Voodoo in Ann Arbor


I am spending the weekend at a friend's house. He recently purchased my JMlab Tantal 509's and is in the market for a power amp. Since he lives close to Ann Arbor we decided to go shopping there--supposedly, good high end stores are located near major universities.

Anyway, we called Audio/Video Showcase and it was such a fiasco! What a salesman they had--he was trying to sell us *watts*...he wanted us to buy a Denon power amp (which to my friend and I looked questionable) without auditioning it and at full list price! Although the store claimed to be high end (Conrad Johnson, Bryston, Musical Fidelity, Denon) he was reluctant to have us audition equipment. Finally my friend asked this salesman to rig some JMlab Cobalt (2-way) with a Musical Fidelity dual mono 85WPC integrated and the MF CDP. The salesman used Tara Labas snakes, from power cord to speaker cables. IT SOUNDED HORRIBLE!!!!! It wasn't the JMlabs, as we're familiar with their sound.

Unbelievable! This was an absolutely awful experience. Why did this happen, we ask ourselves. Was it because we're not Anglos? Anyway we would give this store a 3 out a possible 10.
psychicanimal

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Sedond emailed someone from HD who lives in Detroit and gave us some names. We went to Almas & The Gramophone--and were treated right at both...

Almas had Rotel & The Gramophone had B&K. I could easily tell the Rotel had better & more controlled bass. When I looked at the specs the Rotel had a damping factor of 500 vs 100 for the B&K. What can I say, I have a good ear...

We also went to Guitar Center and they have some pretty heavy (literally) Crown amps at decent prices---275 WPC for $399--and it comes with a fan!!! Guess I found my future subwoofer amp...

Thanks for helping us--it's so hard to get good sound!