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so many choices, yet so little to demo

What's a person to do? I'm in the market for new speakers. I go to few mid end stores (within 100 miles) and listen to Monitor Audio, PSB's and Golden Ear. Of course all are different stores. Then I come here and find another 25 brands that aren't carried in my state, no less area.

That being said I surely will not ask for a recommendation and I'm fairly confident that I am not the first to have this issue. And honestly, I don't believe that I ever read a BAD speaker review and comparisons always end up saying the two are really close. Useless to the average person.

My market range is for a 5 speaker HT setup that I will use for audio as well. I have an Onkyo PR-SC885 pre/proc driving an Emotiva UPS-7 (7ch @ 125W each) . My price range is 1700-2500. I feel that I really need to hear them before I lay down the money and knowing the markup need to get a deal. That combo is nearly impossible, deals are usually only on the internet (B- stock, demo, several years old)and the mid end stores want list price and don't carry any of the above.

I know many internet dealers allow returns but there are so many caveats attached. So I don't view that as a solution.

Shall I limit myself to only those brands I can demo in my area? How have you guys/gals addressed this?

Thanks in Advance
wzakaras

Showing 2 responses by english210

english210
169 posts
 
I am somewhat in the same boat, although living in the Atlanta area, I have more choices closer than when I was in SW Florida. There are still many brands I hear about here, with 'nothing else comes close for ten times the price' endorsements from posters, that I can't find. I'm not completely opposed to internet direct, b-stock, or used, but would prefer to support local dealers. Ultimately though, even if a speaker of interest can be auditioned live, how it sounds 'there' versus how it will sound in my room is still little more than a guess. The dealers I've been too have setups that bear little or no resemblance to the room I'm using, or the equipment. Given that those factors are of great importance to the end result, isn't anything we buy little more than a shot in the dark until we get it home? Slightly educated shot in the dark, maybe, but still....
Much like any given item you could mention, us as individual buyers have differences in how we prefer to buy.
english210
169 posts
 
Shakey - speaking purely for myself, my mains are quite distant from my screen, mainly because I made the assumption that anything that 'needed' to sound like it was coming from a central position would come from the center channel, which is in the middle. Maybe naive, but it seems to work for me. In fact, sometimes I wonder if the 'mains' aren't borderline-redundant with so much happening from the center, but I also remember the system pre-center-channel, and the mains were pretty good at making up for there being no center.
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