each other well enough, we would all be brutally honest with what we heard. Only way to help people progress with their diy efforts.

I have no problem saying what I think about what I'm hearing. It's the honest thing to do. If others disagree, that's their prerogative. No offence should be taken either way. Of course, there's the occasional 'precious' character who regards any negativity as a personal affront, but that would be their problem.

I can’t say I’ve ever been in that position, although I have disagreed with salesmen before. I remember one of them playing KEF105/3s with pride and me saying I thought they were a cacophonous mess that didn’t play music. I also irritated a Linn Salesman by consistently preferring the Naim CDS over his favoured Linns but I wasn’t rude because both were good. The naim was just better to me.

I guess salesmen are easier to be blunt with because it’s not their gear,

One of my mates has rarely had a good sound, He tends to “experiment” with speaker drivers and crossovers. All have sounded so far from the norm, they sound broken to me, I have come to wonder whether he might have hearing damage, I tend not to comment when I hear his stuff nowadays. It pleases him, so it’s not helpful to add my thoughts.

I don’t tend to attend bake offs. I’m not sure how blunt I’d be, I guess it would depend on the company. I wouldn’t really want to upset someone who had taken the time and trouble to travel with their kit, but I would say whether or not I liked the sound. Would I feel bad if I was the odd one out? Not at all. I value that difference.

At one of the recent Bristol hi-fi shows I spent a lot of time in the corridors listening to people's comments as they came out of demonstrations and it quickly occurred to me that we all have different preferences to hearing music. One person's "detailed" could just as easily be perceived as being "bright" by others and it amazed me how many people were listening to loose stodgy bass and commenting how "realistic" it is, while firm taut bass was perceived as being "lacking" in bass.

When I got home I did a lot of soul searching and changed the way I wrote reviews. I stopped using fixed viewpoints in my evaluations set to pre-defined standards and tailored the wording to appeal to an audience that would enjoy that particular kind of sound. For example, not everyone welcomes prodigious bass output and people that live in flats actually want a truthful bass but in a muted way and not dominating the sound.

I say too much and upset people more than ever, so shouldn't contribute to this. At shows, you could almost always tell in the corridor if a room was using a vinyl source, as the bass was stronger, more 'plump' in character and less defined. Having said that, I remember one evening, hearing some then new Wilson System 8 Watt/Puppy speakers in a huge, totally free space and Krell driven. Dan D'Agostino was there, exhausted after his flight and these things, revered by audiophiles, sounded over fat and dull - ugh!! We had some WITT's on dem at KJ. Nobody bought them but they were the best sound in the shop I thought (I attended plenty of live jazz gigs then and these had the same tone and feel, if not the volume)

AVI integrated and Mission 753's played TOO LOUDLY..... Customer loved it!

YUK!  Each to his own, as they say

All the time.  Can remember speaking to someone after walking out of an Absolute Sounds dem were we thought the sound was very hifi but you wouldn't want to listen to it for more than 30 mins. Absolute Sounds do not seem to match Wilson and Audio Research any longer, big mistake.

IME hif-fi shops don't, as a general rule, tend to hire salesmen who are any good at it.

They seem to mostly hire clean-cut youngsters with no experience of anything, let alone hi-fi/music, who are good at hiding in the back or looking busy whilst doing nothing much except avoiding any sort of contact with potential customers. 

I remember going in a branch of Super-Fi looking to buy an amplifier. Three youths and an older manager in there, no other customers. They were all standing about chatting until I walked in when two of them plus the manager immediately found something very pressing to do behind the counter. The one remaining youth was enthusiastic, pointed out a few amps and asked about my speakers. He then shouted over to the others asking for their input too. They looked at him like he had gone mad. 'Trying to assist a customer and actually sell him something? You'll soon learn mate'. They were completely disinterested. 

Shop closed about a year later.

I went in Walrus Systems one time and the bloke in there was friendly and helpful even though I was only killing time and told him so from the off. So not saying that there are not exceptions. Always found Richer Sounds to be very good in terms of giving you attention, even if their hi-fi knowledge is a bit limited.

In general though my experience has been that you have to try hard to convince them to sell you something which is sort of the wrong way round.


My first sales job you got paid commission based on the percentage of prospects you converted. So it was no good rushing through the difficult punters to get to the easy sales, you had to sell to the time-wasters too. You had to sell them a product they didn't especially want at a price they knew they could get cheaper elsewhere.


Sounds impossible but like they say in 'Glengarry Glenross': 'A man doesn't walk onto the lot unless he wants to buy. Do you think he came in to get out of the rain?'

Now that's when you need a good salesman. Anything else is just order-taking and anyone can do that.

AVI S2000 amps were hardly warm toned due to their high damping factor, but the small 100WPC (claimed) integrated hard clipped which I never recall the separate power amps ever doing - the 80WPC stereo one was a sweetie when pushed I remember and the huge 200WPC stereo amp was amazing by anyone's standards IMO into conventional 4+ ohm speaker loads anyway...

Having worked in both commission and non-commission hifi, I would far rather have the former. Of course, back then, I was too idealistic and threw away a killer wage with prospects for a lousy wage with the gear being the only reward. Once we started selling TVs, I was left with no incentive, because they didn’t (and stil, don’t) interest me.