According to Wendell, the goal of this demonstration wasn't just to sell speakers, but to introduce a concept -- that of using the DWM woofer to match bass panel area to the acoustics of individual rooms. This concept is still unfamiliar to most, and dealers expressed concern that customers would think the DWM meant that the 3.7 didn't put out enough bass, when in fact like all speakers it's tuned to an average room and may need more or less output to fit a particular acoustic. So Wendell is doing his best to get the concept of room matching out there, and judging by the glowing press reaction, the demo seems to have gone over very well.
I guess I should add that Magnepan believes very strongly in the value of blind listening. They use this for effect at shows, but they also use it in their own speaker testing -- they won't make a change unless a listening panel prefers it in a blind A/B test. This is an excellent way of circumventing expectation bias.
Finally, regarding dissatisfaction with the closed demo format, Wendell explains that they have a limited number of good seats and that while he'd like to accommodate requests such as listening to a specific cut, listening without the center and so forth, to do so would be to deny others a chance to listen to the demo. He says that he was doing 15-20 minute demos for four days without a break for lunch. Because they knew the room would have to be in use full time for the demos, Mark and Paula were in the hall to answer questions.
