As again Grpblu you appoint yourself as the self appointed guardian of propriety and many people find your incessant attacks to be in bad taste and do not bring anything to the table perhaps you should rethink your approach.
Our posts have been mentioned time and time again as being informative by many readers and a few people actually purchased products based on reading our posts.
One thing you should know those people were not local to us and didn’t purchase these products from us.
Musicfx who lives in CA, purchased a T+A 2500R and loves the way it drives his Wilson Sashas. He purchased a Chord Dave and then realized that the 1/4 price T+A Dac 8 DSD sounds nearly as good.
My track record over 30 years is one of finding and promoting some of the best sounding products in the industry and our rooms at many of the regional shows are usually some of the best sounding.
Many of our setups have been the same pairings that many reviewers have gone gaga over. Johnathan Valin loved the pairing of CJ and the Scaena line array, English reviewers love ATC and Naim, Kef and Chord was another well respected combo.
However, no matter what the magazines say as the store owner, I have to find the product to be special enough to warrant paying for it and having to market it. Unlike you a store is much more committed to a brand, we have to believe in that brand in order to sell it.
I look at price, is the product a good value, is there unique technology, are the features and user experience good, will the company grow, and how does it compare to the competition.
One of your other posts you mentioned how turned off you were about listening to our Usher presentation at the 2007 NY show, where I said the $16k Ushers were an extraordinary loudspeaker for the money one that competed with much more expensive loudspeakers, did I ever say that the Usher were the best speakers ever made, no I did not, nor did I say the Ushers were better than a Focal, Wilson or other highly lauded brand, the message here was a product using state of the art drivers, priced much lower then many others speakers and this pair of speakers could easily challenge a much more expensive speaker, gee a similar message to the Paradigms a few years later.
What I find so ironic you were never commented that you hated the sound of the Ushers it was always an issue about salesmanship and presentation, not at the product.
I guess that sums up our differences in a nut shell I would not care what a presenter would say or if I was being sold to at a show or a store, I would be keyed in on the product, does it sound good, does it perform, is it a good value etc, does the person I am talking with bring up valid points, does he or she know what they are talking about and lastly does their systems or products they are advocating perform?
It seemed that most of the audiophile press later went on to say the same things about Usher their $3k BE 718 and DMD 718 monitors in the 2007 to 2010 period became one of the highest rated and most raved about monitor in that price range.
We stopped selling Usher due to a change in their distribution as well as finding less heavy other loudspeaker brands, but for the time they were really superb speakers.
What is so remarkable is how much bad advice is given on the forums by people that think they know what they are talking about.
I have seen way too many audiophile system pictures which show poorly setup, expensive rigs, and people wonder why they keep on changing out gear.
If you look at one of our showroom pictures you will see Echo buster panels, Acoustic system resonators, Shakti holographs. various power conditioners, power cables, high end racks etc. Our systems are carefully constructed and tuned.
As per my personal record at SBS as well as Innovative in all of those years i had many satisfied clients, whose systems made music.
There were very few sales people as either one of these stores that actually knew the craft of setting up a great system. I on the other had tested and came up with many of the combinations that sounded so good at the time such as the CAT,VAC,WP 5 combo usually with a CEC and EAD front end, I never trusted the gospel that the same companies products all around always sounded better.
What it keep coming down to is you don’t like a salesperson that in your mind is a passionate advocate for what they sell and what they believe in and you don’t like being "sold" good for you, all of life is buying and selling from marriage to working at your job.
If you look at my track record many of the best audiophile products sold by both of these companies was found and advocated by me based on reading and researching, VAC, BAT, Nordost, Black Diamond Racing. EAD, and many other brands over the years ended up in these stores, based on my reading and research.
As per the Kharmas I tested a $120k pair with a diamond tweeter, on the same electronics Conrad Johnson Art and Gat and a full T+A stack as well as the Thrax electronics, and just switched out speakers, so we were doing a one to one comparison.
I said the Kharmas sounded very good, I also said they weren’t worth $120k nor did they sound better then the $68k Polymer Research speakers or the Paradigm Personas.
When you are evaluating carrying such an expensive speaker you have to also put yourself into the mind of the consumer and say is this product worth that kind of money.
We also tested the Kharma DB 9 and they were excellent, and were a much better value at $30k, we just didn’t find them to outperform either the Kef Blade, the Personas or the Polymers.
My opinions come from carefully testing in the case of power conditioners we tested over the years Shunyata, Audience, Synergistic, Silver Circle, Exact Power, PS Audio, Running Springs, Audioquest and Audio Magic and Isotek.
How many stores actually keep on comparing their products?
If you actually want to talk about the merits of any line of audio products my ears and pen are open.
As per Ricridi’s question, the Roland gear is excellent. in the case of integrated amplifier vs integrated amplifier I had a customer with the Roland integrated who brought it in to the shop per my request.
The Roland was excellent but it did seem to lose some of the detail and a bit of air compared to a $6k Coda integrated amp we were comparing at the time. I liked the overall sound quality of the Roland it just didn’t blow me away compared to a 400 watt Coda integrated at $4k less.
The Coda CS ib is a gem it just doesn’t have the PRAT and same involving sound that the T+A gear does. The 2500 R just draws you into the performance in a way that you have to experience to appreciate.
Is the T+A gear better than your current Roland setup I think it would be but the real question should be would that be the right move at the current time vs upgrading cables, power conditioning, room tuning etc.
Dave store owner
Audio Doctor NJ
