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Why did it take this long to understand

J

just_jeff

New Member
I'm 48 and I've always been a fan of music. I've always upgraded the systems in my vehicles. I've visited most AV dealers in my local communities (Austin, Orlando, Atlanta, Portland) to buy speakers, TVs, AV receivers, etc.

Why did it take me until now to really hear great detail and soundstage?? Why have I never understood what retailers and reviewers were really talking about?

I have a clue - I've never asked the right questions at those retailers. Looking back, at the ~50+ retailers I've been to sales people will usually ask 'Can I help you?' as a greeting. My answer was usually "I'm just browsing" or "I'm looking for new speakers, what do you have around $x price point?". Most sales people will have very short answers and would simply make me feel like I'm wasting their time.

Lookin back, what I wished sales people would have done is help me understand why physical placement in a room matters. Why crap class D amps can muddy the sound and demonstrate this to me. How placing a sub in a corner may sound louder but looses the detail and demonstrate it to me. I wish sales people would take the time to understand and get to know me and my environment; help me understand why a good setup sounds great. I wished they would have asked me if I wanted to hear something amazing and put on my favorite song, sat me in the sweet spot and let me hear what a proper setup sounds like without the concerns if I was going to purchase or not. I would have spent so much more $$ in this industry and been enjoying music much earlier in life!

I can't tell you how may retailers I've been to where the sales people would pretty much ignore me until I asked them about a specific speaker or amp. Their response is typically the price (over $5k) without understanding why I'm asking. I usually walk out after a few mins of browsing feeling frustrated by their snobbery. I've always just assumed this is who all audiophiles were; people who sell or own very high priced equipment to simply brag about how much it costs.

While this may be the case for some, I now realize (by my own accidental discovery) that there is so much more to the music production that I never new existed and had missed out on for so many years. I've also realized that it takes a fairly good bit of understanding and knowledge about equipment, room characteristics, speaker placement, etc to really fully achieve the ability to hear what the sound engineers, producers and musicians had put into the recording. My discovery came in part while playing around with a product called miniDSP and a room correction app called REW (Room Equalization Wizard). Seeing how speaker placement had a direct affect on comb filtering from room characteristics as well as sub placement had an immediate affect on what you hear. I could also immediately see the affect by overlaying sound measurement charts on top of each other comparing the results.

I am now really enjoying going back through the decades of music I have always known but have never really truly heard.

I'm now trying to educate my kids on all the things I've learned over the years so that they can realize what great music recordings sound like instead of living most of their lives hearing music through cheap airpods.
 
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I also wanted to credit a big part of my recent education on audio was a car audio amp with DSP, AudioControl D-6.1200. After installing this and all new speakers (6 channels + sub) I began to set timing. I read and watched everything I could on the subject. I must admit, trying to get 6 channels time aligned by ear with pink noise was a big challenge but it taught me a lot. Also, this setup had xover points for dash, front doors, rear doors and subs. Getting all this dialed in took me days (with some help with REW again). In the end - I learned a ton about how time alignment, cross over points & curves, and parametric EQ had on the end result. Now, for the first time I can hear a soundstage in my vehicle. Mind blown.
 
I guess it depends on what the store is like. Sales people aren't all cut from the same cloth, but there are probably as many who essentially treat it as a job and aren't overly enthused about what they sell as not.

Then consider the "tire kickers". It can get old sharing one's enthusiasm and/or knowledge with people who are pegged as unlikely buyers.
 
I hear you. I think its a sales thing. When I sold computers (remember 486's?) I always asked lots of questions about use, expectations, etc. Then budget. And I never oversold and would answer questions after the sale. My boss wasn't happy and I spent a lot more time in the back room and service calls (I was hired as a tech, not salesperson. I hate sales, just not my thing.). Hard to find a really good sales person sometimes. But you read up, did the work and now understand. You are now an informed consumer. You probably shouldn't have done that, lol. Music will never be the same. Nor will your wallet....LOL Good luck with your journey!
 
Do sales people in AV dealers really get it? Or have the knowledge and training to pass along? It they do, I have never experienced it.
 
j_j: Imo, because that's not the primary job of salesmen - not only in hifi/audio, but in general. I.e., I'd say, the primary job of a salesman is to sell good stuff to the customer. While also teaching the customer a bit about how to make good use of that stuff would merely be an additional bonus - but one, that can't necessarily be expected.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
I guess what surprises me the most is how uneducated the general public is about audio quality. I would have expected most high end audio dealers (not big box AV stores) to do a better job of educating the average Joe/Jane and build their local market. I would imagine there would be a much bigger market for quality audio equipment if people only knew what they were missing.
 
I had the opposite experience with local dealers, and it has happened more often than not. I have found them more than willing to educate, listen to what I am after, and spend plenty of time with me listening to different gear. This has not changed in the 40 years I have been visiting my local stores. It all started in a Tweeter store in Worcester with the store manager who took my friend and I under his wing and steered us right into the 'big' room to hear some K horns. We were just out of high school and could barely afford our sneakers but he was very eager to start us down the path (smart guy - hook 'em young).

I am sorry that you did not get the same experience from your local dealers. All of mine - Tweeter, Waltham Camera and Stereo, Natural Sound and Goodwins - have always been there for me.

Jblnut
 
j_j: Really? I'm not so surprised. I mean, cosidering how many potential hobbies/pastimes/interests there nowdays are, I'd deem high quality audio just one of these. And as already hinted to above, I think education of the consumer isn't the primary job of shops in general. And maybe even less so, the higher up - as a salesman might expect a consumer, who is shopping for a high quality piece of equipment, to already have a good bit of experience.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
Next time you go to look at a car ask the sales person how much horsepower it has, wattage of the stereo, 0-60 time, etc, then wait for the blank stare. It's not only the audio industry eh.
 
jblnut said:
I had the opposite experience with local dealers, and it has happened more often than not. I have found them more than willing to educate, listen to what I am after, and spend plenty of time with me listening to different gear. This has not changed in the 40 years I have been visiting my local stores. It all started in a Tweeter store in Worcester with the store manager who took my friend and I under his wing and steered us right into the 'big' room to hear some K horns. We were just out of high school and could barely afford our sneakers but he was very eager to start us down the path (smart guy - hook 'em young).

I am sorry that you did not get the same experience from your local dealers. All of mine - Tweeter, Waltham Camera and Stereo, Natural Sound and Goodwins - have always been there for me.

Jblnut
Click to expand...

Have you ever been to the armory museum there? Had a number of class field trips there in the late 60's early 70's.
 
just_jeff said:
I guess what surprises me the most is how uneducated the general public is about audio quality. I would have expected most high end audio dealers (not big box AV stores) to do a better job of educating the average Joe/Jane and build their local market. I would imagine there would be a much bigger market for quality audio equipment if people only knew what they were missing.
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Never overestimate the intelligence of the average human being.

The general public consists of human beings.

.
 
Many times - we are very sad that it closed. My son's scout troop even had a sleep over there once. The halls took on an entirely different feel at night, empty and slightly creepy with all the suits casting huge shadows. That, I will never forget.

Jblnut
 
I would think that the training part is for the sales person to learn how to recognize a potential sale. I believe it has more to do with listening to your client, and assessing what they know and if there is any value in putting more time into it.

Before COVID-19, I was an amateur salesman working out of my home, as part of my hobby. I sometimes speak too much and chase away the client, or don't listen enough. But I also get many repeat customers, so I must be doing something right. Most people just want music. They don't care about sound quality as long as it fits into their budget and gives them what they want. Every now and then, you find someone who really wants high quality sound, and then it can take some time to put the gear together. I have had three such clients over the last 10 years. It took me about a year to put together a system for my brothers friend. He wanted a pair of Tangent RS-8s I had, but he wanted it to sound as good as he heard on my gear. It took a while with a few mistakes, and I ended up selling him a Yamaha P2100, a Pioneer SA-1000 as the preamp, and a Dual 1218, along with the speakers. The second one was even more challenging because she knew what she wanted to hear, but it took us a while to figure out how to get there. She got a pair of Ditton 44s and 442s.

The bottom line is, we are a rare beast in the world. There are very few of us.
 
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Sadly customers can be as incompetent and uncooperative as "salespeople".

I had a car audio shop from the late 80's to the early 2000's and the customers ran the gamut.

Some wanted to learn and understand, others showed up to teach me a thing or two.

While good help is hard to find, so are good customers.
 
I don't think AV guys know or much care about that thing called imaging. They are into enormous numbers of speakers all around the room splattering sound on everything from every possible direction, and it's pretty much impossible to produce something other than a cacophony of discombobulated sound fronts coming at a listener.

I learned what good imaging sounds like in my early 20's at a shop that sold 2 channel systems and actually took the time to set up their rooms to sound decent.
 
AV is all about imagining.

The idea of the sound tracking the action from left to right, front to back and now up above is exactly what imaging is.

Imagine turning off the video and just playing the audio / sound effects from something like Master and Commander.
You can hear the cannon blasts from the right and left as the ships engage. Cannonballs whiz by overhead and explode into something behind you.

Seeing what you hear, that's imaging.

It does not fit into the "audiophiles" definition of imaging but that's mostly because music isn't generally recorded that way.
 
One of my biggest 'ah-ha' moments is when I first experienced a perfectly time aligned (near-field) setup on my desk where I could hear - with great precision - parts of the recording coming from the center. If I had my eyes closed, I would swear there was a center channel speaker playing these sounds; there wasn't. I then soon realized that some recordings had instruments just left or right of center but not exclusively in the left or right channel. I was blown away by the fact that only two channels could provide so much sound imaging between the two speakers! Now in my listening room I have reflections that are incorporated. Hearing sounds that are out of phase sound like they are coming from behind me!

I've always owned surround sound systems pretty much since they became mainstream. Hearing movie soundtracks move between channels to achieve this imaging was amazing. I've only just learned that two channel music had so much of this imaging incorporated.

Later on, when I was time aligning the speakers in my vehicle and listening to pink noise virtually move across my dash as I modified the delays in each channel did I realize how precise our hearing is at perceiving spatial location based on timing of the soundwaves hitting each ear.
 
just_jeff said:
One of my biggest 'ah-ha' moments is when I first experienced a perfectly time aligned (near-field) setup on my desk where I could hear - with great precision - parts of the recording coming from the center. If I had my eyes closed, I would swear there was a center channel speaker playing these sounds; there wasn't. I then soon realized that some recordings had instruments just left or right of center but not exclusively in the left or right channel. I was blown away by the fact that only two channels could provide so much sound imaging between the two speakers! Now in my listening room I have reflections that are incorporated. Hearing sounds that are out of phase sound like they are coming from behind me!

I've always owned surround sound systems pretty much since they became mainstream. Hearing movie soundtracks move between channels to achieve this imaging was amazing. I've only just learned that two channel music had so much of this imaging incorporated.

Later on, when I was time aligning the speakers in my vehicle and listening to pink noise virtually move across my dash as I modified the delays in each channel did I realize how precise our hearing is at perceiving spatial location based on timing of the soundwaves hitting each ear.
Click to expand...

You should read the white paper on Carver's Sonic Holography, I think you'll find it very interesting.

And also take a look at Polk's approach with their SDA line.
 
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