@hilde45 - you're so welcome, hilde ; ) - with deeper consideration, I hope you too come to see how different the test drive of a performance car, or any other fully developed system for an experience is, to that of a single hifi component : ) I must also tell you, about a week and a bit ago, I made an offer of usd250 to audition a wolf von langa son (usd16000 msrp thereabouts) in my listening space, to learn if what I had read about it as a smallish field coil speaker was accurate, not necessarily for an actual purchase, but to just learn everything I could about it. And realised after that not only was almost everything reviewed on it spot on, it also had greater and more accurate depth of soundfield than my current single driver full range speaker - the realism on these field coil speakers, and its dynamism, is unbelievable. I ended up trading/buying something I had auditioned on a hunch to better understand the strengths of my current speaker, in comparison - and instead discovered the greater strengths of something else : ) - paid auditions reap unexpected benefits aside from learning : )
I try to avoid the odd confrontational stance buyers generally have with dealers - I do not begrudge them any profit they attempt to maximise, and in doing so, attempt to subvert the paradigm, in making friendships of trust rather than relationships of business. In trust, a speaker or preamplifier can be left a week for a true audition. It is a trust that can be bought, but only through that first offer of sincerity, an offer that acknowledges the huge effort any audition requires. It is a trust that can only begin by putting one's money where one's mouth is, I suppose. The lovely byproduct of this has been huge savings off the msrp in the end, and in most cases.
@ghdprentice you know, theres this crazy thing how little we understand, as a global culture, about what we truly value. I have asked a question of the many people I've met (fewer of whom are audiophiles than anything else), of what they would sacrifice first; personal mobility in the form of a private car to drive, or the privilege of listening to music. The answer is inevitably the car. Almost everyone I've ever spoken to would rather drop their daily driver (never mind a performance car) in adoption of public transport, than sacrifice the ability for listening to music.
We innately and generally value music and its listening far more than our private cars, but take its accessibility and our amazing ability to listen for granted, it seems.
I will pay so much more for anything that I value this much; for this crazy stupidly beautiful electromagnetic world of boxes, wires, plugs, resonant air and auditions, to learn about something I could never exchange for almost anything, not for the vehicular convenience of grocery shopping, nor the sheer pleasure of driving and drifting the greatest performance cars in the world. ; )
In friendship, kevin.