To all that worked in audio salons.


What albums or CDs did you have on hand to demo equipment? Was it popular music or some obscure recordings that were well engineered. Im trying to find a pattern here. In the 70's I saw a lot of Dire Straits, Rikki Lee Jones and Al Dimiola on hand at dealerships. Was there any recordings that would be the one that helped sell the equipment? An old faithful or reliable.
128x128blueranger
I worked at Audio Assoc. and AudioKrafters in the late 70s, early 80s. We used a lot of Telarc discs, Sheffields, Nautilus, and even a Yamaha demo disc. The Yamaha disc was surprisingly good.

Some "popular" music we used was Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg's "Twin Sons of Different Mothers", Steely Dan's "Aja" and "Countdown to Ecstasy", MFSL's "DSOTM", Virgil Fox organ discs, "Jazz At The Pawnshop" (yawn!), and MFSL's Al Stewart "Year Of The Cat". Also Poco's "Legend" sounded very good...

-RW-
I worked for a large mid-fi, some high end stuff like KEF. Monitor Audio, Ariston etc as a part-timer in the early 80"s in Germany.

Steeley Dan's Aja was IT ! "The Wall" a distant second.
I carried a Schubert cassette in my pocket and used it when boss wasn't around . Worked for me.
Sound Chamber, early 80s. My personal demos were MFSL DSOTM, , ARS Musica Brandenburg Concertos on DCM Time Window, DiMeola's Elegant Gypsy, Police Ghost in the Machine, DG of Beethoven's 5th, CBS Masterworks of the 9th, Drum Disk, Track Record and Harry James Sheffields. Store demos were MFSL Finger Paintings, MFSL Year of the Cat, Riki Lee Jones on Nautilus, Kim Carnes on Nautilus, Jethro Tull Aqualung, Bowie Ziggy Stardust. No CDs; hadn't been introduced yet. Did have a very early Sony PCM deck that used small video cassettes, no pre-recorded material for it. One of our guys worked with Duke Jupiter and made a demo with it. Meh.
Never worked in a store, but the darlings were "Midnight Sugar", which is everything wrong with demo records rolled into one, and the Charlie Byrd Crystal Clear direct disc record with the drum solo on side 2. Not a half bad record.