Shop stereos always sounded better than yours?

[cronus]

Go in a music shop and they always sounded better than yours in the ol' days. A Marantz or Quad-amp was always better even if you owned the same amp. How did that happen?

[Animavore]

Bu it and it'll be the same.

[klr]

Go in a music shop and they always sounded better than yours in the ol' days. A Marantz or Quad-amp was always better even if you owned the same amp. How did that happen?

I've yet to hear of a sales technique that involves presenting products as inferior to how they are in reality.

Anyway, does anyone buy stereo units any more? They must be a niche market by now. A very small niche.

[cronus]

Go in a music shop and they always sounded better than yours in the ol' days. A Marantz or Quad-amp was always better even if you owned the same amp. How did that happen?

I've yet to hear of a sales technique that involves presenting products as inferior to how they are in reality.

Anyway, does anyone buy stereo units any more? They must be a niche market by now. A very small niche.

I'd advise buying a couple of quality second hand amps and quality CD racks etc whilst they're going cheap and out of fashion. Still can't top a quality system compared with these 'cardboard cereal box' mp3 set ups, when you've wired them up well. The old standards are becoming a niche market for now, and prices will reflect that in the next few years, they are far from second best though.

[Jason]

I suspect they carefully engineer those rooms you sit in to listen to their fancy setups with good acoustics in mind.

[orpheus]

I suspect they carefully engineer those rooms you sit in to listen to their fancy setups with good acoustics in mind.

I think that's probably a big part of it. One thing I've learned over the years is that the room affects the sound of an instrument much more than most people think. The principal oboist of the San Francisco Symphony once pointed out that when you see an orchestra onstage before they tune up to play, they'll be fiddling around on their instruments; you might even see the oboes actually shave tiny bits off their reeds - and what they're doing is not only adjusting their instrument, but they're adjusting it to the acoustics of that particular hall, on that particular night, at that particular temperature and humidity, with that number of people in the audience, making up a particular configuration of sound absorption and reflection). He's right.

I think some of it is also psychological - we want to buy something that will sound better than what we currently have, so we're predisposed to hear the new thing as better.

[HomerJay]

Plus they always stick Freebird on just as a customer walks in.

[MiM]

Three reasons: Room acoustics, room acoustics and room acoustics

Oh, and did I mention room acoustics.

[orpheus]

Plus they always stick Freebird on just as a customer walks in.

I always brought my own recordings to test it out. Something for solo piano (usually Gould's later recording of the "Goldberg" Variations) and for voice (e.g., Hermann Prey singing Schubert's "Winterreise"). Those two (voice and piano), if well-recorded, are two of the most revealing about the quality of playback equipment.