"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
The most dramatic change I ever heard was in a shop when the removed the
Isobariks and tried Quad 63's. From awful to excellent. They shop droids
hated the Quads. But then they were unable to hear that one of the
tweeters
in one of the Isobariks was busted... :-)


"Never in the field of domestic audio was so much bull**** dispensed by
so few and believed by so many"

The problem, alas, was that it was a 'key' few people in just the right
places to influence readers of the magazines, and those who innocently
walked into the shops in question. IMHO the results blighted UK domestic
audio for over a decade.

I don't blame those who went into the shops, and bought the gear. Often
they were given no real chance to hear alternatives or make a judgement
for
themselves without being led by the magazines and salesdroids. In the case
I had in mind we had to nag the driods until after I'd shown the Isobariks
were damaged to force them to even bring any other speakers (the 63's)
into
the room. They did so with bad grace, mumbling comments about how poor the
63's were.

I wonder if they sold the Isobariks to someone without replacing the
broken
tweeter...

Remember this was also the days when part of the 'wisdom' was that any
other speakers in the room might 'upset the sound'. Maybe by allowing the
listener to discover how they were being led to buy actually compared with
alternatives. :-)

Curiously, the items in question had carefully controlled 'franchises'
with
higher mark up rates. Triumph of marketing over content. Given the
treatment in the magazines, the items 'sold themselves'. The punter walked
into the shop asking to hear that specific setup, heard it, and bought it.
No real comparisons or experimentation.

No doubt this all still goes on in some cases. One of the reasons I got
fed
up with the audio biz as a living. I also know of other engineers who left
the field for similar reasons.

Maybe these days I am a gamekeeper turned poacher... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

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When I was involved with consumer audio in the mid '80s, (some may remember
Beechwood Audio in Braintree and Bury St Edmunds) I ran an ad in the April
edition of Hi-Fi News offering single ear demonstrations. This required two
customers, one would listen with their right ear blocked, and the other with
the left. At the end of the piece of music, each listener would tell the
other what they had just heard, thus restoring the stereo experience.

It attests to the spirit of the time that only a few older customers
actually understood the ad for what it was......

Not surprisingly, I returned to the relative sanity of broadcasting shortly
afterwards.

S.

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