What actually makes a good audio dealer?
By Roy Gregory
“It’s not what you buy, it’s who you buy it from.”
In a world as gear-obsessed as high-end audio, that might seem like a strange suggestion. Yet it’s some of the oldest and wisest advice I’ve ever received on the subject of audio purchases. It rests – and has always rested – on the simple, easily demonstrated and oft experienced fact that a competent dealer working with modest equipment that he knows inside out can easily produce a system that outperforms a much more expensive rig that has simply been assembled, rather than actually set-up properly. It’s not a welcome thought, especially to those audiophiles who, despite protestations to the contrary, pore over reviews and websites, show reports and fora, if only to proclaim the superiority of their own views/abilities or experience. Yet faced with a truly competent dealer, the difference between an enthusiastic amateur and a genuine, informed and capable professional is only too apparent.
If you are seriously interested in maximising your system’s musical and/or sonic performance, your focus shouldn’t be on selecting the next magic box or tweak to invest in, but in finding a dealer whose competence embraces the equipment you already own. The challenge lies in finding that competent dealer and, while a lot of things in audio have changed, that hasn’t – it’s just got harder.
Back in the day, finding a good dealer was a whole lot easier. For starters there were a whole lot more of them, with most reasonable sized towns offering a choice of two or three. You could tell a lot from how their store was arranged: not how pretty it was (a lot of the best dealers had far from resplendent premises) but how they used the equipment and facilities they offered. Did they conduct single-speaker demonstrations? How carefully were demos set up? How much did they listen (to you) and how much did the demonstration respond to your reactions? With several dealers in close proximity, it wasn’t too hard to work out which one best suited your system and needs.
You could also tell a lot from the brands that they stocked with certain brands offering an implied level of credibility and competence. In the UK, Linn or Naim agencies held a certain status, later joined or superseded by Absolute Sounds products (the distributor, not the magazine). In the US, one of the key brands was Wilson and, historically speaking, that influence has been less than helpful. Specifically, Wilson created a set of criteria for their dealers, one of which was the existence of a dedicated demonstration facility. This was both a recognition of the issues around presenting large, heavy and complex, set-up critical loudspeakers. It was also a hedge against a rising tide of competing brands and the home-based dealers who so often represented them. After all, it’s hard to get a toe in the door of an established business with its established product lines and installed customer base. But there was no escaping the inference that ‘real’ dealers had dedicated, bricks-and-mortar stores. It’s an attitude that persists to this day. Unfortunately, it’s an attitude that is inherently conservative, an attitude that refuses to accept the changing reality, an attitude that is (or certainly can be) actively destructive
