The audio world sure has changed since I've been in the hobby. I've had separates for over 45 years (since I was 6 years old of course
). It's not for the better in my opinion. I have one local dealer about 15 minutes away. He is only open part time (he shares a house where he has a couple of showrooms with a photographer). When I was ready to move on from JRiver on a small fanless PC (which I used for many years), I talked to someone in my old audio society up North who had bought a minority share of an audio dealership. So I narrowed my search down to a couple of well known brands.
I made 4 trips to the dealer in an attempt to get an audition as he carried one of the two brands I was looking at. I even loaded music on his system (and in a subsequent trip he was using it to demo things). I even dragged what I was using into the store (along with a monitor) in an attempt to get a comparison and it didn't work (I guess he wasn't that interested since I probably was going to spend under $10k and just buy one thing for now). He promised to bring it over my house, which he never did. I told him I'd need at most half an hour.
The dealership had lost an audio brand for trying to sell on the internet. When I came in at a later date it was to meet a friend of a friend (I've known for a long time) in the audio business (who was doing a demo) who had just taken over as director of sales for a high end speaker company. The dealer noticed me talking to him (and the conversation had nothing to do with the audio store as it was just catching up as I hadn't seen him since I moved down to FL) and more or less semi-freaked out (I assume he thought I was talking about him) and came over and interjected that he owned me something (that was after 4 trips I made to the store and this was probably 6 months or more after my last trip). I just politely ignored him.
The internet has not made it easier in my opinion for the hobby. There's just too much stuff like the subject of this thread which goes on. Combined with a shrinking number of high end dealers (e.g.
https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/why-decline-in-audio-stores-usa.136762/#post-1690005), it makes it more difficult for me than it used to be. I'm not one to go into a dealer (whether it be a car dealer or audio dealer) to just waste someone's time. I go in when I'm either currently in the market or expect to be within months. I don't participate in many forums due to the stuff which goes on. I'm not here to argue and don't post tons as the primary purpose is to keep up with new things.
