Sorry to disappoint many of the hi-fi manufacturers’ personnel at the hi-fi shows past and present. Neither my learned colleague nor myself resemble the typical image of a hi-fi enthusiast (whatever the typical image is)?

We discovered many representatives were less than enthusiastic with regards to offering feedback to polite questions regarding their components. It was also clear that many Hi fi manufacturers personnel at the 2004 - 2005 shows where reluctant and ‘extremely selective’ with regards to demonstrations. This is understandable and defiantly not a new phenomenon. After all, different components and component set-ups are tuned & tweaked to reproduce the best from specific types of music.

If I were a car salesman I would not arrange a Punto to be test driven into the deepest uncharted territory of the Australian outback!

I had a certain amount of empathy for a few personnel -That is until one particular manufacturer completely refused to use any of his potential buyers music at all:

“Sorry, we will only use what we have in our demonstration rack!”

Which ironically only contained approximately five vinyl albums. (Can’t remember which genres). I only spent one minute in that particular room. AND later I stumbled across one particular gentleman, who made such hard work of demonstrating his turntable. We almost gave up. When he did eventually manage to manoeuvre himself from his chair to place a record on his turntable, the results where amazing! He then proceeded to spoil the demo by saying:

“It doesn’t matter how much this turntable cost because you won’t buy it anyway!”

GREAT SALES PITCH I THOUGHT!
Bless your cotton socks Mr de Paravicini!

I am reluctant to play the ‘age discrimination card’ here, though the stats are piled quite high regarding the above statement. I have had long conversations with many individuals regarding this situation and the overall issues are long and detailed. Other related scenarios came to the forefront – such as ‘selective age grouping’, or ‘age targeting’.Perhaps all the above negativity was just due to plain old human fatigue on behalf of the representatives.

Considering the current state of the hi-fi market (specifically two channel), I would have thought that two bright young individuals who clearly showed an interest in alleged ‘quality hi-fi’ components would be just what the industry wanted – or needs. No matter what our ‘predicted’ income, we are the buyers of the future (or perhaps now). Or perhaps some manufacturers would prefer to keep their products a secret, after all – Niche status adds value and helps warrant high price tags!

Unfortunately many hi-fi dealers and manufacturers will now have to impress me in another way- at another time and place with their wares!

On the flip side

Congratulations to The Chord Electronics Company and Conrad Mass’ Avid for superb demonstrations. Both these companies’ representatives were patient and enthusiastic. Definitely service with a smile – and judging by what we heard, they had a great deal to smile about!

Report by Robin Francis
© Michael Valentine Studio