Dealers and exaggerated treble

In a lot of those cases, the treble was exaggerated, or harsh to me.

ALL of the dealer demos i had recently sounded bad. VERY bad. The problem is dealers dont seem to realise how bad the sound is. They dont seem to know the difference between good and bad sound. I would say a not insignificant number of audiophiles are exactly the same which is why we dont hear many complaints like this.

What speakers were you listening to?

Many of the dealers i went to were selling some of the most expensive speakers on the planet. 

hooking the speakers up out of phase not to mention spewing out
all kinds of BS.

Please explain to me what this is about?

I recently went to an ultra high end store for a demo. It was by apointment so everything had been set up prior to my arrival by the store manager. In other words he must have surely sat down and checked the sound even if briefly. 
When i arrived, i immediately heard and pointed out that the speakers were wired out of phase.
He then corrected the mistake. I was shocked at how this could have happened. 

Either deliberate, or a mistake. Either way its deplorable. 

@kenjit : Your story of the out-of-phase demo reminded me that I once had that experience, too. It's hard to understand, because the system was set up with care and sounded great once we fixed that.

I suppose the explanation is, we're all human. Maybe a phone call came in at the end of the system setup. The dealer had done a lot of work moving heavy stuff to make that demo possible, so I forgave them -- and I've given them some business since.

Can't say I've noticed this, myself.
But then I'm usual active in my speaker auditioning: if not asking for a particular position for the speakers, then ensuring I experiment with my seating position to get the best, smoothest sound I can hear from the set up.

I drove over there(never had, prior) and looked around, finding a graphic EQ, far removed(on another shelf) from the system),

THAT is exactly the sort of BS I'm talking about.

What got me thinking of this is that there's a couple of brands I've heard and hated as ear drills, which others call sublime. Golden Ear, Jim Thiel era Thiels, etc.

I recently had the experience of walking into a Wilson dealer and hearing the speaker cables reversed. When that was fixed, the treble was still nasty hot. Several Wilsons have configurable crossovers which lets you turn the relative level of the tweeters up or down, so this was a case where it would have been impossible to tell if they were altered without tools.


I heard Magico's at another local dealer and I winced at the presence. I literally could not listen to them. 

I'm also thinking about other dealers who would not let me play my own music.


Using digital servers it is super easy to juice music tracks. You equalize them before saving them to your music server, and voila, you magically have detail you've never heard at home before. 

So, overall, I'm wondering:


- how much of my opinion about brands has been shaped by bad dealer setups
- How many consumers of high end gear are easily duped by it.  I mean, if the dealers lost money doing this they would stop, right?