life without audio dealers

the days of hi fi and music stores (as a significent part of any community's culture) are either going or gone. i had the priviledge to live in minneapolis/st. paul when there were (per capita) more music and hi fi stores than any metro area in the world, as well as live theater and indie book stores....the only thing certain is change, but occasionally change sucks.

How about a world without teachers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters etc?

Your model is one where only the product matters and experience and system setup, means nothing. Sure you can do everything yourself with enough reading and practice however your results may vary.

For the record most of the time an experienced dealer can walk into a room and can improve a system sometime just by making a few simple and inexpensive changes.

Yes there are bad dealers but there are many superb dealers!

There is no good substitute for looking at and hearing equipment in person. I've seen some fine looking photographs that fail to communicate certain aspects of how a piece actually appears in real life. Punching buttons, twirling knobs and generally "kicking tires" are immensely helpful.

Hearing different speakers and other equipment side-by-side is also enormously useful, even if the dealer showroom isn't a duplicate of my home listening room. When I went speaker shopping two years ago, I was able to very quickly eliminate a number of well known quality brands. Lots of people liked 'em, and they had good reviews, but side-by-side auditions at the local dealers quickly showed they were not my cup of tea. It was immensely useful in narrowing the field down to two candidates.

None of that could have been easily accomplished with direct manufacturer sales. I have done that in the past (I auditioned Ohms about five years ago) but it simply is not a process that's useful for narrowing a field. The procedure is a hassle that I find worthwhile only if you are making a final decision.

The big problem with many brick and mortar dealers is they are stuck in a difficult middle spot. Best Buy, Circuit City and the others have a pretty good lock on the middle-market where the vast sales numbers are. The audiophile end of the market has gotten increasingly fragmented with zillions of brands and buyers who, honestly put, are more and more in the obsessive eccentric category. Audiophiles make for an extraordinarily difficult and demanding customer. I don't blame many B&M dealers for turning their marketing efforts elsewhere, such as HT, or getting heavily into the overpriced and sometimes questionable accessories and tweak end of things.

Ultimately, as Adam Smith put it, the invisible hand of the market will sort things out. No one stays in business long solely on the basis of being a good samaritan. There are rent, salaries and insurance to pay, inventory to buy, bank loans to repay and the business model has to support all that. If small audiophile B&M dealers disappear, then we will have pretty much gotten what we asked for. I think that'd be sad, but then there are lots of things in my life that are not the way they used to be.

Shockingly enough, I tend to agree with Mrtennis. I do find the one true value of a dealer is in-home demo. If the dealer doesn't offer this, he has no value whatsoever to me. Listening in a unfamiliar room, to a bunch of unfamiliar components may be enjoyable, but fruitless. Listening to a dealer's expertise (re: forced agenda) provides even less.

As for Audiooracle, who by the way is a dealer, hence the defense, comparsion of an experienced dealer to a craftsmen, I disagree. Audio tends to be a opinion/taste or subjective field, whereas the trades tend to be objective fields. A dealer will certainly have his opinions, but often there are hidden agendas (re: sales) behind his opinions. I actually find more useful opinions on-line from experienced amatuer reviewers can relate experiences, usually without the agendas. A licensed tradesman (electrician, plumber, etc.) opinion will carry a lot more weight, to me anyway. That doesn't mean I wouldn't get a second opinion, or estimate, but it does carry more weight.

Sorry Audiooracle, and more importanly Audiofeil (a classy dealer), but I also would prefer to buy direct from the manufacturer. I'm fully able to form my own opinion, and it would save me some dough. I have, and will continue to support dealers who let me have free in-home demo's, as I find this to be the one useful tool for a dealer. However, these guys are few and far between. Most dealers I know are simply willing to dispense their 'knowledge' (sic), in exchange for their handsome fee.

Cheers,
John