Dealers and exaggerated treble

I personally don’t think that the speakers in general are more accurate and transparent than the past but I do know that different speakers do sound different in the same exact (rest of the) system.

@kenjit wrote.... 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.

Perhaps one of the upstream components inverted phase.  One speaker wired out of phase WILL impact the sound, whereas, both speakers wire out of phase will have very little impact as you have a 50/50 chance that the source material was recorded with the correct phase.

Perhaps one of the upstream components inverted phase.  

does not matter where the phase was inverted. It should be immediately obvious unless you have bad hearing or it was deliberate.

I noticed sizzly treble in at least two models I auditioned.  One (Paradigm) seems to be tipped-up out of the box, per Stereophile measurements. The other I'm not sure about. The dealer's listening room had a live end (brick wall) at the speaker end of the room.  Didn't seem like a good choice.

I think people have different sensitivity to treble curves. So you may be quite different from a dealer in that regard and there is nothing "wrong." Also, dealers usually carry different speaker lines for different ears, so unless they are all bright i doubt there is an issue.

I would actually trust good dealers in LA moreso than any internet forum. Several of them are *excellent* setup guys. One took 12 hours to setup my friends Alexxs. But most audiophiles enjoy crappy setup sound at home instead to save a few $ vs using someone who has 20-30 years of experience in all types of rooms.

True, there can be an inverted phase issue from time to time - but that's an outlier not the norm. By golly guys...