Dealers with excellent listening rooms?


Hi everyone,

Not looking to buy but was thinking that it has been a very long time since I heard excellent gear in an excellent room. Outside of regional shows, where do you go to hear things in a post Amazon, post covid-19 world?

erik_squires

Thanks “mikelavigne” for the nod to Rhapsody.Audio. I host one of the west coast Rhapsody locations in my home just outside Portland. As always, there is the reality what someone hears in a showroom (or any room for that matter) isn’t going to come across quite the same in their own room. Personally I think this is most critical for loudspeakers — but applies across the board unless the demo rig matches your own to a T. 
 

That said, my room was gutted and acoustically remodeled 6 years ago, so while gear is going to sound different in someone else’s room/rig, here you can get a good taste of what a speaker (component) is actually capable of. And my space isn’t a typical rectangle room, it does not seal from the rest of the house, and has big glass windows between & behind the speakers. I don't keep other brands of speakers in the room when I set up for someone who is coming to audition, instead taking time to optimize each speaker’s position for the best sound. This won’t be the same as a months or years long adjustment period some folks might do to optimize setup to the last mm of finesse, but those aren’t typically commercial oriented rooms.

Rhapsody rooms are all in real world homes, except the Dallas location which has custom built rooms in a commercial space. We all carry some subset of the full assortment of components imported by Rhapsody in Brooklyn, NYC. 
 

should you find yourself in the Pacific Northwest give me a ring, I promise excellent sound in an excellent room. https://rhapsody.audio/location-portland/

 

Two of the best show rooms I have been in are GTT Audio in Long Valley, NJ and East End HiFi in Coram, NY (Long Island).  Both operate out of home showrooms and setups show extreme attention to detail to extract the best of their product lines.  Very impressive.  The owners are very knowledgeable.  Appointment only.  

Quintessence Audio in Morton Grove, Illinois (Chicago suburb) has the best rooms I’ve experienced, and not by a small margin. I traveled to hear different speakers and knowing a bit more now, I’m amazed how overlooked acoustic treatments and proper listening spaces are in many dealers. 

@gestalt in Nashville. Some of the best sounding gear I’ve heard in my 30 years of audiophile journey.