Is your local audio / HiFi dealers stuck in 2-channel music?

[WozzaDog]

I visited two audio resellers this week who sell the biggest known global brands both in volume (Denon/Marantz, Yamaha, Sonos) up to quality brands (Focal, Naim, McIntosh, Martin Logan, Linn), with a combined business history of +70 years. Neither reseller had setups for demonstrating Atmos music. When asked all reps prefer two channel. When ask none of the 6 reps had sat down and done a single Atmos music listening 'session'.

As a salesperson employed by multiple fortune 100 companies, the highest profit is made from value sales and upselling. Upselling from 2 channel to 5.1.4 or 7.1.4 or 9.4.6 or higher increases sales profits and value to customers.

All the reps are nice kind, people and by no means is this an attack on them, nor am I wronging their beliefs. I respect all of them, they are kind people Id invite to dinner with my family.

In sales Im defined as "A challenger" I challenge business to do things differently to achieve "their" business success criteria, and then provide successful solutions. So I asked one reseller gentleman "Why do you not enjoy Atmos music?"
He replied "I want to hear the music as it was intended to be heard from the studio"
I then asked "So if the artist and/or the engineer intended it to be heard in Atmos would you not be denying them your gratification of their intended Atmos experience? Take for example Groove Amarda's 'Goodbye Country / Hello Nightclub" that was composed and recorded at Abby Road to be a 5.1 SACD before they walked into the studio. And Tubular Bells quadrophonic. And Neil Young and Crazy Horses 'Welcome Back' recorded in Atmos?"
His response was "How is it going to be better than 2-channel music?"

Is your local audio / HiFi dealers stuck in listening to 2-channel music?

- Please share your stories of your local resellers uptake of multichannel music in this new Atmos Music era?


WozzaDog
Atmos-Fantastic coinsure.

 

[hirez]

I gave up a long time ago (over 15 years) on my local HI/FI(?) dealer because they couldn't play 5.1. Apparently very few HI/FI retailers belive in surround sound because more money is made in trinkets for stereo vinyl playback, new cartridges every few months , cleaning the vinyl, antistatic for the vinyl, ETC.... One of the many blessings for having moved to digital playback.

PS OOH did I forget new turntables!

 

[gene_stl]

Here in St. Louis there is a big big store but they are mainly in the Home theater bidness. I went to an open house they had recently I suppose to try and get customer visits back to the pre pandemic levels. I myself have not been to a dedicated stereo store since about 1993. The only multichannel music source they had was Eric Clapton's Crossroads DVD. When I asked to hear some of it I had to sit through 15 minutes of sales pitch to hear about 20 seconds of music. They were really trying to sell the expensive Sony laser power projector. They said if the screen was too big for your house, sell your house.

 

[4-earredwonder]

Here in St. Louis there is a big big store but they are mainly in the Home theater bidness. I went to an open house they had recently I suppose to try and get customer visits back to the pre pandemic levels. I myself have not been to a dedicated stereo store since about 1993. The only multichannel music source they had was Eric Clapton's Crossroads DVD. When I asked to hear some of it I had to sit through 15 minutes of sales pitch to hear about 20 seconds of music. They were really trying to sell the expensive Sony laser power projector. They said if the screen was too big for your house, sell your house.

Yikes, Gene, in the 'home theater biz' utilizing an Eric Clapton DVD to demonstrate 'state of the art' in home theater???????? At least my rip off high end audio salon which did go bankrupt in the early 00's [and 'stiffed' their vendors out of thousands of unpaid bills] had the good sense to jump on the multichannel bandwagon early on and offer then, state of the art components like Meridian, Theta, Sony's top of the line SACD players and Plasma flatscreens with a slew of MLP DVD~A discs and multichannel SACDs to better enhance the listening experience!

How does that St. Louis store expect to stay in business if they're hawking Sony Laser projectors and huge cinema screens showing Eric Clapton DVDs?????? And that crack about needing a BIGGER dwelling if the screen doesn't fit was a downright facetious remark!

Hope you walked out as soon as that ridiculous demo was over ...... and told those 'amateurs' in the words of Saturday Night Live's logo .....NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME!

 

[gene_stl]

I already was never going to spend a penny there before I walked in. I was given their name by Rotel. I needed a Rotel part. Even though they had a big service dept. they had stopped selling parts to the public.

I considered that the same way I consider the shift of Atmos to streaming only. An affront to consumers like me.

I went because I wanted to see what they were hawking. I did have some pleasant conversations with a manufacturer's rep (an old guy) and with one of their service techs (a younger guy).

I didn't stay long because there was nothing for me.

The audio was terrible. Bass that sounded like what you hear at traffic lights when a young doofus pulls up next to you with his 10 kw wooofer system.

 

[marpow]

I think we can all testify to our enlightenment of surround to be greater than even people who sell the gear we buy from them. We have to be our own sales person, do our own research etc.
Being a member of QQ is a million times better than anyone selling gear.
I have built two outstanding rigs, one the home and one the car.
Keep in mind, even though I did most the work, I still needed help, from sellers of audio equipment.
With some problems in the home build, I had reps and dealers come over to help with issues, now all resolved but mostly by me.
There response when coming over was WOW, this is fantastic.
With the car build, needed lots of help with wiring, etc, but the builder through my 100% direction finished and said WOW, the best system I have ever heard and built.
In both cases, more than equipment and wires and this and that, the WOW was the surround more than anything.
Then you start telling these same professionals about ripping, and files, and storage, and servers well there head just explodes.

My advice to anyone, especially those that read QQ and lurk on the side, step in and ask questions, we will all help you, we love our hobby and part of it is helping others getting the sonic bliss in surround to the best of there ability.
When I started listening to surround in 2014 I literally knew nothing, not even the concept, but knew I wanted it. With help from SACD.net and QQ mostly I am now very comfortable with my listening experience. I call it scratch and claw till you get there.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

At least there are hi-fi stores in your area! The ones in mine have all closed down long ago! Forget about multichannel, most people here no longer believe in stereo!

It's a sad world

 

[gene_stl]

Even though I and my stereo buddy SHOULD have gotten into quad in the early seventies (We didn't actually meet and become instant BFF until 1977) our experiences were similar. Namely nobody we knew well enough to spend time listening hard enough to get the bug, had a quad system. I never heard nor saw one neither in a store (which there were a lot of stores here in St.Louis) nor at anybody's house.

I did read about it and notice reviews of quad LPs. I also noticed that there were multiple warring formats. I did not discern releases that I wanted to buy though my observation was not 100%.

Fast forward to 2017-2018 when I got interested in audio again after a hiatus and now there is greater than CD quality for each of as many channels as you want and tons of releases that I DO want to have.

So I got interested. I started from a point of being pretty knowledgeable about stereo audio and some knowledge of the old formats. But even I had to do what Marpow very aptly labels "Scratch and Claw" A very good way to put it. You really have to want this a lot. I bought Dr. Marks Big Black Book. I studied it. There is a list member here who somehow I ran into on Facebook , randomly who was nice enough to chat with me a little before I knew anything and started talking to me about what was involved. It is amazing it didn't scare me off.

I had ONE exposure in the intevening years. I was at some big box store I don't remember which. And there was a multi channel receiver on an end cap with some tiny home theater speakers suspended in the air. A little 5.1 system. They had some kind of disc playing , I don't remember whether it was SACD or DVD A. The AVR was about $3500 and the discs were 30 or 35 each. I paused and listened a while (the store of course was noisy and this was just on an end cap not even a place to sit down.) I remember thinking to myself, "this ain't likely to make it".

This stuff is all complicated and difficult not to mention , rare and spensive!

But this group is terrific!!

 

[ar surround]

It's sad to hear this same story over and over again. I cannot fathom why any seller of audio equipment would blow off an entire market segment. It was actually an audio salon nearby that introduced me to 7.1 surround sound with the Lexicon CP-1 processor back in 1989. What changed?

 

[cbmmm3]

It's sad to hear this same story over and over again. I cannot fathom why any seller of audio equipment would blow off an entire market segment. It was actually an audio salon nearby that introduced me to 7.1 surround sound with the Lexicon CP-1 processor back in 1989. What changed?

What changed AR ? The Record labels. Back in 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 the studios were pushing Surround. And then - it died. DVD Audio died. SACD was pretty much a Sony only thing at that point. All due to greed. Licensing dollars. Greed. It was the next ' big audio thing" and then greed killed it.

The hardware community followed their lead and lowered / limited the surround hardware that one could purchase

 

[kfbkfb]

I don't want to sound like broken record (broken mp3?), but the Hafler "free lunch" system of getting surround sound with just a stereo amplifier and 1 extra speaker + wire seems like it could be easily promoted by audio dealers - people would be getting something that provides a noticeable improvement for very little money (maybe the well known speaker makers could make a special speaker styled like their others but for use in a Hafler/DynaQuad arrangement).

(An Involve Audio QS encoder could be used to create surround sound content to be decoded w/Hafler system)

Possibly an Audio Industry trade group could be motivated to push for such a marketing idea.


Kirk Bayne

 

[barfle]

There is one independent home theater dealer in my area, but I haven’t been in because the “home theater” on their sign is about one fourth the size of their CAR AUDIO. Then there’s Best Buy.

Before I retired and moved to Idaho, I patronized a B&M store in Fairfax, VA. Twice. I bought my pre-pro from them, but the experience was like they wanted to get me out the door. I’d read reviews of my Marantz pre-pro and wanted a demo, but they just went into their warehouse and brought out the box. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but minimal effort, and I suspect I could have saved a couple hundred on-line, but I wanted to support local business.

Same with my TV. i had a few specs that I wanted, and they pulled a box out of inventory and sold it.

Damn. Customer service like that doesn’t bring people back. I gave them a second chance because I wanted a local business to succeed, but then I didn’t see any reason to try. They weren’t rude, but they didn’t seem to understand that a bit of seeing how what I wanted and what they had could mesh would have made a loyal customer. Further purchases were made on-line, with similar customer service warm-and-fuzzies. Exactly none.

 

[par4ken]

This is not new the same thing happened in the quad days. Most sales people were clueless. There was always an attitude of yes we have quad but you just need stereo. Their attitude was even worse in the dying days!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

@WozzaDog originally asked:

Is your local audio / HiFi dealers stuck in listening to 2-channel music?

The last time I walked into a brick and mortar shopping audio was about 4 years ago. Pre-ATMOS. But they were so ensconced in home theater surround sound my experience was almost the opposite. In trying to audition a simple pair of speakers it was very frustrating. Read all about it:

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/retail-audio-disapointment.26063/

 

[HiFiMan]

My local high end audio store is only interested in high volume levels with lots of thundering bass. They don't know anything else! Oh, ......... they are also very proficient in snake oil. It's a great place to go, if you want to experience where the current state of popular audio has gone, along with a few laughs. You would leave bewildered and just shaking your head.

 

[gene_stl]

EXACTLY what my experience was. Actually not as much snake oil as I saw at AXPONA in 2019 , but lots of really absurdly bass heavy, car audio sounding boom boom. I am sure they had the snake oil available as add on sales. "These cables will make your sound even better!" (they DID carry audioquest which means I would not do business with them.) But their main business was clearly home theater systems that were going into either 1) new houses or 2) additions or add on remodels to existing houses. Ones with six figure budgets. Music is just an afterthought for these systems and clients.

One thing I find interesting about myself is that I will spend a fortune on music and I am very happy about music videos that have surround or good stereo.
But I don't really care about improving my home theater movie experience. That wiring just isn't there in my head. And my Mrs. and I DO like to watch movies. They just don't need to be in surround.

Barfle what kind of pre pro were you buying in the post above??

 

[barfle]

Barfle what kind of pre pro were you buying in the post above??

Marantz 7701.

 

[MidiMagic]

Five years ago I went to Best Buy (the only stereo store left in town) and they demoed a 7.1 system for me. The movie they had on was the original Top Gun. And when it got to one of the dogfight scenes, I heard cogging. We tried an auto racing tape, and I heard cogging. I did not want that kind of surround.

Now all they have is stereo and soundbars.

Even Walmart has soundbars (one purporting to be Atmos). It didn't cog, but when I turned sideways, the image collapsed.

And I hate to say that most of the turntables I see in stores are junk, with ceramic cartridges, no counterweight, and no antiskate. Many do not even have a cue control.

 

[par4ken]

I thought that you always maintained that Dolby Surround didn't produce "cogging". I do realise that the movie was likely discrete, you really should be a proponent of Ambisonics then. It can place images between speakers better than other methods. Myself I don't see "cogging" as a problem. Ambisonics or some elements of it could/should be used in the mixing of discrete surround!

 

[marpow]

We tried an auto racing tape, and I heard cogging. I did not want that kind of surround.

I have never heard the term "cogging" in the world of audio. I looked up many pages of "cogging" in audio and all I seem to read is motor driven and when in the world of audio, only relates to a turntable, start up with the motor.

I am curious, how do you define "cogging" when listening to a surround system? I have no experience to debate, just curious as to your definition vs what I have read.