Pat: Out of curiosity, what was your company called at that time. It all sounds very familiar. I have only been to a couple of big shows - one CES/High End about 10 years ago and the Stereophile show when it came to Los Angeles.
I went to the LA show with a friend of mine and we quietly sat in many rooms and tried to hear stuff knowing that setups have a lot of compromises. Over the next couple of weeks we tracked what people thought were the best/worst rooms of the show online. I was shocked to see that some people liked what I thought were the worst rooms - so many people like very, very bright unmusical speakers (Gamt!?! - we bolted out of that room - just could not take it). On the other hand some of the best were not too expensive (Joseph Audio) and some expensive ones were good (Nola, Hyperion, Rockport). Money and quality of sound did not correlate well enough for me. -MA ar-t wrote: > Ok, back to your premise about cognitive psychology. > > When I did the fake preamp test, and they gave me that > deer-in-the-headlight look........"I can't hear any > difference.......was I supposed to......did I screw up.......?", I then > moved on the next aspect of sorting out the keen listeners. > > Which, for those who are interested, was to try a listening test with > different UUTs, where everyone at the shop all agreed sounded a certain > way. Did not mean absolute correctness, but that they listened to things > in the same manner that we did, and came to the same conclusion. > > A self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe. But we did have a certain target > market in mind. It would not have been beneficial to pick folks who > preferred the warmth of tubes, and would not be happy if our SS amps > did not have that "glorious midrange" that those folks seem to prefer. > We did have some listeners who did own some tube gear, but they also > had lots of SS gear as well. Picking listeners that we felt that we > could trust was tough. Having them disperse across the country over a > period of 20 years aided in our exit from active manufacturing. At > least on a full-time basis. We tried to assemble a new team about 5 or > so years ago, and found that all of us were now too old to be zealous > about any of it. > > Pat > > > _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
