And then.........
Then we ventured into the AudioWorks room. Spectral Amps, Avalon Speakers, DCS Paganini, i think, all wired and fired with his selection of hi-zoot mains blocks and interconnects etc etc and all on his new guitar shape shelves.
Well frankly for the cost of the gear it sounded crap, just plain bloody awful, i have heard better in Dixons.
But there was more to come.
This guy got the award for player of the most obvious parlour game demo. His demo was removing his 'quality' mains cables and replacing them with kettle leads, and we were mean to pick up on the drop in sound quality along the way.
So off he goes playing some music telling us about how fantastic it was, clicking his fingers and tapping feet, smiling away, really getting into it. (we declined to follow suit and sat quite stoicly).
"right, that was great yeh, now see if you can spot the difference now i've taken out the hi-end cable from the DCS player"
The only differnece was that this time he didn't jump around clicking his fingers and tapping his feet, he stood there and scowled at us. ( so me and my two mates sat there tapping our feet and nodding our heads, while other people joined in, easil;y duped by our happy demeanours.).
He looked pissed.... he knew the game was up.
He asked who thought it sounded much much worse after all " if you couldn't hear that difference you should give up and sell your hifi". Naturally i volunteered that i couldn't hear any difference, then asked the guy next to me if he had. (i'd noticed that he had been easily lead by my foot tapping so thought him a cert to identify with me rather than the shop guy). Naturally he heard no differnece. The Audioworks guy is looking for a rabbit by this time.
So one of the audience asks how much the DCS player costs, "that's a 9K cd player" the guy says super pleased to show how much his gear costs, "9K just out this month".
"you'd think for nine thousand pounds that a company with a history of firsts in DSP and audio development would be able to cobble together a mains lead that didn't reduce the quality of their product".
he didn't respond.
"i noticed that they used standard leads downstairs in the DCS, they must think them all right"...
By this time, he realises that we are hear for a little fight, we hadn't come for a fight, but his parlour game was too clumsy to put up with, him foot tapping and clapping when he was listening to the expensive stuff, then the scowling and abrupt language as we moved down the kettle leads.
truth was there was absolutely no fucking difference at all, not even when all the gear had shit leads or when it had all his leads.
Pissed that we'd kinda sabotaged his demo, which we never intended to do, he did that himself, we decided that it might be nice to discuss the merits of his cables with him.
So we did.
"so what exactly do these cables do then" we asked, as it hadn't yet gone 'totally' south at this point.
" they allow a ''''''better harmonic structure to propagate up the wire'''''', and they damp out unwanted vibrations within the cable, it's a very fine selection process getting exactly the right amount of damping you don't want to over do it."
"surely you damp out all the vibration?" i asked
"no, if you over damp it it sounds bad".
"but it's just a power cable into a cd player, how can it be microphonic, have you eve measured it at the outputs.
"you can't measure it... you just have to trust your ears" he says.
"well i was trusting my ears, and i heard no difference at all, between the cheap and the expensive leads, so i just wondered what we should have been listening for, you know before i sell my hifi.."
"before you shoot yourself in the foot", says he" you might like to know that i also designed a nine thousand pound valve amp, so i know my electronics".
"did it sound any good" someone asked from the back"
So naturally i said "isn't it a bit bullish of you to assume that i have no electronics knowledge, after all you dont know me and you haven't stopped to ask what i do for a living. Do you always take the high ground with your customers and assume them to be idiots. if so how does that tally wiht telling them to trust their ears, aren't you just telling them to trust yours? Anyway about this damping... so does it damp the microphonic cable vibration out completely?
"almost" he said.
"so wouldn't that lovely 50hz vibration coming from the traffo inside the DCS player just put it all back in?"
and after that it fell apart, he lost the audience completely, we went around the houses on the subject of the only difference in the demo.... the sound of his own carefully placed tapping of feet and clicking of fingers to support a positive air during replay with his expensive cables, and him not tapping his feet and scolwing when he wanted people to react negatively to the cables...... and then he asked us to leave.
"If you don't want to learn anything from me, then why don't you give you seat up to someone who can hear the great difference these cables make to the sound?"
" we will mate, Dave said standing up, but i'm guessing you better take that seat yourself, because you're the only person in this room who thinks there is any differnece between those cables"...
and we went back and listned to Delicate sound of thunder in the MAX room, simply awesome music and no hard sell.
He was super pissed, for which I, Dave and Mark, make no apologies. if you want to demo gear then don't assume your customers haven't worked in the trade, don't use parlour tricks and slapdash NLP tricks, and above all, do your fucking research so you know what you are talking about when someone asks you a question and don't be so fucking rude...
