Walking Into A Brick & Mortar High End Audio Store

AudioConnection is far beyond B&M for sure.

Agreed. I was a customer for years before I moved west. Great guy.

I want to know where you guys go to "waste" the salesmen's time, because I went into two B&M audio stores in San Francisco and Berkeley and could not get anyone in either place to talk to me, much less try to sell me anything. And, I was there to buy a phono stage! My experience with audio sales clerks is that they would rather listen to the gear in the store and chat with their fellow salesmen than try to sell anything. B&M stores are dying out and it is IMHO due to surly, pretentious sales clerks who couldn't sell ice cream on a hot day! My two cents.

Face it..For all intents n purposes , THERE ARE NO BRICKS NOR MORTAR LEFT IN THE EQUATION! If any exist, its only some money laundering front to hide the real goings on behind the scenes! Lol!
Good luck making a buck, as a hifi store otherwise

Avgoround, I don't understand your comment. There are many B&M stores in existence, unfortunately some better and some worse.

If you have enough audio friends that have enough gear, then maybe you don't need a brick and mortar store. But if not, then how do you not only listen and discover which gear you like but how do you know what gear works best together and will work in your room? Endless purchases and trial and error?

If you don't have a good dealer that you can work with you are probably selecting your audio gear based on what someone else has heard (or thinks).