In The Beginning

In The Beginning

After college in 1975 I wanted to try my hand at running an audio store. It sure sounded like more fun than working for a living. With a $10k loan from my far too believing parents, I opened a small shop in a small town in Colorado, Estes Park. The theory was that as a single guy with no obligations, I could learn about the biz on a small scale with little risk. If it worked out, that would be great! If it wasn’t for me, I could let my lease run out and get a real job.

After about a year after creating High Fidelity Of Estes Park, I realized that I liked the biz, as well as the hobby. I had a year left on my lease and used that time to shop for a larger market that could use a store like the one I had in mind. You need a good sized population base to succeed in this racket because while we audiophiles are passionate, there aren’t very many of us per capita.

Milwaukee

I chose Milwaukee for a host of reasons. It was close to my family in Rockford, Il. It had a big enough population at about 500k. And while there were many audio stores in Milwaukee, none were

doing what I wanted to do.

I visited the Milwaukee stores in 1976 to size up the market.

Flanners had a peculiar store with small rooms in a huge mall with loads of commissioned salesmen swimming like sharks. They had strong product lines but, do you remember big mall electronics showrooms of the 70s? I would have better sound rooms, more progressive lines and a more personalized connection to die hard hobbyists.

Wack’s on North Ave was a trip. As I entered, the owner, Wally, was at a large counter area by the register. He had hunting gear on, complete with orange hat. He didn’t even look up as I strolled around. I went up the stairs to find two small dark rooms, locked. I came back down and asked him if I could check out those rooms. He said, “That’s high hat up there.” He never looked up from his newspaper on the counter. I knew Wack’s wouldn’t be a problem.

Port of Sound was insane! I would later learn that locals dubbed it Port of Noise. It was as big as a grocery store and music was blasting from all corners simultaneously. I saw they carried Yamaha electronics which were strong for the day. I went to the counter to ask the guy at the register, “Do you carry Yamaha speakers too?” Yamaha had been making a splash with NS-1000. A voice (Elliot) came from behind a cubicle from a man I couldn’t even see. He barked to his salesperson, “We don’t carry Yamaha speakers. Sell him something else.”

A boutique dealer advertised in a local rag that they sold HIGH END electronics from the back of a book store on Silver Spring. They advertised Connoisseur. I wondered if this might be a sharp

competitor with an eye on my target market. I visited. There was a pair of Bertagni Geostats on display. Pretty cool for 1976. I asked the sales guy about them. His pitch is something I’ve still never topped. “Well, they ain’t shitty. I can tell ya that. They ain’t shitty.”

Flanners would be a force to contend with. They had high profile advertising, respectable product lines and aggressive salesmen. But my direction would be more focused and personal.

I was also a cold weather guy vs a hot weather guy. St. Louis & Phoenix were screaming for an Audio Emporium but I would have melted at either. I chose Milwaukee and opened in 1977.

Audio Emporium

My store hinged around several very important product lines- speakers in particular.

The speakers at the upper end were niche products from Magnepan and Dahlquist. In the bread and butter category I offered a killer new line “nobody” had yet heard of, Polk Audio. It turned out to be a super star.

It’s hard to remember… or even imagine, how hi-fi fit into the home entertainment world in 1977. For us men, our first hobby of interest was women. That… has not changed! Everything else has.

Look at all the content you can watch on your screens tonight. And most people are lazy. They’ll WATCH most any crud passively. We audiophiles want a more immersive and interactive experience by bringing musicians into our living room.

Hi-fi was the #1 hobby of the day. A lot of guys were into cameras (because girls liked cameras) but hi-fi and music were IT. When I opened AE with Polk, it was a smashing success. Polk was bringing people in and killin’ it with sales from day one. Polk was just hammering its similarly priced competitors for about 15 years. Flanners had ADS and the 810 was half again more money than the Polk Ten. I’m sure the 810 sold just fine- it was good speaker. But Polk was redefining the market of affordable speakers. ADS actually changed directions and by the mid 80s had completely lost their way. That helped my biz. Flanner had to push people towards Kef, which was a smaller sound at a bigger price- not what Milwaukee wants.

I also made room for a category of speaker that was just “happening” in the US- an ENGLISH speaker line (English speakers? What? Why?) called B&W. I had my choice between B&W and Kef. Both were good at what they did. In 1977 Kef was actually a bit more mature than B&W. But I smelled that B&W was much more “on the move” due to some technical advancements, and made the correct decision (whew!) to ride the B&W horse.

All four of these lines were to become industry stallions. It was a combination that was impossible to beat. Polk took flight as THE premier affordable audio brand for almost two decades. Anyone who partnered with Polk and paid attention to Sandy Gross’s guidance couldn’t help but do well.

 

In 1977 I connected with Paul DiComo, a straight talking, fun loving audiophile with NAD. Paul moved to Polk within a couple years and I enjoyed a good relationship with him for many years. In fact, Paul and I were both married on June 10, 1978- but not to EACH OTHER! Every year as our anniversaries neared we would call or email. OK, what are we getting Debbie & Sue this year? What made Paul different from other guys in the sales world is… that while he was willing to make the case to sell his product, he knew other companies made good gear too. It wasn’t like his line was great and everything else was garbage. You’d be shocked at how seldom this mature outlook was taken.

POLK was successful because it made some terrific sounding speakers at very fair prices. The line sold well because, number one, it was strong in performance. And #2, Polk’s marketing and keeping up with demand was outstanding. Polk was a wonderful business partner from 1977-1992 when the wheels came off.

The Polk Ten just kicked fanny for its day. It had a nice open midrange and top end, along with a bit of a kick in the bass. It was immediately likable for all the pop rock EVERYONE was listening to. To get even with Polk Ten, you had to double the price to something like an ADS-810. Polk Ten was a superstar. Polk 12 with open air tweeter was sophisticated ahead of its time. The open air tweeter achieved space and depth competitive with Dahlquist and B&W, at a fraction of the price. It didn’t have the audiophile allure of the British, but make no mistake, Polk 12 was half the price of a B&W or Kef that were just a touch more refined.

ARC was my high end separates line, with GAS right along side and stretching to more

affordable price points. Hafler had just opened shop and I jumped on board with both feet. It was a home run.

Audire was my dark horse. Nobody had heard of it. Yet Audire was my favorite, with a smoother, warmer sound than Hafler and GAS, while the prices were similar. Audire also had weightier bass performance, Crescendo and Forte- at good pricing.

Here’s how I discovered Audire. I was at the Chicago CES, McCormick place in 1976. There was a very polite guy in a suit playing one of Beethoven’s string quartets. The sound of this system was… arresting! It grabbed me because of the quiet between the notes, and the timbre and sheen of the strings. It was eerily real- what I knew to have the immediacy of a MASTER TAPE, but coming from a commercially produced LP. This was coming from speakers the gentleman also built, but were not for sale. To make my point, average speakers were purveying this marvelous sound.

As a strong young guy, I had dragged my 45 pound Akai open reel around to various music venues over the years to do live recording. I had a respectable Tapco mixer and a handful of good AKG mics. It wasn’t super high end, but it was GOOD. I learned early that the sound of a MASTER TAPE I made with my modest gear – whupped commercially produced LPs.

In today’s lingo we know Audire’s success was the result of a dead quiet background, discrete design, big power supplies and short signal paths. The dynamics within the Beethoven quartet were astonishing. CES assaults you with room after room of classic rock. While that has its place, Audire and Beethoven won me over. Julius Siksnius who owned Audire, turned out to be the nicest guy ever.

What an asset! When you’re in business you need the support of your manufacturer. Julius created Audire and cared about the details. He was not a volatile guy and when things needed to be fixed or changed, he just did so. With most of my other companies, it was pulling teeth to do most

anything other than order and pay.

I still had my shop in Colorado at the time and did a bit of Audire business there. Audire was the best kept secret in the affordable audio world. I tried to help spread the word. Audire did get some national acclaim, but never got its due. It is interesting that there are pockets of extreme Audire loyalty out there in the used market these days!

Audire’s Legato preamp and Crescendo power amp, especially the version with meters, sounded smoother than Hafler and sold very well. Diffet 2 and Forte were solidly magnificent. The Forte amp had more courage than any amp short of a $3k Threshold. What a great time to sell ground breaking, affordable gear.

George Kelly

When I was in Colorado I became friends with a world class Hammond B3 player with a great voice. George Kelly was 28.

George could play the B3 as well as the biggest names we all know. George played tunes you’ve heard of with his own improvisations. His renditions of “The Work Song” “I’ve Got a Woman” “Higher and Higher” “Stormy Monday” and especially Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” “I Don’t Live Today” and “Hangman Hang My Shell” were driving and ravishing. They were different every night. His pedal work in the midst of playing the keys and singing was astonishing. George truly was a one man band of the highest talent.

George was the first (and last!) local musician I heard who had national level talent. George’s undoing was that he loved the bottle more than the music.

Set one every night was fabulous- on point and on fire! People who were visiting Colorado from afar would stand and hoot and holler at his talent after one song. By set two things were sliding badly. By set 3, George was all but gone, a fraction of what he could be.

I recorded a couple gigs and met resort owners who said they’d have hired him FOR THE SEASON if they hadn’t seen set two or three. With that exposure… to the celebs and music people of Aspen, he would have become a national success. His talent was undeniable.

George lived on your sofa or futon. He did odd jobs because playing a few nights at bars,

clubs and resorts couldn’t pay the bills. His genius quotient and drinking prevented him from getting a solid day job to create a substantive base of operations. I always wondered how he could be such a great musician- with no home base in which to practice- kinda like Schubert! The only time he played was at gigs where he was getting paid. Over the two years I knew him, he started out great and got even better. But he “couldn’t” play without drinking. And when he drank, his playing quickly slumped. But that first set set each night was scintillating!

The point… you never know where you’ll encounter music that will literally blow you away. We can hear more music than ever now with today’s technology. If George was playing today, he would surely have been “discovered.” Youtube would have been his vehicle to take off.

Tables

Turntables were Rega and Linn. And B&O. B&O was its own world. It was beautiful and sounded pleasant- but didn’t have state of the art definition. Yet Rega was my daily bread. Regas sounded so much cleaner than Technics, Denons and all the direct drives of the day. Regas didn’t have the ringing and rumble of the direct drives. Great values!

The other cool thing about Rega tables in the 70s is that they had detachable headshells. You could load up a pile of cartridges and compare them quickly enough to make valid comparisons. The benefit of this is that you could prove to a customer that a Denon moving coil cart was worth the money over a Sonus or Shure.

Magnepan made the incredible Unitrac-1 tonearm. Before the Unitrac came out, we had various models from Grace, Decca and Keith Monks. Lemme tell ya, the Unitrac-1 scorched them all. We sold it on Regas, Linns and Oracles. Today the idea of a tonearm being a ground breaking product… seems hard to believe. But Magnepan redefined the category- great arm that would accept almost any cart- at a fair price.

I had Connoisseur for a short time because as a belt drive, it sounded better than the Technics at the same price. But the rumble and flimsy build quality killed me and I had to boot it out.

Micro Seiki made some excellent low cost tables- as well as some more esoteric tables. We had a nice run with them before they forgot who they were.

As the B&O line expanded with more features the reliability plummeted. Their late 70s/early 80s gear was pretty and WORKED. It was audio with flair. It cost about 25% more than the mainstream brands but had personality. A lot of people liked it. I did too. But it was never high power. When the feature set ramped up, the reliability fell off a cliff so I dropped it. It got big and complicated.

Carts

Cartridges were wildly variable and made my hair turn gray at a young age. There was no question that as moving coils took over the market, we were going to achieve new levels of resolution and air in our music systems. The fact was, and IS, that MM RIAA is elstinko! It is massively rolled off at the high end. MCs smoke Mms. But the problem in the mid 70s is that the head amps you needed for MCs were too noisy to be useful. Yep, even expensive units from ARC, Acoustat and others had thoroughly unusable MC phono preamps!

Denon moving coils were solid and wonderful. The 103D in particular, was great sounding and reliable. But customers believed what the mags wrote, so I had an alternative diet of Supex, Decca, Dynavector, Sonus and Grado. It ground my gears that Stereo Review and the like raved about Shure carts. They couldn’t hold a candle to a Denon 103D. The lack of consistency and poor reliability of many popular carts was a reality punch in the nose. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way. Denon did MC right. In the 80s we had a nice run with Talisman who also made great MCs. The Denon HA1000 headamp for about $500 sounded good- but that was the RARE MC phono pre in 1977 that cut the mustard. That would change within a couple years. Ultimately Julius saved us with his sub $200 Audire Poco battery operated MC phono pre! Audire’s Poco became

a regular seller with virtually every moving coil cart we sold for years.

It was sad the way Shure dominated the market with V15 type whatever. The Shure MM didn’t have the speed, weight or dynamics that Denon’s 103D had, much less the Talisman S. You could tell Shure’s marketing money was paying off. MC was, and still is, worth the trouble. Today we have plenty of headamp options that are quiet. Back then… NO! We knew about Julius and Audire. The general market didn’t.

Electronics

In short order NAD came to the US. I was the 10^th NAD dealer in N America. All the others were near Boston where the importer was based. Talk about a line that was about to slay the competition! NAD made fine sounding gear in unabashedly plain Jane cosmetics- a great combination. The headroom on their integrated amps and power amps smashed the Technics, Sonys and even Yamahas of the day. NAD had growing pains. Rarely does a rookie lead the league in home runs and make the all-star team. But by about 1980 NAD was making some terrific gear at

fair prices that was reliable. The sound of NAD integrateds was less stressed at higher volume levels due to Soft Clipping and Power Drive. The gear punched above its weight class and still does.

I fell in love with the Snell Type A and carried it. It was crushing that Peter Snell died at just 38 in 1984. There’s no doubt Peter’s work would have been exciting for years to come. Peter bought drivers from various companies and built his own cabinets and crossovers. Many companies still do this. His cabinet work was innovative and impressive. Have you seen the Snell Type A? If not, please Google Snell Type A. It was iconic and beautiful. Type A sold for a mere $1680. Peter got more mileage out of this MO than anybody working with the same formula. The original A was outstanding. Yet Peter was smart enough to introduce upgrades, each of which produced large improvements. I can only imagine what he would have achieved over the years. I’m very sad we lost him, both personally, and professionally. He would have made increasingly beautiful sounding, and looking speakers.

I added RH Labs subwoofers as well. Randy Hooker was one of the nicest guys in the biz, at a tough time when high freight prices hurt heavy product sales. Randy made the passive coffin shaped woofer. Randy even understood to offer an electronic crossover which had a faster slope than Dahlquist. It worked nicely. He later brought out a powered smaller woofer- that people over drove and killed. Freight prices on these big boys killed the profit for everyone. It just wasn’t possible to do biz at the reasonable prices Randy was asking. Randy was clearly ahead of his time and deserved a better fate. If he had opened RH Labs in 1987 instead of 1977, things would have gone much better for him. Randy legitimately was the first guy to kick start the subwoofer market! In fact Randy was looking for dealers in the mid 70s and called on a retail store in California to carry RH subs. These motivated guys saw an opportunity and instead of carrying Randy’s subs- started their

own subwoofer company- M&K was born.

Velodyne was the company that solved the riddle of the affordable powered sub before anyone else. Yet as cheap powered subs proliferated, they ate their own. Eventually the SOBs, including my vendors of Paradigm and B&W, learned how to make subs that would last just outside the warranty- and then the amp would die. The customer was faced with, do I pay for an expensive repair with a 90 day warranty on a four year old sub? Or do I buy a new sub? Door number two please.

Great White Whale Point 3 was the first 3 piece (satellites and sub) system I heard. It wasn’t uber sophisticated but it was unique for the time. It competed with Fried and sold for a fraction

of the price, $400. GWW was way ahead of the market in producing a sub with small satellites. In due time Bose flooded the market with plastic Dixie cup satellites and flimsy subs for a grand. Heavens! I remember the GWW being an early, affordable foray into the category.

Rogers brought out the iconic LS 3/5a. It sounded tonally accurate compared to virtually everything else. But it couldn’t play loudly enough to please most of my customers. As you tried to get more volume, it just wouldn’t go. The woofer bottomed and broke. Rogers would never cover a driver under warranty, so it cost me money to sell the product. It was a shame, but, reality can’t be ignored.

Falcon introduced its Gold Badge LS 3/5a in 2020. It is the best ever version of this venerable speaker. It’s fine for me, an old guy who doesn’t blast classic rock. But it’s still limited for most of my customers. Falcon introduced other speakers that can play at volumes people demand. Falcons are made in England. The Rogers name is now back, but they’re buying Chinese built speakers and simply marketing.

It was a fascinating time to be in the biz because all of these companies were owner/operator enterprises. We got to interface with owners, designers and their right hand men.

ARC

ARC had just introduced its analog module, solid state line in 1977. The SP-4 preamp and D-100 amp sounded wonderful. They were clean, quiet and never broke. Bill Johnson of ARC visited me and told me to my face, “We’ll never make a tube unit again!”

It was a crying shame that the market would not believe that Bill had created a better mouse trap. The analog module sounded very good, clean and quiet. The market insisted he go back to tubes, so he did, within two years. While some of them sounded good, they all broke like mad and were a pain in the neck. Bill had done good work with the analog module. It deserved to fly.

When 50% of the gear has problems, even though it sounds good, you’ve got a bad business partner. To this day, I am befuddled as to why the hi-fi mags ignore the reality of poor reliability of most tube lines. There are some good ones, like Rogue & Mac. But it seems to be a state secret as to how unreliable big, hot, tube gear is!

I learned a truth about the biz that was a punch in the nose in 1977. As I went to CES in Chicago in June, I visited ARC. Sitting on the shelf was a spartan looking SP-5 preamp, $600. What’s this? Nobody had told me about the SP-5. In fact, I had just received several SP-4s, which ran $900 and had tone controls, that most audiophiles didn’t want. I learned very quickly that ARC came out with a cheaper, ostensibly cleaner sounding unit for $300 less. ARC was dying to move out its SP4 inventory and only selectively shared this SP-5 news with pet dealers before the show. I had to buy some SP-5s, which made the SP4s boat anchors. You have to look out for yourself- because your vendors do the same. ARC had SP4s in stock to move. Nobody was going to tell me, you might want to order this brand new SP5 instead. The minute the SP5 intro hit the mags, moving the SP4s was very difficult.

After seeing SP5 at the show, it took me an hour to “absorb” that I had been taken advantage of- that my SP4s were worth less- with the intro of SP5. I went back to ask Bill why he would sand bag a dealer like that. He blew off my concern and said, “Just put the SP4 on sale for 5% off. That should do it.” It didn’t answer my question AND I couldn’t believe, HE believed, that a 5% discount was enough to move the needle even a little bit. In reality, he lived in an ivory tower. He didn’t realize that shoppers drove hours from one dealer to another to save a buck. 5% wouldn’t move nada. Pretty naive Bill.

ARC vs Threshold

In 1979, Bob, a brass salesman from Chicago visited with a gorgeously modern looking amp in hand. It turned out to be a Threshold 400A. Bob traveled the Midwest and had visited me before. He told me of this new amp he had gotten- and how wonderful it was. I challenged him to bring it

by to compete with ARC’s D100, a very fine power amp for $1k.

In my first couple of years, I had fellows bring in SAE, Phase Linear, Dynas, Mac, Citation, Audionics and untold other amps to do battle with the ARC D-100. The D-100 had beaten them all in definition and smoothness. It never got harsh. D-100 had weightier sound than the budget amps by Audionics and Hafler.

I connected up Bob’s 400A and realized, WOW! The 400A was a clear cut winner. The improvement in resolution, dynamics and bass impact was so apparent that I didn’t even put up a battle. Bob was humble in victory. That’s how I learned about Threshold. In short order I was doing biz with Threshold. Their SL-10 preamp whupped the SP-4 because it had a dead quiet MC section- the Achilles’ heel of the ARC.

Within a couple months, Bill Johnson of ARC called me up. He said you have to choose between Threshold and ARC. I’m not sharing top billing with Threshold. I pulled no punches. I told him the 400A, and 4000A were more power and better sounding than his amps. And the SL-10 preamp with quiet MC section slaughters your SP-4 with noisy MC. ARC’s MC phono section hissed like a snake. I told him, you’re now a tube specialty line for me. He got angry and said he wouldn’t sell to me any more. Hasta la vista Bill.

I replaced ARC with one tube line after another. I carried C-J. Then Cary. They both had big reliability problems and simply weren’t worth selling. When half of what you sell doesn’t work and needs to be repaired or returned- I’ll pull the chute. The magazines would rave about all these lines,

totally ignoring their constant problems.

Audire

Audire was an oasis in the 70s and 80s. It sounded warm and solid. Hafler, for ex, sounded clean and lean = less musical. So did Apt Holman. The Forte and Crescendo amps were richer sounding, wonderful values.

The Poco phono headamp was a joy. What a sweet product! It was a very quiet MC phono preamp for under $200. Everyone could afford it so we sold them prolifically! We finally had a sub $500 MC headamp that worked with Denon and the other fine MCs of the day. Before Poco we tried to get by with the Marcof- but it stunk. Too noisy. The Denon HA-1000 was the only good headamp at the time- and it ran $500 in 1977, which is equal to about $2k today.

Audiophiles have forgotten what a bear it was to make MCs carts work acceptably. The noise floor was a huge problem and Audire flat out solved it before anyone else- with a great sounding, affordable solution.

To this day, RIAA sucks and it’s a challenge to make MM sound good.

The Diffet and Legato preamps were quiet and clean. Audire didn’t get much national attention because Julius was so low key. But he sure made great gear and it was a pleasure selling it.

Make no mistake, getting press in the rags revolves around spending advertising money. You can get a mention here or there with a fine product alone. But if you plan to be in biz for some years

you need the support of the mags and you have to have the money to do that. A one page ad in

Stereophile ran about $3500 in 2010.

After having success with the $1k on down gear, Julius came out with a killer class AB amp called the Otez. It was dynamite- better than the MLAS ML3. He came out with a class A version called Parlando. It was another magnificent amp. I don’t know how many Audire sold. I only sold a handful of each. But they were the best amps I knew of. If Julius had PT Barnum for a front man his biz would have been booming.

To depict how nice a guy Julius was… this time in hi-fi was the wild wild west. If TAS wrote that this new Mallory Mylar cap was the best, it wasn’t THAT unusual for a customer to decide, he was going to replace the caps in his amp with the new ones that were getting raved.

One of my customers soldered in a pile of Mylar caps into his Audire amp. When he was done,

it didn’t work! No surprise here. He sent it to Audire with a note that said, fix this under warranty. All I did was put in some better parts than the junk you put in.

Now, Julius… who was literally the nicest guy I’ve ever met, called me and said, “I’m thinking I should just send this back to the customer, untouched. He butchered it. Do you know this man?”

I told Julius, yes, I know him. He’s been a very good customer. I’ve never had a problem with him,

and I’m surprised by the tone of the letter he sent you.

Julius offered, “Well, he was probably just influenced by the magazine.” Julius sent ME a brand new replacement amp, to hand to the customer and tell him- “Do not modify this amp or you’re on your own. I’m taking care of you this time. But that’s it.”

This… was Julius. Who else would do this after a customer botched his amp and insinuated that he did slipshod work? Nobody! I admit, I wouldn’t have been so magnanimous.

Linn Vs Oracle

I had been selling Linn but it wasn’t easy duty. The table set up was clunky to say the least. The LP12 was sprung so tightly that if your 20 pound dog ran across the room, the darn thing would jiggle and skip. Heaven forbid you had children in the house!

 

Oracle came out with a beautiful table that was much less finicky to set up. It too had its problems. But Oracle had Steve McCormack who was as professional as they come. Problems were

dealt with and overcome. Steve proved that even if a product wasn’t perfect, having a class guy at the top who wouldn’t dodge problems was invaluable. Linn’s importer had Gary Warzin who was a plenty smart guy, but acerbic. If you called with a Linn problem, he would immediately go on the offensive like every problem was your fault- and YOU were the idiot. I had a nice run with Oracle.

But ya know, I was very much a Rega guy. Rega’s Planar 3 with the best carts of the day was very competitive with Oracle and Linn- with NONE of the trouble. There was no dancing suspension

to make you swear at your dog. You just put a record on and played it. Rega had nice resistance to foot fall and you can make a good case for buying a fancier cartridge with a Rega than a lesser cartridge with a more expensive table. Because… that more expensive table only sounded better when set up within a gnat’s arse of perfect. With all that sprung suspension in play, changing with time and weather to boot, I was a Rega guy for LPs. I did lots of biz with Jeff Horen, the St Louis

based Rega importer. Jeff was a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. But I got a long great with Jeff. He always did what he said and I always paid on time. You would think everyone would do biz like that. Um, no. It was the exception, and not the rule, to run your side of the biz honorably.

Magazines

This would be a good time to bring in the WEIGHT that hi-fi mags had back at this wild wild west time in our business.

We all read Stereo Review and Audio. We read them for exposure to new products. We scoured The Absolute Sound and Stereophile.

I was much more of a TAS fan. HP talked about gear we had never heard of. You could tell he didn’t know diddly squat about technology. He even hypothesized that ARC’s analog module had “wee little tubes” within- cuz they sounded good. That was an absolutely ridiculous guess and let us know that HP didn’t know beans from apple butter about what was in the gear he was reviewing. But he wrote passionately about the music and how it sounded. This was fun stuff when all you had in your town were Sony receivers and Bose speakers.

When I opened in 1977, TAS and Stereophile were barely more than leaflets. What they put in their REFERENCE SYSTEMS, people could either afford, or PLAN to buy. It wasn’t like today where the mags have gone BESERK, reviewing turntables for $300k and speakers for $750k.

Hence the hi-fi mags were indeed resources for us. I would definitely call them advocates for us- hi-fi hobbyists. HP wrote as though he was thinking of us when he reviewed gear.

Today, that’s not at all the case. Rich companies send reviewers uber expensive gear every month. We see 8 page reviews and discussions about half a million dollar speakers. What a waste of time.

These writers often say they buy things after reviewing. Of course they do so at pennies on the dollar because manufacturers see this as great advertising. If they sell a $70k speaker to reviewer X for $5k, they’re fine with that. It’s well paid for when the reviewer brags that they are in his reference system. Writer after writer today has millions of dollars of gear in his stable. He’s not like you or me.

I read carefully the exchanges HP had with hi-fi personalities. Every exchange with Jim Bongiorno was a dogfight. At a time when Bongiorno made early high powered amps, GAS was in the mags quite a bit.

Exchanges with Jim Winey of Magnepan were smart and well considered.

We learned about innovative products like Magnepans, Acoustat stats, Heil tweeters and Walsh inverted megaphone looking drivers. There were even a few crazy people who bought Hill speakers with helium based tweeters.

Along with the four mags mentioned above, two others had some juice. IAR and The Audio Critic. I subscribed to all six and read them cover to cover. Perhaps you did too.

These mags were not altruistic in nature. They all wanted to SCOOP each other. Odds were good that if one mag recommended the Linn LP12, a competing mag would recommend the Oracle instead. The same thing happened with cartridges, speakers, cables etc. Think B&W vs KEF.

The mags were important because they could give a company a real kick start. The company would have to earn its biz, of course. But that kick start would be valuable.

The perfect example was Oracle vs Linn. I loved the sound of LP12 and it was my top table when I opened in 1977. But if was a jiggly mess. If your 10 pound poodle ran across the room it would send LP12 into seizures. Heaven forbid your 5 and 7 year olds got into a wrestling match!

Further, dealing with Gary, Linn’s ever acerbic importer, was no pleasure. IAR wrote a rave on Oracle which put them on the map instantly. I was dying for an alternative to Linn and Oracle filled the bill. The product was easier to set up. It was more resistant to foot fall issues. And dealing with Steve McCormack was an absolute pleasure compared to dealing with Gary. Oracle had its issues, which I’ll spell out. But the point is, one “leaflet” by IAR, literally gave Oracle wings. We saw this happen time and time again.

My first employee, Doug, made a prescient comment. He said his heart beat twice its normal speed as he was opening a new TAS. He was hopeful our brands had been endorsed instead of something else. Because it mattered!

At times I’d shake my head. Rotel was making some good affordable electronics. Then all of a sudden Adcom became the rage. Hey fellas, Rotel made Adcom! The 100 and 200 w/ch amps were literally the same pieces, except for the cosmetics. Adcom’s American face, Rob Hein, just did a much better job “working” the press than Rotel did. Adcom took off and Rotel was much more pedestrian.

This is running too long to make it a short story. But the point is the mags really DID matter in the 70s and 80s in particular. The mags are where you learned of Magnepans, Dahlquists, Levinson, ARC and the rest.

There is so much online press today, that even if TAS raves a new speaker, it just doesn’t move the needle as it once could. No one reviewer, anywhere, can move the market as HP or Peter Moncrief once could.

Let me add this. If you read Stereophile or the British Hi-Fi News, you’ll see their measurements of equipment. While we don’t hear measurements, you can learn a lot from them. You can determine which companies are FIBBING on power ratings and speaker impedance ratings. You can learn a lot from what’s in the dark gray sections. The writers don’t want to say in the copy, this speaker is rated at 8 ohms, but the bass goes below 2 at much of the curve. They don’t want to say that this amp that’s rated at 40 w/ch actually clipped at 14 w/ch. But the info is there if you care to look for it.

NAD

NAD was right up Milwaukee’s alley! This was good gear selling at similar prices to big box.

NAD 3020 changed the world of integrated amps. As they introduced new integrateds over the years, they just got better and better. NAD taught us the value of headroom and soft clipping. These characteristics are still important today.

NAD had wonderful affordable separates. While they didn’t sound as gutsy and smooth as Audire, they were much less money and rarely broke. They had circuitry to save the customer from himself. And yep, a lot of a customers imbibe at home and abuse their amps and speakers.

NAD was especially successful with their red labeled Monitor Line. They ran a great range of preamps, amps, tuners and CD players for about ten years. I’ve had an NAD 2100 running 8 pairs of speakers in my house for 33 plus years. It refuses to break!

The 1300 preamp, with 5000 CD player and 2400 power amp were as strong and cost effective a package as you could buy for many years. It could drive any speakers and allowed a customer to spend more in the speakers where it mattered, than in electronics with lesser speakers.

In the early 2020s, NAD really got its MOJO back and started producing remarkable products at fair prices- that outperformed their competitors. It all starts with amp sections that are impedance invariant and don’t break!

70s/80s

These years were great fun as numerous owner operators came out with good sounding products. They were all passionate and well meaning. Everyone tried to out do the other guy. That’s what great competition yielded- better, more reliable products.

There were some weird experiences along the way though- which I certainly didn’t expect. They toughen you up.

I was selling a specialty tonearm at the time made locally. The gentleman visited my store

OFTEN to tweak it. I respected that he wanted the demo to sound as good as possible as HE got better. He was learning on the fly, hardly a scientist. One day in the store he was chatting with a customer who was shopping for a power amp. In short order it was clear he was trying to talk this customer into buying his used Dynaco amp, because he had gotten something new. That… is not kosher. The customer did indeed buy his Dyna.

My Hafler rep was a rare visitor. I was selling lots of Hafler. I didn’t need maintenance from reps for the most part. When Hafler introduced its big amp, the DH-500, one of the reps from the Chicago firm visited to hear it. His rep firm hadn’t yet received a sample of this new brontosaurus. He was an outgoing, gregarious sales guy. Customer Mark was visiting to hear this new amp. Mark and the rep are two peas in a pod. Both loud, friendly and back slapping guys. Within moments they were best buds, sharing hi-fi and motorcycle stories. I was kind of surprised Mark never bought the DH-500 from me. He had been looking for more power than his 100×2 NAD amp had. Wellllll, Mark told me about 20 years later, that he arranged to trade a rock of coke to my rep for a DH-500. Mark thought it was hilarious. Me… not so much.

Compact Discs

I was shocked at the venom the audiophile community showed towards the CD when it was introduced in 1982. In retrospect, it can easily be identified. The assault was launched by turntable specialists and importers, like Linn in particular. Of course they were scared spitless that their turntable biz would suffer. It was as simple as, hey, if we don’t sell it, it’s no good!

While audiophiles whined and cried about the nuances of CDs, they were immune to hearing clicks, pops and potholes in their records. I never understood this disdain for the new format. CDs could vary in quality based on the master available and production work. But at their best, they whipped LPs because they had no noise and much superior dynamic range. And in fact, while the specialty “lunatic fringe” was knocking CDs, the general public was buying them by the boatload. In a short time the loonies were a small bastion in the fog while most people embraced the format.

And hey, within a couple of years Linn was selling CD players too! They were claiming that THEIR CD players were great and everything else was so much junk. By the late 80s it was easy to see through this snowstorm of BS.

Well guess what. It happened again in 2000, with SACD. When SACD was introduced by Marantz and Sony, a portion of our hobby dismissed SACD as a failure- not worth consideration. Yet again, I wondered where this was coming from. SACDs sounded great, and still make my favorite sound in the industry! But the answer was the same. The companies that were behind the curve and couldn’t offer the SACD format, just said- it’s no better than red book. Ah, NO. You’re wrong again.

Fast forward to the 2020s and it’s happening again in the vinyl revival. Some crazy people are saying you have to stream or play LPs. Well… you can, if you want to. But I encourage my customers to play their library of CDs (and SACDs if you dove in).There’s no LP hassle or maintenance. No clicks and pops to LISTEN THROUGH and pretend they’re not there. Let’s face facts on vinyl. You need to clean ‘em every play. You will even get better performance if you deep clean them with an expensive treatment process. They’ll sound better with LAST preservative. They’ll sound better if you align the VTA every LP cuz they’re all different in size. Some aren’t even center cut for crissakes.

The problem with streaming is, it doesn’t sound as good as playing silver discs. It’s convenient. I like it for hearing new music or playing old music I’ll never buy on CD. But make no mistake, SACD is the best sounding format and CD is fabulous as well.

Now, of course the sound depends on how well the master was made. It further depends on how that master was turned into a CD. Not every CD sounds great. But the format has the capacity to sound nothing short of magnificent.

I have many piano recordings in particular, where the CD sounds clear and spacious. That music would be spoiled by running a needle through a sandbox.

I’ve visited a few stores around the country when on vacation and asked to hear a big rig that’s on display. In each and every case the sales guy proudly plays an LP, stating CDs are garbage. And then we listen to Brahms, Chopin or Schumann through mechanical noise.

IF you choose to pretend that noise isn’t there…. Like your brain has a filter for it, go nuts. Suit yourself. Yet EVERY TIME I hear a classical piano work I want to hear played on LP, it takes only a few seconds before the noise disqualifies the musical experience for me. I am happy to play vinyl if the music being introduced isn’t available on silver disc.

Ultimately, if you want to play your LPs, by all means do so. It IS fun looking at the cover of

“No Secrets” or “Hasten Down the Wind” yet again- with that fabulous… cover art! But it’s the emperor’s new clothes musically for me. I don’t care to listen THROUGH the debris. You can pretend it isn’t there. I won’t.

Please consider an Atoll CD player. They’re so good, and so fairly priced, that it’s ridiculous. Of course an Atoll sounds warmer and smoother than every manner of $400 Chinese built player.

As for you LP devotes… If you bark about a $400 CD player, then you’d better compare that to an AudioTechnica or Project table with a cheap cart that rumbles and hums. You see, the problem isn’t the CD format. If you play CDs on crappy players with small power supplies that don’t track well, of course they’ll fall short. Try that music on an Atoll CD80 Sig or CD200SE!

Magnepan moved into ribbon tweets. The airy sound they could provide was unlike anything we’d heard before. Their bass was always tight and lean. It was up MY alley but my customers wanted more thunder. You can talk till you’re blue in the face, the boys want big bass.

I encouraged Magnepan for years to make powered subs. About 75% of my Maggie customers were buying subwoofers. But nope. They never listened. They insisted box subs “don’t work” and let all that biz walk. I respected their desire for purity. But their customers WERE buying subs- and they did work. Instead of making the best subs possible for the time, million$ went to other companies. That shoulda/coulda been Maggie biz.

We could say the same thing about power amps. There were more fine amps than subs. I encouraged Maggie to create a power amp or integrated to marry their speakers. The speakers were/are a bit demanding, but the impedance is flat, so making a good amp should be attainable. Every Maggie customer asked which amp to buy. It was a shame to send that biz elsewhere. It isn’t rocket science to make a good quality sub or amp. But nope, not gonna do it. Magnepan and Wendell stuck to their guns and have always made great speakers.

Hey boys, my ideas are still solid!

I met Jim Smith when he was with Maggie. He visited my store and helped teach me how to

set up speakers to get the most out of them. He was concerned with making good sound in the store,

whether it was with his Maggies, Dahlquists or anything else. Jim epitomized the philosophy that all boats rise when the tide comes in. It’s good to help the tide come in for everyone, not just your own brand.

Magnepan also made the best tone arm of the day! How strange was that?! We sold a couple hundred to put on Oracles and even Regas. I’ll still never understand how they wouldn’t listen to me

on subwoofers though. You can step outta your box to make a friggen tonearm but not stay within

your box to create a fine subwoofer?!

The Amber Series 70 was a smoother, warmer amp than the Hafler at the same price point. I sold loads of them. They had a fine preamp too. I still liked Audire better. But Amber was aggressive and in the mags. Guys were asking for it. It was a unique time. If TAS or Stereophile said, we just discovered this great new amp- the phone started ringing. Sometimes the products were really good, as with the Amber Series 70, Grace 707 arm and Stax headphones. Sometimes they were putsy or unreliable, like the Decca carts, Formula 4 tonearms and Marcof headamps. You can’t always hit a home run.

Apt Holman had a full featured preamp that was very nice for its time. There are plenty of audiophiles who wanted those features. They had a clean, too lean, power amp as well, that was happy with any impedance- but didn’t sound heavy enough in the bass to compete with a great amp like the Audire Forte.

Sumo grew out of the ashes of GAS. Jim Bongiorno was challenging, and ultimately impossible, to do business with, but he understood that there was strong demand for high powered amps. We had spurts of success, including two fine cartridges (one MM, the other MC).

We all have our own personalities. You can’t make Bobby Knight into a calm coach. And, you couldn’t keep Jim from being his own worst enemy. There were other characters kinda/sorta like Jim,

but he took the cake. He was a lot like Buddy Rich the drummer. People would respect Buddy’s chops but couldn’t work with, or get along with him.

Jim fought like lions and hyenas with magazines, dealers and customers. If you didn’t immediately accept what Jim said and comply, YOU were a dope. Get used to it. Jim did have chutzpah! He got his gear into magazines better than anyone of his day. He probably bowled through the front door and said here I am, let’s get to the review. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Sometimes that isn’t the best path- for long term success anyway.

I sold Vandersteen for a couple years when the Model 2 came out. While pleasant sounding enough, the speaker had mundane dynamics and was stiflingly inefficient. It needed much more amplifier to wake it up than anything else in the shop. Stereophile (Oct 2005) measured it at 82dB SPL, the lowest number I’ve ever seen. They were particularly blah with the low powered tube amps of the day. I just wasn’t a big fan and we didn’t hit it off that well personally, having to listen to extreme political chatter on more than one occasion. I decided to put my efforts elsewhere. It turns out we both did just fine without each other.

Nakamichi made the best sounding cassette decks at a time when cassette decks mattered. But they were no more reliable than the inexpensive NADs. I loved playing with cassette decks! I did a fair amount of live recording with them. Master Tape sound was a real thing. NAD cassette decks with the PlayTrim feature were wonderful for the time. PlayTrim boosted highs in front of the Dolby circuitry. They were affordable and sounded open, while being quiet.

During a snit with Nakamichi and their crummy service, I picked up Uher. Their cassette deck

and open reel decks sounded great- more open and airy than Naks. But Nakamichi was the name and… people weren’t much interested in the cute German Uhers. I dragged the tiny battery operated cassette deck around to a couple of live chamber and piano recordings. It was surprisingly good with small scale ensembles.

Revox broke my heart. A77 was a pain in the neck. It had the reputation of being built like a house- a straw house! They broke like mad. I was happy that B77 came out. But it wasn’t much better. If ever a product had a better reputation than it deserved, it was stinkin’ Revox. I had better luck with my old Akai than any Revox.

Luxman was pretty gear in a rosewood looking cabinet. It sounded good and I still have a few customers that use Lux receivers or integrateds from the late 70s. They went through volcanic biz changes that threw them off the tracks. How do you get a sales guy to come up with a moronic idea like servo-face, and actually bring it into production?

Fosgate was fun, but people didn’t get it. Early surround sound was MONO and the highs

were chopped off – so it was like the tweeters were pulled out of your rear speakers. Fosgate had its own circuitry to create a fake stereo in the rear and run full range. It made early surround sound a lot more immersive. It didn’t sell a lot. But, it was legit. Shure and Angstrom had processors that did kinda similar things. All were useful in the early days of surround sound. Even though I’m not a video guy, it was a blast listening to a baseball game from Wrigley field with the Shure processor at work.

Rotel matured from a putsy little receiver company into a wonderful manufacturer of integrated amps and affordable separates. Rotel was quite solid to deal with for years. Rotel’s integrated amps and CD players were clean, affordable products. Their modest separates didn’t sound as good as Audire, but being made in China, they were cheaper. Price always matters. Rotel had a problem it just couldn’t overcome. The 200×2 class AB power amps popped fuses too easily. The NADs did NOT. Ultimately I had to stick with NAD and encourage my most demanding clientele do the same. These rockers would pop fuses on Rotel and they could keep on rockin’ with NAD.

Win Labs made a fantastic, state of the art strain gauge cartridge. It had speed and acceleration like the best MCs- combined with a quiet headamp like Audire’s Poco. The problem was, the cantilevers could collapse too easily and Win couldn’t afford to provide replacements in a prompt fashion. There is a huge difference between being able to make a few products on a small scale well- vs being IN BUSINESS. Being in biz means you have to be capitalized properly and take care of your customers. Sometimes you even have to eat replacements due to the customer’s own misbehavior. It’s all part of being in biz.

Royd Speakers. One day Jeff Horen of Import Audio in St. Louis walked in my door. I had been buying Rega from Jeff for some years. I had no idea he was in the neighborhood. He wanted to sell me Royd speakers. I said I’d listen, out of courtesy, but B&W was killin’ it for cut above loudspeakers. Polk owned the main stream. First he played a 5” 2-way. Next a 6” 2-way. These speakers were absolutely outstanding. Through Rega tables and NAD electronics… these reasonably sized and priced Royds were excellent. But I had no need for them. This type of experience would play out many times over the years.

A new shortstop wants to make the team, but I’ve already got Robin Yount. Sorry Jeff.

It turns out there were loads of fine speakers nobody had ever heard of that were pretty good. For ex, Castle, Mordaunt Short, Proac, PMC, Angstrom, Spendor, Celestion, Mission, Harbeth and a hundred others. How could they all sell? Ezekiel even made some innovative all metal driver speakers. Sometimes… you can be before your time.

Sometimes we’d learn from consumers. A snarky young guy brought in an Epos shelf model he said slaughtered everything we had. OK. Let’s listen. As he picked it up, holding the port with one hand in the back- the tube fell out! It wasn’t even glued. We looked at the companion- same story. The port tube just slid out with very little effort. Pretty impressive build quality there! Their sound was blah and he sent them back. Big talk…

Vector Research had a sweet, short run. Mostly known for badging video gear, designer Bill Cawfield used Rotel as an OEM for a range of audio gear. For several years Vector gear was similar to Rotel but at much better pricing- always an advantage. Bill created a killer line of Rotel gear, with slight changes, called it Vector Research, and sold it for about 20% less than Rotel. The CD players were made by Kyocera and were wonderful. Even I couldn’t quite believe how good this array of Vector was for the money. In short order Bill moved on. This experience taught me how much one guy could influence an entire line. For about three years were selling boatloads of Vector, at great prices- with pride. We knew exactly what it was. Hardly anyone else had heard of it- or knew what made it special.

Kyocera was an amazing product line for its time (1982-89). They outdid NAD and Rotel in making affordable, though not cheap gear, WORK. Kyocera just put more into the hardware and the reliability was all but faultless. Kyocera’s CD players were much more solid than any affordables of the day. Not even close. Their receivers sounded GREAT and never broke. I loved selling Kyocera.

To this day, my piano teacher runs a Kyocera CD player and receiver bought in the mid 80s! Kyocera had bought the KLH name and was planning to create a line of killer speakers that would likely rival B&W and Kef at Polk prices. But…one day in 1989, they called me and said, the hi-fi biz isn’t worth the trouble. We can make more money doing a million other things. And just like that- they blew it off! Gone. Yet still, for another five years or so, they kept their national service department open. Quite honorable.

I can’t say it was only Kyocera’s influence. But I can tell you that in the late 80s and into the 90s we had a huge upgrade in build quality and reliability. NAD and Rotel went from good sounding gear built just well enough to work (most of the time), to solidly built, reliable gear.

We saw fewer owner-operators, but the gear stepped up quite a bit.

Stuff Happened

Dinner With Steve

People being people, strange things would happen- even within the biz community. In the early 80s a new rep from Denon wanted to take us to a nice Milwaukee restaurant in appreciation for our sales. My staff chose Mike & Anna’s on the south side- a nice ma and pa restaurant. I couldn’t go. I had a hockey game to play in that night. When the check was presented, rep Steve pulled out his company Amex. But this was 1980. Mike & Anna’s didn’t speak credit cards! Steve didn’t have the cash, so he pulled out his personal check book. Um, no go Steve. Mike and Anna don’t want a New Jersey check. It fell to one of the guys from my staff to write the check for $300 or whatever it was. He was none too pleased. Rep Steve said no sweat, I’ll have Denon cut you a check tomorrow and mail it over. You know where this is going, don’t you?

The next day my staff member told me about this. After about a month of no check, I called Steve and said hey, my guy is still looking for his check in the mail. Steve apologized and said he would get on it. Remember, this is 1980 and $300 is $300. Over the next 30 days my employee was getting extremely ticked at Steve and Denon. It was becoming an issue in our store and on the sales floor. At about 60 days I called Steve AGAIN and let him have it. “Steve, dude, you gotta get my guy

a check here AS YOU PROMISED.” Maybe it was a bad day. Steve flipped out on ME. He said, “This is between me and him. Why are you calling me on this? You weren’t even there.” How bad is that?!

The check finally showed up- about 75 days after the dinner.

Of course I should have paid my guy and fought with Steve myself. I was too stupid at the time to realize this. It wouldn’t be the last time I was clueless.

Home Brews

People regularly wanted to bring in their home brew speakers to compare to our brand name lines. These were all well meaning guys who bought drivers from Madisound for a DIY project. But the problem is that- we all love our own children! After sinking hours into these projects, every single one of these guys thought he’d built something scientific. I can tell you that NOT A ONE OF THEM

sounded as good as a Polk 7 that sold for $400. Doug was my right hand man when we opened. He would regularly say, “Let me kick his @$$ with some Polk 7s!”

We’ve seen contraptions small and tall. Literally all of them have been as boring as white bread. Yet every time, the builder considered himself a scientist and was sure he had thought of things large companies with almost limitless capital were too stupid to have discovered.

Custom Speaker Boxes

Another situation arose. A member of my staff ordered some speaker “boxes.” A fellow involved with a cable start up company that called on us “invented” some goofazoid boxes to put between your amp and speakers. One of my fellows was convinced and sent him a check. The boxes were nowhere to be seen for months. My guy kept calling and being put off. “Soon” “In a week” “Any day” etc. It was just like the Mike & Anna dinner situation. It took a fight and about 6 months for those boxes to arrive. It was unbelievable. It took about 6 months and then the boxes were air freighted in. Clearly, he didn’t have any money to actually MAKE these magic boxes! At first my guy liked them. In short order he sold them off.

Dinner With Dave

There was an uncomfortable dinner with a snooty rep- Dave from Magnepan. In Milwaukee, we’re pretty much normal people. We don’t huff and puff and snort if the water isn’t on the table in 3.7 seconds after you walk in the door.

Dave insisted we go to Harold’s, a nice restaurant by the airport. Dave had been an arrogant putz when he visited our store- but he was knowledgeable and you keep your trap shut for the greater good. Why let “behavior” keep you from learning? We suffered through Dave at the store half the day and went to Harold’s for dinner- basically, so he wouldn’t have to eat alone on the road.

We had a young waitress who looked about 16. She must have been 21 because they served drinks. Dave was predictably rude and dismissive of her when she visited the table to see about servicing us. When it was Dave’s turn to order he barked at her that he wanted a “side car.” She politely asked, “What’s that?” He snapped at her “GO LOOK IT UP!” It was a very uncomfortable moment and we felt terrible for the embarrassed young lady who was just trying to do her job. Mr Obnoxious was giving her a tough time. It’s not cool to be rude.

Fortunately the manager half the room away noticed what had occurred. He immediately brought in Brunhilda from the bullpen, a veteran waitress, about 50 years old, 5-10 and 200lbs. Brunhilda had NO trouble handling Dave and our table the rest of the night! I loved her as she stood toe to toe with his arrogance. After the dinner I called the company and told them Dave was never to visit again. In fact, he died within a couple years at age 45. All that barking and rudeness isn’t good for your health. Or…maybe it was too many side cars?

BiPolar?

No, I’m not talking about speakers. I’m talking about people.

There have actually been a handful of times over the years where I sold something, like a Dynavector cartridge, and the customer would call me the next day, practically in tears, thanking me for selling them this “magnificent” product. This cart had brought musical expression to his system like he’d never heard before. He was overcome with emotion due to the massive improvement. Thanks so much Dave for bringing more passion into my music!

The same guy would call a day or two later and ask- “How could you sell me this POS? It’s the biggest piece of junk in the world!”

Invariably, he would tell me- he read in a magazine, or later online, that someone, somewhere, had written that this product wasn’t as good as a Shure, Technics or Bose.

WF bought a Bryston power amp from me. He called me sniffling the next day. “This amp is so good I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. It kills my Threshold 4000!” Then a day or two later, “I don’t know why you sold me this amp. It’s nowhere near as good as the Threshold 4000.” The same fellow bought a Rotel stereo receiver from me for his second string system. He called to thank me, just like the Bryston amp. He walked in a day or two later and demanded to return it- because
“it sounds horrible. It’s worse than the speakers in the TV.” He came in a few months later with his

tail between his legs. “I shouldn’t have returned that Rotel receiver. It was outstanding. I’m sorry. I want to buy one.” OK, no hard feelings. He bought it and was back a day later. “This Rotel sucks. You have to take this back because it’s worse than a Bose Wave Radio.” Yep, the same guy bought, and returned, the same EXCELLENT $900 Rotel stereo receiver, TWICE within about 3 months.

You might not believe this, but on a given day one guy will walk in and dismiss everything in my store and say, “JVC is the best brand. I can’t believe you don’t have it.” And someone else later

in the same day will wonder, “I can’t believe you’re not carrying Celestion speakers. They’re the best in the business.” The fact is, there is SOMEONE for every brand out there. At one point or another I think I’ve heard this comment about every brand you can think of. Who knows how audiophiles fall in love with what they land on?

I always wondered, how can people believe what they read over what they HEAR? But we store owners have to deal with this regularly. When people see something in print, they can get scared they bought the wrong thing. Even though they heard the Dynavector sounded great, they were freaked by the guy who wrote that his Empire was the best ever.

Some Fun Customer Stories

Richard

Richard ran an international business from Burlington, down the road an hour for you non Wisconsinites. He traveled a lot. When he visited Audio Emporium he often bought a boat load of gear for his next location- where he would likely be parked for 3-6 months or more. When he would leave these “posts” he left the gear behind as a gift for people who helped him- and frankly, he was too harried to have to try to pack it up safely to return.

On one visit he wrote a check and showed me the check above mine was written to Wisconsin Electric. The amount wasn’t filled in. He said, “Do you wanna know why that is?” Well, OK, sure. “It’s because I travel so much I’m always behind on the mail- and they shut off my electricity in Wisconsin. So I sent them a blank check and told them to fill it out and send me the receipt. I don’t have time to call these people, sit on hold and try to figure this out!” He said they never did fill out the blank check he sent them. Pretty trusting though, don’t you think?!

Earl

Earl was a huge, fun loving guy. He looked like defensive tackle, Rosy Grier. He played loudly and blew up amplifiers right and left. I had just gotten in the new Rotel class D amps which ran cool and claimed to be indestructible. Seemed like a perfect fit for Earl. I had a customer buy a 100×5 amp and opted to move up to a 200×5. So I had the 100×5 gently amp used, about 6 months old. It was $1500 new and I was asking $1000 for it. Earl’s eyes flashed and he pulled out a quarter. He offered, “Heads I pay $900 out the door. Tails I pay $1100 plus tax!” It was a pretty cheeky move as the Brits would say, so I said sure, give it a flip. It came up tails and to my surprise, Earl didn’t bark and paid the $1100+ without hesitating- laughing all the way. By the way, he never did blow up the amp.

Billy

Billy is another living large audiophile, born in the mid 50s for reference. He has speakers all over his house. I don’t think he has room for anything else. His wife just rolls her eyes when they visit.

The MoFi SP10s had just arrived. Audiophiles listened and liked them, but complained, they’re just too big. Billy came in, took ONE LOOK and fell in love. He had no idea what they were or who made them. He didn’t know Andrew Jones the speaker designer from Andruw Jones the center fielder. He yelled out, “Those are friggen cool! I’ll take those!” He didn’t even know how much they were when he said that- but had no hesitancy spending the $4k with stands when he found out. He didn’t even ask to hear them- though I insisted on showing them off for the few seconds he would tolerate.

The Wiz

Ed, about 6-6, visited to poke around. He was an odd character searching for bargains just this side of the dumpster. He went to open the bathroom door and it was locked. Someone was in there. I was talking to another customer in the front room- who opted to buy a CD player. I went down stairs to get it and as I was going down, Ed was coming up from our warehouse. He knew it looked like he might have gone down to steal something and offered, “Don’t worry, I didn’t steal anything. I just had to take a wiz and the bathroom was locked. I knew you’d have a utility sink down there.” Yep, we did. With his height, the tall sink wasn’t a problem I guess.

Coke Truck Destruction

One day the Coke truck was making a delivery to the deli just to the south of us. For some reason the driver thought the best way out of the lot was THROUGH our hedge- which he destroyed with his long truck mowing down my hedge. I visited the owner of the deli. He said one of his patrons had parked in his exit drive and the Coke driver refused to wait for two minutes for the guy to move- so he exited through our hedge. “Too bad! Not my problem!”

Timber

One day a tree near my trash area had a heavy limb fall off during a storm and land on a neighbor’s car. The car wasn’t parked in their driveway. It was parked in their back yard right next to our trash area. When you looked at where the car was parked, you’d swear it was parked directly under that limb- just hoping for a storm- to get them a new car. Parking there made no other sense.

Who parks in their back yard away from the driveway? My insurance helped but it was still $3k out of pocket to get rid of the tree and pay the deductible. When you get into business, you don’t anticipate this fun stuff.

Shoplifting

We know it’s out there. But here? Really? Yep, over the years I’ve lost components, remotes, cables, CDs… It’s an unfortunate reality of being in business where some people are quite industrious in the art of stealing.

Almost as soon as I opened in 1977 I got a call from Pacific Stereo up the street. A salesperson knew about my store and asked, “Did you just have a Dahlquist electronic crossover stolen?” Hmm. I don’t know how that would happen. It is connected between a preamp and a couple power amps in a rack with a glass door on it. I put Carmen on hold, looked at my rack, and sure enough, the crossover was GONE. I told her- yup, it’s mine. The fellow who stole it got cold feet as the call was playing out and disappeared while we were on the phones. Time to be more observant…

One evening in the store when I had an event with a vendor, I invited visitors to bring in CDs to play. During the presentation of 90 minutes a handful of CDs simply disappeared. Someone within the listening group snatched them. Really?! One guest became very upset and demanded $20 from me for the theft. I gave him a 20 to end the scene. I wondered after the fact, perhaps HE was the purp!

Burglary

Yep. If you own a brick and mortar business you’re surely going to experience some burglaries over time. My most colorful episode occurred in 1978. I lived in the apartment building that was just behind the store. I could throw a baseball from the parking lot of one to the other.

The alarm company called me, simultaneously with the police department, that the alarm had gone off. I beat the police to the store and found a posse of thieves loading a couple of cars in the back of the building after a smash and grab extravaganza. I came in the front door of the strip mall and they all went flying out the back. The first car stepped on the gas and disappeared faster than Parnelli Jones. The guys in the second car were slower- apparently more careful in loading their loot.

Fortunately for me, the police arrived with sirens and lights before the second car could escape- and made quick work of the apprehension. I had to go to court a month later to identify

equipment, people and their vehicle.

Bum Checks & Scams

All of us in retail have the annoyance of dealing with bad checks. We always give the customer the benefit of the doubt- that it was a logistical stumble. Sometimes it’s much more than that.

In 1984 a fellow visited me with his very well trained German shepherd. He was 300 plus pounds which was quite unusual at the time. His huge dog reacted to his every word and motion. My kids couldn’t compete with that behavior!

He knew enough to talk about nice equipment, knew my brands and how to plan a proper system. He said he lived just down the street and wanted me to visit to help lay out the speaker set up he was considering. We discussed cables, lengths, connectors- the whole 9 yards. There was nothing concerning about his modest home and living room. It looked like an easy fit. He played me well.

He came in with a check a few days later, about $15k as I recall. I noted the pertinent info on the check which was customary for the time. His drivers license agreed with the address on the check and his house. I had it in stock and he took it with him.

A few days later I got a call from my bank. The check was no good- account closed. That’s a 9 bell alarm for sure. I drove to the guy’s house just down the street. It was cleaned out and abandoned. He had played me pretty well. I filed a police report and learned from the officer who visited me that I wasn’t the only dope. This fellow had TAKEN a number of businesses, and from what the officer could tell, he was on the run with over a quarter million bucks worth of products from various stores. I was small potatoes. But… these guys don’t get away with it for long.

There was no news for about a month. Then one day I got a call from a stereo store owner in Kansas who was much smarter than I am. He said he had a man in his store trying to sell him a Mark Levinson preamp and amp, for much less money than made sense. Audio Emporium was on the

boxes. “Is this legit?” My only question for him was, “Does he have a well trained German shepherd with him?” My Kansas counterpart said, “Yes! He scared the hell out of me- looking me right in the eye, awaiting instructions!”

Mr Kansas had experience with this skulduggery. He told the bad guy to come back at the end of the day to pick up a check. The check was written from a bank across town, purposely,

so it couldn’t be cashed that day. The next morning Mr 300 Pounds showed up with his dog at the bank to cash his check- and was taken into custody. Nice sting! I had to drive to Kansas a few months later when this was all sorted out to pick up my gear, and take in a Phil Collins concert.

Sidney

Sidney was like more than a handful of our customers. He wanted new hi-fi gear but didn’t want his wife to know he was buying it. His nice system was in the basement and apparently she rarely went down there. He had some beautiful Snell Type As that he kept forever. As for the components, he bragged, “As long as I replace one black box with another she doesn’t know what’s going on.” Sidney bought Audire, Levinson, Bryston… one black box after another spanning many years. Did his wife know he was spending all this money and changing gear? I would bet SHE DID. Hey guys, we’re really not as crafty as we think.

Independent Reps

Independent reps are regional sales guys, typically based in Milwaukee or Chicago. They work for a “book” of manufacturers. In theory, they provide good coverage for the manufacturers they represent because they are the boots on the ground. They should be able to visit their dealers monthly, or quarterly, and act just as someone would who actually works at the mother ship.

We’ve had many outstanding reps over the years – and some poor ones as well. No two people are the same. It’s a blessing and a curse that every rep firm has within its book, speaker lines, electronics lines, projectors, screens, cables, headphones, remotes, etc.

There have been great fellas like Bill Haran. Bill has repped Paradigm, McIntosh, Klipsch,

JL and many other lines. Bill is first and foremost a nice, normal guy who understands his job, which

is to help retailers sell and service the lines he offers. Bill understands the real world. Bill sees me regularly for McIntosh and JL. He reps cables, speakers and other things, of course. Yet he understands that AE has a great thing going with Kimber Kable, for example. Bill knows he’s not going to sell me his cable line, because I’m married to Kimber.

Many reps over the years have used their “cherry” speaker line to get in the door- and then waste loads of time trying to shove an odd ball cable or screen line down my throat. A smart guy like Bill will ASK, but not POUT, if he doesn’t get that biz. Many retailers are loathe to make an appointment with a rep because they know what’s coming- a hard sell on a plethora of lines we don’t need.

I appreciate the plight of the independent rep. They CAN really help, when they’re good. They have some tough decisions to make along the way.

In the 80s in Milwaukee there was a less than ethical dealer working on the north side with a

small store. He had a scam he had figured out, that was working for him.

My friend and rep Ted Meyer, said this fellow ordered about $1000 worth of Dynavector cartridges. He didn’t pay. The rep is responsible for collections or HE doesn’t get paid. The rep makes about 5%. Ted called this guy, and visited. The dealer told him, the cartridges suck. I’m not paying.

Ted said, well, then return them. He refused to. He sold them. The dealer realized that Ted’s commission was $50. For $50 he wasn’t about to hire an attorney and start a lawsuit. Ted found out through the grapevine that he and Dynavector weren’t the only ones scammed. It was actually a substantial list of suppliers who had shipped this dealer $500-$1k or merchandise- only to get stiffed.

This was a distinct tactic by a dealer on the Milwaukee AV circuit to get FREE stuff.

Jim Goodman and Jeff Wilner repped B&W and Rotel in their hey day. We did loads of biz. Jim, Jeff and their office lady Laura Zimerman (the best follow through ever!) made sure things ran smoothly. They wouldn’t put on unethical dealers and made sure we had the support we needed.

Tom Aird and Wally Whinna sold and supported B&O and Grado when both lines were very important. Tom helped install our B&O stone wall, and leaked a couple gallons of blood in the process – as that stone wall takes a toll on your hands.

Steve Ekblad was conscientious with all the lines he offered. Marc Meinhardt always lets you know where you stand with your manufacturers. Marc Schnoll was always a great pro with the B&W group, willing to spend time educating us on latest/greatest technology.

It isn’t easy being a rep. In addition to doing your job, you have to be concerned that you might get fired- like a baseball manager. Manufacturers change horses all the time. If sales aren’t up to par, it can’t be the products, right? Usually, when a guy got fired- it wasn’t his fault. He just ended up being the fall guy.

We were fortunate to have many good reps help our biz.

Bryston

I had been selling Threshold and its companion lines Forte and PS Audio in the mid 80s. One day a certified letter showed up from a bank. What’s this? They’re closed! Done. Bankrupt. Huh?! No phone call? No heads up? Nope. Nada. Unbelievable! Many years later I learned a divorce had blown up the whole she-bang. But how about a phone call anyway? Too embarrassed.

I replaced them all with Bryston and have never looked back. Bryston was an immediate smash as my top end performer, both in terms of sound quality and reliability. James Tanner and the Russell brothers walked the tightrope of being a family owned company that made reliable gear. It’s tough to be small, but make gear professionally.

Bryston achieved a dead quiet noise floor, a tad better than even Audire. Other gear I had sold, like Naim, bragged up the same thing but just didn’t produce it. Getting the noise floor to zero made all the fine details of music APPARENT- that had been hiding. Bryston gear was so clean and quiet that it was even silent into efficient horn speakers like Avantgarde and Klipsch.

Bryston was quite professional compared to the guys, who you could tell, were just winging it.

With Bryston we had quiet, complementary output transistor power amps. The preamps were outstanding as well- using discrete op amps. I’ll never understand how everyone lauded their amps and ignored their preamps.

That is changing with the intro of the spellbinding BR-20 preamp. BR-20 brings state of the art transparency with this outstanding preamp/DAC. What a fabulous product- right there with the insanely priced Swiss guys- at a price a mortal can afford. BR-20 has immediacy and transparency that’s as good as money can buy. And you get it as an analog preamp WITH state of the art DAC, all in one box for $6800! Seriously, I’ve never heard a better preamp at any price! And you get a “free” state of the art DAC built in.

Bryston speakers have changed the landscape of speaker world out there. At fair prices they deliver bass that’s deeper than anyone. They play plenty loud for my raucous customers. They have a 20 year warranty. And… why not buy N American than fare east imports for under $5k?

MLAS

I carried Mark Levinson for about three years in the early 80s. But it was crazy town. Mark was part of the company at the start. He was passionate about music- and a very nice guy. But the company couldn’t get product out the door. And nobody knew anything about if and when this might change. Some companies can make a nice product by can’t run a good business.

Mark visited for a music night. He was very pleasant and artsy. When he announced a new amp to the crowd of about 30 people, he said it sounds great. He didn’t offer any details. The amp was 50×2 for $1600. In 1983, that was low power for high dollars.

A shop worker from the crowd barked at Mark, “How much power?” For some reason, Mark wouldn’t spit it out. He started this soft shoe dance about how it was a great sounding amp. Wattage doesn’t matter. Sorry Mark, wrong answer. You answer the question directly and then pull out the flowers if you want. Customer Bill wouldn’t let him off the hook. “You didn’t answer my question.” Mark virtually froze. I chimed in from the side, “$1600, 50 w/ch.” Bill stomped out complaining, “This guy’s ridiculous.” It wasn’t nice. We didn’t miss Bill the rest of the evening. But Mark should have answered his question. When you step out of the ivory tower you might discovered the unwashed.

Acoustat

Acoustat made a fascinating stat with on board amp. While it had great promise with lightning speed and dynamics, it too was built poorly and developed peculiar noises. I stuck with them as they moved to speakers without amps. They were some better. But ultimately… persnickety little pops or buzzes prevented me from putting up with them any further. They also insisted each dealer show their new preamp, which had a hissing MC phono section like ARC. Sorry boys, no go.

CES Fiasco I

When Mark Levinson visited my store for the music evening, he was pleasant & artsy. Mark brought some master tapes with him that we played. Dave, one of my customers fancied himself to be a professional level live recording engineer. He said to Mark, “I’d like you to hear my tapes.” Being a nice guy, Mark said, sure, sometime, that would be fun. It was an innocent comment. Sure, sometime. Well….

When you don’t know the public, you know not what you say… There was a CES coming up in Chicago in a couple months and… oh no!

 

Dave showed up, decked out in “fashionable” Campagnolo bike gear, complete with flipped up bill of his hat., at the Levinson room, right when the show opened. Dave had tapes in hand.

Mark was there with his business partners in suits. They were not about to let any consumer, much less Mark’s new best friend, put on heaven knows what kind of tapes, with prospective clients in the room. These tapes could be wonderful, or terrible. They would not take any chances.

 

Further, at this point CES wasn’t for the public. It was for dealers. Dave must have made up a business card within the trade to get a badge to get in the show. A fair number of consumers did this. The Levinson staff was there to SELL to dealers. They were not there to listen to random tapes. The Levinson staff was chagrined to have this Our Gang looking character wandering around their room while they were making fervent pitches to sell very expensive gear.

I arrived in the Levinson room about 3pm. Dave was standing in the corner. I nodded to Dave and said hi to Mark. Mark pulled me aside. “We can’t get rid of him. Help me get him out of here.”

It took about two seconds to realize what had happened. Dave had shown up at 10am to play tapes for Mark. Mark hadn’t faced him up and said, “We’re not going to do that.” The Levinson staff simply tried to ignore Dave, who as the day ran on, was the elephant in the room. Sandy Berlin of Levinson saw Mark talking to me. Sandy hustled over, “Get him out of here! He’s weirding everyone out!.” I asked Sandy if anyone had spoken to him. Sandy said, “Hell no! We just want him to go away.”

So THIS had been going on since 10am. Dave had left the room for a smoke or bathroom break a couple of times. Other than that, he had been standing there FIVE HOURS awaiting his chance to play tapes for Mark, his “hero.”

I asked Dave to step out in the hallway with me. I told him, “Dave, this show is for Levinson to sell their gear to dealers. They’re not going to play your tapes. You need to call it a day and move on.”

Dave was crestfallen. He had assumed that at SOME POINT in the day, traffic would dissipate and Mark would invite him to play his tapes. You might think that after 5 hours… this situation might have been addressed by SOMEONE. But nope. Dave walked out with his tail between his legs. Sandy and Mark thanked me profusely for getting him out of the room. Sandy almost broke my hand when he shook it.

I wondered… why hadn’t anyone spoken to Dave all day? Why not just ask why he was there and address the situation? Dave was “a character” but… he was not crazy or unreasonable. He just assumed, because Mark said at my store, that he’d like to hear Dave’s tapes, that this was the time

to do it. Dave didn’t think for a minute that he might be weirding people out. HE thought this was just

an audiophile get together. It didn’t occur to Dave for a minute that Levinson paid THOUSANDS to rent this hotel suite, in attempts TO SELL to their dealers.

CES Fiasco II

After the Levinson room episode, I marched upstairs to see the GAS suite. They hadn’t gone bust yet. As I entered GAS, I saw another one of my customers, Chuck, chewing out a GAS suit who worked for the ever volatile Jim Bongiorno. I didn’t know this man, but anyone who worked for Jim was walking on egg shells.

Chuck talked at 100 dB. He’s a big (6-3, 250+), high octane, LOUD guy. He could be telling you about the Brewers and his voice would be at jet aircraft engine level. Chuck didn’t hear well and regularly blew speakers and amplifiers. He’s the kind of customer that manufacturers hate. He buys stuff, but he breaks it from abuse. Chuck was almost screaming at this man about his Ampzilla breaking so often, and taking out tweeters with it.

As with MLAS and Dave… these shows were not for consumers to visit and vent about their personal grievances. CES in the 70s and early 80s was for manufacturers TO SELL their gear to dealers. And here’s Chuck going gonzo about a personal problem he’s had, which was probably his own fault. About this time Bongiorno finished with another visitor and stormed over to Chuck. Oh no!

Bongiorno had no filter. He laid into Chuck. “BURN IT! BURN THE MF! If you hate it so much just burn it and buy something else! We obviously can’t help you!”

I wasn’t the least bit shocked at Jim’s behavior. But at 5-8 and 150, he might have measured his tone with a guy like Chuck who looked like an NFL lineman. Chuck was incredulous. He was shocked that Jim wouldn’t step up to the plate and offer to take care of him. I don’t think Chuck even realized how badly HE came off with his powerful voice and imposing size. Jim wasn’t about to be intimidated into changing his policies. Chuck replied to Bongiorno, “I can’t believe you’re treating a customer this way. You’re not offering to take care of me.” Within a minute or so Chuck left, quite shaken that he had not gotten what he wanted- which was probably an apology and a promise to replace his often repaired (at Audio Emporium) amp.

After witnessing these two episodes in one day, I wondered, when audio shows opened to the public years later, how would manufacturers treat consumers? Many consumers would show up specifically to exact a pound of flesh from a particular problem they had. As it turns out, virtually all of the manufacturers learned. They leave the hot heads back at the factory and have nice, or at least reasonable people, man the shows.

First Building

Our strip mall at 69^th and Brown Deer was built in early 1977. The feature tenant was a night club on the east end of the building called The Fritz. Yep, these were twilight disco days and the Fritz was HAPPENING every weekend. Remember Larry The Legend? And halter tops?! Larry was a DJ on FM radio and when he did “appearances” the traffic would spill beyond our lot. It was wild, a mini version of Studio 54 right here in Milwaukee. By 1980 the Fritz was gone and the building was bought by two oral surgeons who remodeled and took over the Fritz space. Jordy and Shep were great guys and landlords. They were easy to work with so I could just concentrate on my biz, not the parking lot, trash, graffiti and all the rest that comes with being in business. They don’t make ‘em like Shep and Jordy anymore.

New Owners

In 1997 Jordy had a heart attack. He didn’t die (!), but he and Shep sold the building to some “schnooksters” who owned another mall in town. Within minutes Debbie & I were getting erroneous invoices for gas and electric. We knew when our lease ran out in 11 months, these new guys would be impossible to work with. We shopped and found a dumpy small building in Brown Deer, east a couple miles. It was a perfect location and Smith Jewelers was open to selling.

New Building

Debbie & I bought Smith’s, razed it and built our new shop. We were able to pull this all off and move in about one month before our lease ended. Many thanks to builder Don Gavic who understood the situation and had the right tradesmen to “get ‘er done” on time.

A big moment in the construction is when Bob Fillinger’s company installed our staircase. The inspector said it didn’t meet code. Don and Bob had a meeting with the inspector and it got extremely loud and animated. Bob & Don insisted the code master was wrong. The code master insisted specs had changed and they were behind the times. Bob was livid as he had to rework the staircases- by fractions of an inch. The inspector wasn’t going to give in, not even half an inch. Curve balls like this can throw the job off months- while everyone gets uber excited.

But, whew! It was the best thing we ever did. I have the best sounding sound rooms in the biz! Virtually everyone else builds their store on a cement slab in a strip mall or something equivalent.

Now, building while under the gun of a time line is harrowing. But of course there are curve balls to be dealt with along the way. What did I know about environmentals? What did I know about elevators? These two topics would jump in my lap.

When Smith’s was razed and our foundation was dug, there were gas tanks in the ground! A few locals remembered that our site was once a gas station. Really? Everything came to a screeching halt as we had to hire an environmental company to take out the empty gas tanks and dump trucks full of earth- perhaps in your back yard! Who knows what they did with it? Somehow Smith’s built right on top of this mess and nobody cared. By 1997, it was a 911 disaster. Many thousands later… the disaster was quelled.

Elevator

Our builder spec’d an elevator. It turned out he didn’t install an ELEVATOR, he installed a LIFT. A lift is a “mini elevator’ designed for light use- for the handicapped in a home or small building. I knew nothing about elevators and just assumed we were getting a legit elevator within our building price. As the building was coming together it was apparent that this elevator wasn’t a brand name like Otis or Schindler. It was basically some home brew of parts- that a clever small company assembled to win the job. To make a long story short, the lift does work just fine. But it was a quagmire of a project- because it is apparently a one off. It needs to be maintained with quarterly visits – and additional service visits run about $275 per hour. That’s right. Oh, and you pay travel time! If I had known enough in 1997, I’d have said, put in a full fledged commercial elevator. But you don’t know – what you don’t know.

The happy ending to all this hoo-ha is, despite the hassles of building, the gas tanks, the lift,

the parking lot restrictions complete with stones that people destroy from time to time, it’s GREAT having our own building where we make all the decisions- and noise, albeit on my dime. Further, my listening rooms are fantastic. Virtually all of our competitors are flimsy drywall on a cement floor- a losing proposition.

From time to time I have audiophiles drink up loads of my time and want to chisel on a product with insulting offers. They have no clue, or care, as to what all goes into running a business. Fortunately most people DO understand how the world works. You don’t just buy boxes and sell them for a bit more. There is much more to being in business.

Custom Installation

Along the way in the 80s, custom installation became quite the business. People were buying large screens with projectors and installing nice surround systems as the 80s wound down.

As DVDs and flat panels came about in the middle/late 90s, the home theater category literally exploded. It was a lot of fun to install a high performance surround system based around DVD. We had done it with VHS-S and Beta Hi-Fi, but both tape formats were lousy. DVD brought the theater experience to a new level. I was happy to be selling and having staff install these fun systems.

During this rage in new technology all kinds of competitors popped up. Trunk slammers. They started tying in HVAC, lighting, blinds and burglar alarms into the conglomerate. I was never interested. Not even for a minute. I’m in the biz for music. I’m fine with some theater and sports related content too.

But I’m not at all interested in your lights, HVAC, security and blinds. We saw competitors try to drink up all this biz, and do it all badly. I wasn’t surprised as the bigger they got, the harder they fell.

To this day, I’m happy to install nice audio and video systems that we sell. I still couldn’t care less about your lights, blinds and security stuff. We get calls regularly from guys who were sold on Crestron, Elan and other complicated systems that don’t work worth a hoot. They’re still trying to get them to work well and I’m still not interested.

Custom installation comes with a thousand curve balls. Often times a customer signs up for a list of gear, but then makes changes, deletions or additions. Sometimes my installers wouldn’t fill me in accurately on the details. A prime example is when I sent the final invoice to customer John O’Hare in Mequon. John called me on the phone and said, “You didn’t put the TV on the invoice.” What TV? We didn’t install a TV. John said, “Yes, I added a 32 to the job.” I went to my installer who had done the work and he admitted he forgot to tell me about the $2000 TV he installed at John’s house. How many customers are as honest as John? How many components, cables, plates, surge protectors etc did I give away over the years?

I created a check list that I would go over with my installers after jobs. It included cables, plates, plugs and power bars. In the vast majority of jobs, poor notes left jobs under invoiced. You might think running a biz looks easy. It isn’t. You give away a lot more product than anyone would suspect.

Projectors

The evolution of projectors has been remarkable! The first projectors we had were in the 90s, 3 gun monsters that sold for $20k. They were a nightmare to set up and drifted out of alignment. But if you wanted a 100” diagonal picture, it’s what you had to put up with. My installers battled to install these with very mediocre results. But if you wanted a huge picture…

Sharp kinda/sorta kicked off the new world of smaller projectors that didn’t need 3 gun aligning. They were still expensive at $6-10k, but were much easier to place and despite an LCD screen pattern, were a step forward. This was not at all the bag of cats of 3gun projectors and as long as you could afford it- it was a step forward. Little did we know…

There is a price to pay for participating in the leading edge of technology. Marantz made the 8600 projector for about $10k in 2006. It was the best of breed for a few years. The picture WAS better than the Sharps. Not cheap, but not a 3gun beast either.

What we learned about Marantz, Sharp and other early projectors, is that when the bulb quit about 5 years down the road- they couldn’t be fixed at a fair price. How could we have known?! We trusted that these guys knew what they were doing.

We knew a replacement lamp would be $800 or so. Big money, but, if you could just install it easily, it’s only money. What we found out with these projectors is, when the lamp went, there were MORE problems- like the ballast and power supply failed too. They ran another $800. Add some labor, $2K repair!

The customer had spent $10k ish for the projector and was looking at close to $2k in repairs about 5-6 years down the road. Worse… those repairs proved not to be reliable. I was livid with the repair departments of Sharp, Toshiba, NEC and Marantz. But it didn’t matter. That’s where we were

in 2000-2010 ish.

The customer had spent $2k on repairs and we had the projectors dropping a few months later. Guess who was left holding the bag?

We couldn’t leave our customers STUCK with $2k repairs that didn’t hold. I called Marantz, Sharp, Toshiba, NEC and the other guys we were dealing with at the time. All they would do is

say, send it back in. More time. More freight. Wasted labor. A loaner to the customer. Wasted money right and left for an 6 year old projector that was now sorely out of date because projector technology had moved on so quickly.

Sony provided the plausible solution. They came out with a new projector at $2500 that was

better than the $10k projectors of 8-10 years before. Even though the customer spent $6-10K for a Sharp or Marantz, the best choice AT THIS TIME was to junk it.

You can imagine the angst this engendered with our customers. You have guys who spent $10K eight years ago, and I had to tell them, your best move is to throw it in Lake Michigan and buy the $2500 new model from Sony.

I was doing them a favor. I was being honest. And they just got mad. These fellows just wouldn’t accept that the $2500 projector today was BETTER than the $10k model we sold eight to ten years ago. But it was! Technology moved quickly in the projector world.

Somehow the customer COULD accept that a cheaper computer today, smokes a much more expensive one of ten years ago. But when it came to projectors, their noses got bent out of joint.

Venerable names like Runco, Dwin and JBL got their lunch handed to them by affordable

Sonys & JVCs. I have customers that still think I’m not honorable because I refused to go down the path of an expensive repair- that I knew would not hold (!!) with their old projectors.

I’m sad that we landed at this spot- but I was fully forthcoming about the details and how we had gotten here. I did the right thing.

Marantz

Marantz started in the 80s for me as an affordable, more full featured brand than NAD. But something strange happened. Marantz slowly but surely, just got better and better. Its CD players started to walk away from the pack after Kyocera died. Marantz started to bring out higher end reference products. Their surround receivers, pre-pros and power amps were all remarkably better than your average bear, at competitive pricing. Designer Ken Ishiwata was making his mark.

And their offerings after 2012 or so have done more of the same.

I am an unabashed silver disc fan. I have room in my life for vinyl when that’s the only way I can get a particular piece of music. I’ve lived through far too much junk in the record playing world. Wow and flutter and cartridges doing the gol dang hula while trying to track solo piano- have always been a problem for us piano lovers. Getting good cartridges with properly aligned styli is always a crap shoot. The more expensive and specialized the company, the less likely you are, to get a cartridge, at your house, that is built properly. Yep. That’s right. You want a cart from a real manufacturer that knows what they’re doing- not some doink in a grass hut on the other side of the world.

Marantz’s Ken Ishiwata agreed with me! He felt SACD was THE best format. He created

wonderful SACD players beginning about 2000. He broke the mold in about 2014 when he introduced the SA-10. SA-10 was Ken’s first disc player to NOT use a DAC chip from a vendor. Ken designed his own D to A conversion through his discrete technology, which Marantz dubbed MMM (Marantz Music Mastering). It took me just seconds to fall in love with MMM and I bought an SA-10 right away. But SA-10 runs $9000. Not everyone will buy that. Ken then introduced SA-Ruby for $4k, which is pretty much an SA-10 in the single ended mode- another great player.

That brings us to, one of my favorite products in the history of hi-fi, Marantz’s SACD-30n, $3000. SACD-30n sounds just like SA-Ruby for a grand less. It has a bit less copper and gingerbread, but it sounds the same or better- due to newer parts! SACD30n brings more transparency to your CDs than you knew was there!

At $3k SACD-30n is a must for any serious silver disc lover! It has a more open, airy and transparent sound than any player I’ve heard with a DAC chip. Further, it has Marantz’s home built drive mechanism, not some off the shelf generic drive- which is what even the most pretentious competitors use.

Customer Mike visited one day with a dozen discs in hand. He had gone to Chicago and been talked into a Naim CD player for about $5k from a haughty salesman who convinced him, it was the best. But the Naim couldn’t track its way out of a wet paper bag. The customer was incredulous that his $5k player couldn’t track a good number of his discs. He reasoned, because it’s expensive, it SHOULD track well. Um, NO. It uses a modest drive mechanism from a cheese ball vendor. The Marantz uses its own design, built in its factory in Japan. It is flat out BETTER. We went through every single disc he brought in. The Marantz recognized them promptly and played them all without any hiccups. Mike bought the SACD-30n from me and called back later to thank me for the recommendation- as it plays every disc he owns without fail.

Marantz also makes the phenomenal, companion integrated amp, Model 30. At $3k it has a discrete preamp (including phono MM/MC) and sounds magnificent. It is rated at 100×2 but hit 160×2 when Stereophile reviewed it. Its warmth and beauty are lust worthy.

Marantz also has the advantage of having Kevin Zarow in position to help us dealers. When the chain of command fails us, we can call Kevin and he’ll turn over boulders to make sure problems are solved. Every company needs a guy like Kevin to make sure all ends well. But there are not many guys like Kevin who’ll say, “OK. What’s the problem? Let’s solve it!” Most companies have guys that like to forward emails and not really take responsibility.

B&W 801 & 802

What a treat… when B&W introduced these fine speakers! They were coherent, solid and a joy to use. These B&W 800s positively advanced the art of building loudspeakers. They were respectable with electronics like Audire or even NAD. They were stunningly better with Bryston. Electronics had always mattered. But they mattered more with these fairly hungry but lovely sounding

Britishers. The B&W 800 series moved speakers from the 70s when speakers were cobbled together with vendored parts- into a new world of purpose built sophistication. The strides made were enormous! My buddy Brian bought a pair of 802s from me in 1979. He still has them and they sound very good- which makes me proud to have sold such a fine speaker 40+ years ago.

Today’s speakers, specifically Brystons, have a significantly better build quality. But we have to recognize that these B&Ws came from the late 70s. Bryston’s cabinetry is better. Bryston drivers are MUCH better. Time marches on. The old B&Ws sound a bit foggy compared to new Brystons.

Definitive

When Sandy Gross left Polk to start his own company, I happily signed on. He introduced bipolar speakers, primarily to make theater and surround sound more spacious. We didn’t even have full range, rear channel, stereo information at the time. The run with Definitive was relatively short. Sandy built the company into a bigger animal than even he was happy with. Today, it’s such a mess that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Getting an RA to send an amp in for repair is a battle. And the darn thing was in to them for 4 months before we got it back- not working right. It’s too big to do a good job.

Sandy sold Definitive and planned to retire. Buttt…

GoldenEar

When his non compete ran out, Sandy opened GoldenEar. GoldenEar is the company Sandy really wanted to create when he started Definitive. It started as a tower with ribbon tweeter and powered subs. It turned into much more. Sandy came out with a myriad of speakers to click certain boxes. They are built well and are reliable. Equally importantly, Sandy and wife Anne, knew how to run a great biz.

Any time there was a problem (yes, sometimes there are problems) it would be taken care of. If the standard chain of command didn’t solve the problem, I knew right where to go. Yep, I would go right over Sandy’s head and talk to Anne! One of the real advantages of knowing the biz is to know which tree to shake if you have a problem. If the sales or service guys didn’t move fast enough I knew Anne was the answer. She knew never to duck an issue- it won’t go away. Just take care of it now.

Sandy retired for good (or so Anne says) in 2020. Sandy has always been among the most insightful designers in our biz, making fine products THAT PEOPLE WANT for the money. It has been my pleasure to have ridden along side him for so many years.

As for what the new buyers are doing with GE… don’t ask. Audioquest bought GE from Sandy when he retired and it’s never been the same. It proved to me yet again, that PEOPLE make the company. And it starts at the top.

Quad

In about 2014 the Quad rep offered to sell me a pair of the new Quad stats at an extra attractive price. It was their new series made in China. They were dying to get these models on dealers’ floors. Given Quad’s reputation, I said OK, I’ll try a pair. They came in and sounded pretty impressive- lighting fast but surprisingly, didn’t go as clean on the top end as Maggies with true ribbons. A number of people had heard these over several months, but nobody had bought any. Then one day, one of them started to make a ticking noise. It was easy to deduce. I said, OK, this will be a good test. Can the Quad repair guys send us a new panel to repair them here? No, they couldn’t. OK, let’s continue the test, and I sent them out east somewhere to get fixed. One month turned into about six. Clearly they COULDN’T FIX them. And my investment was lying in pieces at some repair center on the east coast. I called the Quad importer and of course, there would be no refund. Are you kidding? I did agree to accept Isotek power conditioners at retail value, to offset the Quad cost. It’s a ridiculous exchange deal, but I knew I could sell the Isoteks and be back to even. So even with a venerable name like Quad, you have to watch your back. In business, there often is no safety net.

Foreigners Visit

Often foreigners visit- from Chicago, or other far away lands. Rest assured we have plenty of fun things for you to hear and will enjoy sharing the hobby with you.

In good old Milwaukee we have some distinct advantages over Chicago. I built Audio Emporium in 1998 to look and behave like a house. We have great sound rooms that sound more like the rooms in your house. When a guy starts a hi-fi store in Chicago, he’s stuck renting a building with a cement slab for a floor- often a strip mall or old vacuum store. He pays egregious rent. What you hear THERE isn’t like what you’ll hear at your house, unless you live on a cement slab with flimsy drywall. To pay for that rent they love to push products that are bat$ crazy.

We can do biz with you anywhere in the US. We’re happy to spend time with you here to do in person demos. If you call and we don’t have time for you immediately, I’ll call you back.

Paradigm

When Polk started positioning to go public and sell to big box, the line started to slide towards the toilet. The plastic boxes were coming in. Ultimately they went public. Good for them- the owners became rich men. Bad for me. I replaced Polk and had a couple of nice decades with Paradigm.

The Monitor series sounded good, was built average at best, but all told- offered good value. The Studio series, especially when they went to rounded cabinets, represented some of the best value of the day. The speakers sounded less boxy than their rectangular brothers. The drivers should

have been tougher, but I was proud to sell the Studio series.

But of course the same thing happened with Paradigm as Polk. As the owner/operator brothers sold Paradigm, the new guys replaced the outstanding Studio Series with a Prestige Series that wasn’t as good- and of course it was more expensive. The bottom fell out. See ya boys.

Anthem

Anthem was part of the Paradigm family. They made a GREAT integrated (I-225) amp and some very fine multi-channel power amps. I was encouraged when they announced a line of surround receivers. With quality like the afore mentioned amps, perhaps they could improve the level of home theater performance.

The Anthem guys, who we trusted due to their success with amps and integrateds, said they had done their homework. These receivers were going to be flat out the best going and at fair pricing. Um, remember the term, trust, but verify.

In the first summer they came out, I sold 18 within 3 months. I’ll save you the long story, but they all broke and had to be replaced with modified models or in many cases, Marantz, because Anthem had lost its trust with customers. Anthem dodged all culpability and acted like we were the only dealer having problems. Shameful.

Just because someone says the product is ready to rock, doesn’t mean that it is. They came to market too fast with unproven merchandise. I was super ticked that the sales staff was purveying this receiver line as high achieving and well vetted. It was good sounding, but dumpster fire unreliable. Bye Bye.

Avantgarde

We had a nice run with Avantgarde for several years, starting in 2001. These colorful horn speakers were more dynamic and exciting than anything going. The human voice was a bit like watching TV on a vivid picture setting- but tremendously fun!

Unos ran $9k and Duos ran $14k. We did real business with them and sold them well for about four years. But the pricing kept creeping up and by 2006 they had doubled and, it was over. Jim Smith, the American importer pulled the plug. I was sad about it. It is really FUN to have an “over the top” product that looks and sounds outrageously cool. These days we have the Klipsch LaScala (13k) that pretty much fills the same niche.

Isotek

Since the beginning of AE, various companies told me their power bars or mains conditioners would improve our sound. I wasn’t sure such bars could work. But I’m open minded to being educated. I’m not the smartest guy around, so I will LISTEN.

There was a constant march of vendors beating down my door for years. Panamax, APC, Furman, Exact Power, Monster Cable and dozens more- made attempts to sell their wares.

Side bar. I knew we needed to sell $100 Panamax boxes to protect our gear from line surges and storms. Before such boxes existed, we just had power strips from Menards. After a storm filled weekend the calls would come in related to gear with micro processors that had to be rebooted. Panamax’s protection at a cheap price saved the day. BUT THEY DIDN’T IMPROVE SOUND.

I had auditioned bars from Furman, Panamax, Monster and ExactPower. The ExactPower was the first product that gave me a serious glimpse that something real could happen. It purported to regenerate power and IMPROVE the sound. I listened and heard a slight improvement, maybe 5%. But ya know, 5% is 5%. I ordered in a handful of these $1300 boxes and sold a few right away. Guess what? EVERY ONE OF THEM BROKE! Every one of them impressed the customer at home and failed within 30 days. I refunded on all and apologized. I essentially wrote the category off. But I remember my favorite comment from a designer, “I reserve the right to get smarter.”

I had met Jon Derda when he worked for Peachtree. We did some pretty strong biz for years together. Jon moved on to the MoFi family of brands, one of which was Isotek.

Jon is my kind of guy. He showed up one day to pitch Isotek with samples in hand. Jon was willing to DO THE WORK, not just spout BS. We went through the line of products quite deliberately. Jon started with the Initium power cables. Plugged into Panamax I heard no improvement. I was sure we were going down the same path to nowhere. But Jon knew his stuff.

Plugged right into the wall I heard a slight, maybe 5% improvement. Hmmm. The Panamax, while protecting, was veiling the sound a tad. No question.

Jon installed the Polaris. Holy Power Bar! For such a cheap price the improvement was clear! I did a double take. “What all did you do back there, Jon?”

In just a few moments I’d gone from being convinced that a mains conditioner muddled the sound, to hearing it clearly IMPROVED the sound. There was no question about it. Due to some new technology, Isotek was addressing the problem unlike EVERYONE ELSE and it worked.

We moved north to the Aquarius. Holy shock and awe! It was RIDICULOUS how much tighter

the bass was and how much more clear the transients were. This was a solid improvement of a good 20% or so! Honestly, it brought me back to the Threshold -ARC amp battle of 1980 when Threshold mopped the floor with ARC. Again, the improvement was so substantial all I could do was be impressed!

I signed up with Isotek and started doing these same demos for my customers. When you listen to a system with a Polaris or Aquarius, and then go straight to the wall or a Furman, you lose a substantial amount of INFORMATION. Isotek did the equivalent of pulling thick grills off your speakers.

In short, I was rewarded for being open to new technology. I could have refused to audition Isotek because dozens of other guys have approached me as Jon did. It was a memorable and enlightening day that continues to pay dividends acoustically and financially. Thanks Jon!

 

Sonist

When Avantgarde was fading out as prices went into orbit, I took a look at a line called Sonist. Sonist was run by an owner operator, Randy Bankert, in Calif. He had all the right talk. From poplar cabinets, to horn based ribbon tweeters, fancy wire, crossover parts and internal absorption material- Sonist looked to be something special- high SPL speakers built with TLC in the USA. There was even a very nice review by Art Dudley of Stereophile.

I ordered in a pair of Concerto 3 demos. They took forever to ship- that was my first clue. When they arrived, I was horrified at the amateur effort. I couldn’t believe… with all the talk and the review- that a product could come up so short. I took them home and opened them up like Christmas morning. It took about five minutes to realize these were the worst speakers I’ve ever had in my house! The cabinets were poorly finished. The image was vague. The bass was sloppy- even buzzed a bit. In short, these were a mess.

This…was a lesson to me yet again, that you cannot trust all the prophecies written on the Internet. And, you need to be especially leery of people who buy drivers from parts houses, screw them into a box and call it science! It’s just sheer BS.

Even today, maybe especially today, there are guys writing as if they have discovered the holy grail of speaker building. And yet their products and business acumen are poor to atrocious. Most just buy drivers from Madisound, screw them into a box and spout a plausible story.

Zu

Zu Audio of Utah was run by a couple of guys who were looking for dealers. They were tired of dealing direct with the public- who was driving them nuts with returns.

I brought in a couple products that could be heir apparent to Avantgarde. The Essence had a highly efficient full range driver with a ribbon tweeter atop. It didn’t have deep bass- but a guy can always add a sub. They had a shelf mount equivalent. These were BRIGHT and exciting sounding ALIVE speakers. However, yet again we learned that just cuz some guys can make “exciting” sounding speakers, it doesn’t mean they know how to run a biz.

Our run with Zu was short as they bumbled products, distribution and back stabbed dealers with blow out pricing behind our backs- direct. They were awful business partners.

Full Range Speakers

Being a hopeless audiophile, I’ve bought a couple of speakers over the years that feature full range drivers- no crossover. They really do have an immediacy to them that’s different and impressive. But, ultimately they’re unsatisfying because for all their strengths, they have virtually no

bass and the top end isn’t seriously extended. It’s an example of something that READS well, but the follow through doesn’t cut it. In every case, the sellers bragged that the range was about 35-20kHz. But NO way Jose. They all died at 100Hz.

Designers

Every speaker designer thinks he’s smart and every other designer is a complete idiot. There are rare exceptions. Each designer thinks he’s discovered something the other guys weren’t clever enough to figure out on their own. It’s awfully hard to listen to Mr A blather down Mr B when you know it’s really just politics.

Designers are a lot like politicians. Just because they SAY IT with conviction, doesn’t mean it’s true. Company A espouses a certain crossover design. Company B says IT DOESN’T WORK and espouses a different design. You… listen to both brands, and think they’re both pretty good, while

being different. With this in mind, you really have to down play designers who pat themselves on the back.

I’ve met a hundred or more over the years and this plays out on the topic of speakers, amps, turntables, whatever. Think of designers like politicians. They’re confident. They state their opinions as though they’re gospel and everything else “doesn’t work.” That’s never the case and we know it.

Emotiva

I’ve never been a dealer that thought my gear was great and that everything else sucks.

I know the market is quite competitive and a number of companies make good sounding gear. But there is more to doing biz than making good sounding gear.

I listen to my customers. I love the hobby and learn from them- as they do from me.

In the early 2000s it was apparent that Emotiva was selling high powered amps to LOADS of “my” customers- for Magnepans in particular. The Emo amps had 300×2 for a grand. That’s a lotta wattage at a cheap price, for 50 lb amps from China.

When you’re a classic rocker, as most of my customers are, you’re looking for power over smoothness and Emo hit the nail on the head. NAD’s biggest amp at the time was C275BEE ($1500, 150×2). The NAD was more warm and musical- sounded better in any critical assessment. BUT, there’s a big slice of the client base that will go for watts per dollar every day of the week. It frustrated me that so many buyers purchased WATTS instead of appreciating the NAD sound. But ya gotta face facts or you’re toast.

Emo was just starting a dealer program and I signed on. It started out just fine. I demo’d their gear. Customers could audition it before buying. If they bought from me they could use AE for service. And while they were reasonably reliable- service was not rare! There is a consequence of building big amps cheap. The amps sounded harsher than NADs. But they played plenty loud and were CHEAP. They sold very well. If you’re just wailing on Kansas or Boston, who cares anyway? But if your music leans more acoustic, give me NAD any day of the week.

Within a couple years Emo quit supplying products to us in a timely fashion. I’d have a dozen amps on back order for months. Customers would hear my demos and order. But I couldn’t provide merchandise. These customers started to call me and say, I can buy from the Emo site- they’re in stock. WHAT?!

I called the owner who said he ran a “blended” biz where he sold direct to the public AND to dealers. But of course his margin was DRAMATICALLY higher when he sold to consumers directly.

It was clear the dealer program was to BUILD the brand- so Emo could sell to the public direct. Only when they DIDN’T have back orders, would dealers get product. Oh, nice. Ummm, no thanks Dan.

Fortunately NAD quickly eclipsed the loud sounding amps with their own extensive line that sound just as powerful and more smooth- with much superior service. And more recently, Atoll of France makes both Emo and NAD sound thin and harsh.

 

Rogue

Rogue ultimately was the answer to my quest for a reliable tube line. Up until Rogue, one tube maker after the other crashed and burned, sometimes literally (Jolida)!

Dealing with Rogue is a pleasure compared to ALL the other tube guys, save McIntosh. The noise floor is NOT as quiet as Bryston or Atoll. But if you want a slice of the tube pie, Rogue is my favorite choice along with Mac.

Recently, Rogue has introduced new versions of its Sphinx and Pharaoh integrated amps. Both have been vastly improved to where the noise floor isn’t a problem! I’m happy to say we now have hybrid (tube preamp/solid state power amp) integrateds that are affordable, reliable, and quiet enough to be used with a wide array of speakers. Further, these products are built in Pennsylvania and that’s a huge advantage compared to products that come out of Chinese job houses with

pretentious names on the face plates.

Sonos

What a gawdawful company. Rarely have we seen a company start so promisingly and end up as cowpies.

Sonos created a technology to move music around your house- kinda/sorta wirelessly. The sound was average, but for the most part its system worked- at a time when the alternative was a pile of keypads run off a computer (Russound/Niles/Elan/Frox).

As the company got bigger and richer, Sonos just got worse in every way. The product support was worse. Product supply was worse. They even moved into planned obsolescence of established models, leaving customers with useless hardware. It was really quite incredible how Sonos used specialty dealers like us to build the brand- and then move into Target and Amazon- giving the bird to those of us that built the brand.

Fortunately, Bluesound sounds better and checks all the performance boxes. I was delighted

when Bluesound (of the NAD family) stepped ahead of Sonos.

Quagmire

Greg bought an NAD C298 power amp and C658 preamp from me. He lives out east so our communication was on the phone and via email. He said it all sounds GREAT. Thanks!

Then he started emailing massively long emails about- when he ran his far east tube phono preamp into the NAD (which has an excellent solid state MM input by the way), he had this problem or that. A channel was low, or out. It came and went and faded. He did this or did that. He wanted to record through this phono box which added another level of complexity. Pages of details. All the info he gave me pointed to a bad tube phono preamp. You’re just asking for noise and bugaboos if you put tubes in this vital link of the chain. Everything was fine when running the NAD phono preamp, but he had paid for his magic phono box and wouldn’t give up.

I’ll save you the scrolls from the Dead Seas, but Greg ultimately discovered the problem was-the brittle ends of his Audioquest Golden Gate interconnects wouldn’t work properly with this tube box. He ultimately went to a less expensive cable he had lying around and the problem was cured. He had a sophisticated system and I am embarrassed to say I didn’t consider that his AQ cables would be the problem. We don’t sell Audioquest. I respect the brand. But I didn’t know AQ well enough to suspect this might be a problem. Moral of the story, any brand of cables that has stiff connectors can be a problem. Just buy Kimbers and you won’t have to worry.

We Get Calls

Wow. Do we get calls!

 

Did you know that EVERY DAY we get multiple calls asking, “Do you buy audio gear?” Every day! We don’t purchase gear from customers. We say we don’t. But people just don’t want to hear it. They go on a sales pitch about why we should want to buy their old, often broken, gear. Sometimes we just have to hang up on them. I hate doing this but I can’t be tied to the telephone when we have customers in the store, customers to call back, or vendors to interface with. This happens virtually every single day.

We get calls literally every day, asking if we can fix a 1970s turntable. The answer is no. Always. It was a lightweight piece of junk in 1979 and we’re not about to try to fix it with rubber bands and Scotch tape today. You can buy a respectable NEW turntable for $400, including a new cartridge. If you have a friend that wants you to recommend a place to fix his 70s table, please be mature and tell him junk it. Parts aren’t available for it and today’s labor rate is over $100 per hour. We would do people no favors to try to Bandaid a piece of junk together for $175 including a new cartridge- when a brand new table with cart runs $400!

Many people call and want unlimited phone time. With all due respect, the people that have made the effort to walk in our door get our first attention. Sometimes we grab a call while

listening rooms are occupied- and have a hard time getting off the phone to return to our customers.

You can bet that during any call of more than a couple minutes, the UPS or FedEx driver will show up or the other lines will ring in. If you get a machine when you call, do leave a message. We’ll call back when the dust settles.

Did you know that practically every day we get a call asking how to operate Bose or LG or something else we don’t even sell? People buy online and can’t get a human to help them. So they’ll call us, a store where a human answers the phone, and are persistent in trying to talk US into helping them with something we don’t know and didn’t sell. Once again, I hate hanging up on people but we can’t waste time trying to navigate Linn, Meridian, LG or Sony menus when we don’t sell or know the gear. Much less… the caller didn’t do business with us.

Every day we get calls from people with broken big box items like Bose this and Onkyo that- begging for us to service them because big box suxx. One lady even put a nasty Google review out there saying it was because we don’t fix Bose. We never have. We never said we did. It even happens with the low end of Klipsch which is sold at Costco. We won’t touch them. They’re not built well to begin with and certainly not well enough to be worked on. And of course, if you buy cheap stuff at big box, you’ve made your bed.

I’m happy to talk to people anywhere in the US who are considering doing biz with us. I’ll compete and try to earn the biz. But we can’t be ready reference for odd gear, or things we didn’t sell.

A lot goes into running a business. We have to deflect a lot of debris along the way. Most of the hours we put in at the store are in a support role of some sort.

 

JL Audio

I picked up JL Audio in about 2016. They make among the best subs on the market- in Florida no less! I want to be open minded about great gear and its performance. My first consideration is how it sounds and how it’s built- not where it is made.

Our industry is full of subs of generic parts. Suppose you want to start Milwaukee Speakers tomorrow and offer subs. You can call up Parts Express. Buy the woofs, the plate amps and even the cabinets for crying out loud- and call it Sub 1. Buy bigger parts and call it Sub 2- and so the formula goes. Or, if you’re big enough, you can buy the parts direct from the Chinese vendors.

We see THIS from “all” subs out there. The vendors are buying far east made parts and screwing them into boxes with all levels of hysteria in marketing.

THIS, is not JL Audio. JL makes its own gear, in its own plant in Miramar, Fl. Their drivers make the competition look like Tinker Toys. Check our JL tab at the bottom of our home page to see for yourself. They provide approximately three times the testosterone for your investment. They bolt the drivers into the faceplate like nobody else. They even squeeze the back of the driver into submission from the rear on the E Series on up. The other guys have the arse end flopping in the breeze. They are sealed boxes to insure tight bass. The D Series is good. The E Series is incredible- with much improved crossovers to boot. The Fathoms are state of the art.

I like the sound of JL with its non booming style. They go great with literally any speakers out there, including Pans. JL achieves its remarkable quality/pricing equation by marketing on several platforms. JL makes great subs for our residential world. They also make great subs and speakers for the automotive and marine markets. When the quantity goes up you can amortize costs.

Fact is, JL makes my favorite subs, and just has its biz DOWN better than anyone else in the sub market.

Phones

Technology isn’t always good. Sometime during the audio hobby people started using their phones to store music. This was long before streaming music services. The start of this technology yielded absolutely abysmal sonic results.

I never wanted to play someone’s phone based music through a system we were demoing- which would have to be: headphone analog out to analog line ins of a preamp. The music was compressed. It was going through the audio components of a phone! It was guaranteed to have anemic, thin sound. The person that brought the phone in wouldn’t be impressed. Worse yet, other customers in the store might hear it and conclude that the audio gear we carry- stinks.

Some people were visiting with music stored in compressed fashion on their phones. They wanted to hear their songs. I usually had this music or something close to it, on CD or LP. I would gladly play their CDs or LPs. Most customers accepted my explanation and listened to CDs or records. And… seriously, how tough was it to bring in a CD or two you like to a store? Today we can stream anything with great quality. It’s no issue.

But there were some young fellows who thought because the music was saved on their phone it was BETTER than LP or CD. I had one pugnacious young fellow demand I use his phone during a visit. The store was busy. I told him, let’s play CDs instead. I have hundreds on hand. He wanted to hear Steely Dan and other popular music. I had loads of it in house. But nope, he stomped out in a huff and called Magnepan, which he was ostensibly auditioning. He told Magnepan I was a no goodnick for not playing his phone stored music and he would never return.

I remembered our encounter well and decided after that, to play customers’ music from their phones if they insisted. The results were always poor and counter productive. Ya can’t win.

Retail Can Be Humbling

I’ve sold Peachtree for many years. They’ve had some average products and a few superstars along the way. They still don’t know how they want to run their biz.

In the early days they cheated in power ratings by claiming power at 6 ohms and limited bandwidth. The idea of an affordable integrated with on board DAC and tube in the preamp was nice- even cutting edge. Dealers like Audio Emporium helped spread the word for Peachtree and allowed them to develop into a quality manufacturer. Their early gear was primitive to what they’re making now. They didn’t get here over night. Their PT 220 Power Amp was among the best amplifier values in the biz for a decade.

As PT matured, they came out with higher powered integrateds. Among the best for the time was the Nova 220SE. It was 220×2 and its tube usage made it sound more tubey than their prior offerings. It was a big value for $2200- basically a 220 power amp with tube preamp and DAC in the same box. I demo’d it often with my best speakers and sold them very well.

Over a period of a week, a blue collar fellow visited several times to hear the 220SE with Mags. Each demo was terrific, if I do say so myself. We covered every possible piece of ground regarding these components and their interface. We had close to a dozen hours of time together during this week.

Then one day he came in to buy the Mags. That’s fine. I asked, “Are you still thinking about the 220SE?’ He dropped his head and said, he bought it direct from PT’s site. No freight. No tax. And if he bought by the first of the month they threw in some generic speaker wire. He saved $112 in tax.

By the way, taxes ARE now collected when you buy from Crutchfield and their ilk.

To him, a hundred bucks trumped spending a dozen hours in my store. Of course, this is a punch in the gut to the dealer. You bankroll putting these products on display and in stock. You take the time to hook up the exact gear the customer wants to hear- and spend hours listening and talking about the minutia of the products down to the last drop. The customer heard for himself, in the flesh, how the 220SE sounded vs several other quality amps. The customer votes with his wallet. Please consider buying from us, people who DO THE WORK.

Mike Scott

Mike started working for me 1990. He had worked at General Electronics and knew the biz well. Always affable, Mike was the perfect right hand man. Mike was very into smart remotes and programming them. It was good to have Mike because I’m a music/sound guy. I don’t care how many remotes you need. You’ll get no sympathy from me if you need to run 3 remotes. Life is tough, A?

Mike had putzed around with guitar as a young man. I had fumbled some on the piano. We always told each other, “Let’s start taking lessons and compare notes as we go.” Well, life happens. You get busy with kids and their activities. Time flies.

One day in March 2006 Mike & I met with our Marantz reps Jeff Wilner and Jim Smerz. They were telling us about some new products that would be coming out soon. We teased them about some decisions we thought were mistakes. It was a fun sparring bout. At the end of the day Mike and I said “see ya” to each other as we had over 4000 times. Mike never made it home.

He stopped for groceries, so he must have felt fine. But driving home from the grocery store he pulled out of traffic and passed out on Milwaukee’s busy east side. Police found him almost immediately and called an ambulance. Mike’s wife, Beki, called me to say his death from a brain aneurysm was imminent and he would be donating organs. WOW! Talk about a shock!

I decided I was out of excuses and immediately signed up for piano lessons with the ever patient Marlene Cook in Shorewood. Marlene has been my teacher ever since. It has been a fabulous journey to get in the heads of Mozart, Chopin, LVB, Schumann and others.

I’ll never be any good at the instrument because you develop lifelong motor skills as a child. Whether ice skating or piano skills, you can never achieve the fluidity starting at age 53, as you could starting at age 3. I think of Mike each time I walk over to my piano.

I’ve had other friends die young. My buddy Dirk died at 28 when he was hiking at Gov Dodge Park. He fell about 30 feet trying to take a shortcut. We’re all invincible when we’re young.

When I had my store in Colorado, Steve Bassett was a sales rep from HK. Steve was killed on an icy mountain road in the middle of winter somewhere. We were both early 20s. Steve and I would talk music more than HK receivers and cassette decks.

Recession

The industry was decimated in 2008-9 during the recession. Perhaps you heard?! Companies that made fine products in N America or the UK, no longer had the sales to support that manufacturing. They moved to China, or introduced artisan pricing (yikes!) on what was made to higher standards here and in the UK.

Long time companies changed hands. The hedge fund boys came in and brought their dirty laundry to our quaint biz.

Pioneer made their Kuro plasmas up to the recession. They died a quick death as the recession took hold. It was sad to see the best panels of the era die off.

On the plus side, I made a concerted effort to replace some of the big names that had gone to the dark side, with more specialty companies again. Goodbye to B&W and Paradigm- two strong names that were not what they once were. Yet, it was sad to have to make these changes.

 

John Bowers had started B&W. His heir took it over when he died. It was a big hush hush at the time. John was gay. So what?! His partner got B&W. It wasn’t long before he was bought out by the first hedge fund. There have been at least three more since!

The Vander Marel brothers started Paradigm. Both companies sold off. You can’t blame the owners. But what it left for the rest of us was a disappointment. I wasn’t surprised and DID see it coming. This hedge fund behavior had occurred in every other biz. Why would I have been surprised when it struck MY biz?

Do you all remember Advent speakers from the 60s and 70s? Owner Henry Kloss sold to

Jensen in about 1976. Immediately Jensen put the Advent badge on a bunch of its crappy gear. That… is par for the course in hedge fund land.

The B&W situation was especially disappointing. I had become good friends with John McIntosh, B&W’s gregarious National Sales Mgr, for 30 years. We rode the crest of creative products and great biz together. As B&W announced it was purchased, the new direction was crystal clear.

John saw it coming and wanted no part of it. He chose to retire. I chose to retire from B&W too by booting them out the door. Same with Paradigm. These moves created opportunity. If you try somebody new at first base, he might become the next Lou Gehrig. That leads us to…Bryston speakers. But first…

B&W Seminar

I’ve recounted some uncomfortable experiences above. There were plenty of fun ones too!

When B&W brought out the Nautilus series in 1998, it really was a tour de force of technology. The line was very impressive, albeit power hungry. I wanted to “present” it with a music evening.

Now, I’m not big on seminars in the shop. All of the designers in our biz are engineer types. But many aren’t credentialed “engineers.” They’re just hobbyists like you and me, that have putzed with computer programs and have pronounced themselves experts. In fact, while they’ll tell you their designs are better due to XYZ, let’s say crossovers, the next designer in the door will shoot

their theories full of holes. Hence these seminars are just sales presentations by designers who are quite full of themselves. Make sure you bring a big shovel when you go to any audio event hosted by a “designer.” I keep a pair of rubber boots back stage.

NSMs (National Sales Managers) can do the same thing and often without the arrogant pretensions. But some NSMs haven’t done much more than read the brochure you read 5 minutes ago. Some of them couldn’t be bothered to do that. I don’t want those guys either!

But B&W was a different deal for many years- the great John Mac was NSM.

The ever pleasant and knowledgeable John Mac came to AE to run a seminar for us. John was an industry icon. He was kind, mannerly, and knew speakers as deeply as designers do- without their obnoxious edge. John is from Manchester, England and his accent made the speaker talk that much more interesting. John always did his homework. He didn’t just show up unprepared as most reps did.

John gave a nice presentation and offered to take questions. The questions ranged from insightful and interesting, to challenging, insulting, and thoroughly naive. John was up to all of the topics. I never worried about John talking to my customers.

John answered them all with class. He never made a point of showing up someone who had tried a GOT YA moment. Yep, every brand of speaker has its own secret sauce and in every audience there are multiple people who drink that Kool-Aid and want to shove it down everyone’s throat.

But you COULDN’T nail John with a “got ya.” He was thoroughly prepared to discuss any aspect of speakers and the manufacturing process. Even when contentious questions were spit his

direction, John was a gentleman and explained what/why B&W chose to do.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening is when a fellow asked John if B&W stole the Nautilus tuning tube technology from the Bose wave radio. I kid you not!

Jim Bongiorno would have exploded like a hand grenade on the spot. Mr Obnoxious from Harold’s above would have launched into a screaming tirade. Not John. John actually felt bad for the questioner- who had embarrassed himself with such a naive question.

After a very successful seminar with great musical dems to boot, we closed the shop and went

to Augie’s across the street. Augie’s was a ma and pa neighborhood bar like Cheers. They had home made pizza and it was late. The upper level of Augie’s had about 8 tables. John was holding court with our staff and a few customers up there. The lower level of the bar was a few steps lower- mostly around a 20 seat or so horse shoe shaped bar. As we are scarfing our pizza, in come two young ladies in scanty attire. Within moments they are providing lap dances for bar patrons who have clearly been awaiting them. John was impressed that Milwaukee could equate Bose wave radios with B&W Nautilus speakers, AND have lap dances at Augie’s seventy feet across the street ten minutes later. It was embarrassing but highly humorous.

Bryston Speakers

James Tanner of Bryston had designed some fabulous reference monitors for Bryston’s internal use. The Model Ts (T for Tanner) were phenomenal, FULL FIGURED towers, created for evaluating electronics, not for sale. As crazy pricing from N American and European built speakers ensued, James and Bryston decided to market these speakers! All of a sudden, turf that was owned by brands like B&W and Paradigm, was now open territory due to the recession. The reigning lions left the territory, so it was now available.

It has been a treat to have Bryston loudspeakers! The Ts have prodigious power, excellent definition and smooth timbre in spades. Running $3-12k per pair, the Model T, Middle T and Mini T have reshaped the serious loudspeaker biz. They are not priced like YGs, Wilsons and Magicos, but compete nicely- if you chose to spend less than $50k!

The Model T full range tower sells for about $12k per pair. What does B&W sell today for close to that price? $12k buys you a 6” 2-way in a pretty box. B&W’s more affordable towers are sourced from China- not close to Bryston octane and sophistication. B&W’s equivalent of the Model T today

sells for $35k per pair. It’s an artsy speaker at 3.5 times the price! I’m not saying it isn’t good. I am saying you pay a king’s ransom for what you get.

Tanner designed the speakers. Bryston commissioned Axiom of Canada to build them. Axiom is about an hour down the road from Bryston. With Axiom’s facilities, staff and logistics, the Bryston speakers represent a tremendous value. When you analyze what is actually IN these speakers, you’ll appreciate the great bargain they are. If Bryston had purpose built a facility to build speakers, the prices would be more than double what they currently are.

Bryston speakers became quite successful in the marketplace. Specious competitors might tell you that Bryston is just Axiom with a different label. This most definitely is NOT the case! While some elements of manufacture are the same (wood finish, binding posts, ports), Bryston uses more massive drivers, cabinets, crossovers and construction techniques. This holds true for the A Series as well.

Due to the success of Bryston’s speaker venture, Bryston and Axiom have merged. Our nay-saying competitors will have to stop lying- that Brystons are just Axioms with a different logo. It’s shameful… the stories we’ve heard. James Tanner is the CEO of the whole she-bang. Brystons speakers are now 100% under the Bryston roof. We look forward to that relationship bearing even more and better fruit.

Bryston’s A Series wins virtually every competition we throw at it. A3 for about $3k has prodigious bass that makes the Chinese imports whimper and hide in the corner. A2 for a grand more casts a bigger image and is stronger. A1 for about $5k is the defacto price class winner. Check out any of the Chinese at $5k and you’ll be shocked at how poorly they’re built in comparison to Brystons. Further, why would you NOT prefer to buy a speaker made in Canada with a 20 year warranty?

Bryston was really hammered by Covid. For about two years they couldn’t make A Series speakers due to being understaffed. They even decided to discontinue them during Covid. But they’re back being made again and we’re thrilled to have them. They need to update their ancient website though.

Hegel

Hegel of Norway did a nice job to improve the integrated amp category. With SoundEngine in particular, the integrateds sounded clean, albeit a bit cool and lean. They are a nice step above the mainstream brands. Hegel builds its gear in China to hit good price points. They do make many of their PCBs in Norway.

While we had a nice ride with Hegel from 2007-2023, I’ve shifted business over to Atoll. Atoll sounds warmer and more powerful. It’s made in France with a 3 year warranty (instead of 2). The more powerful and dynamic sound of Atoll has won my ears.

Atoll

My favorite affordable electronics brand EVER is Atoll of France. Atoll gear is so smooth and powerful sounding, at such good prices- that I’m just blown away by it.

I feel very lucky to have encountered Atoll before I left the business, or DIED. I’ve never seen a line that is so well thought out and SOLID, from the bottom to the top. Atoll’s entry level pieces are

better than middle of the line from the other guys. Their top pieces are right there with Bryston, Mac and the big boys for half the price.

They can do it because of their wise efficiency of manufacturing process. They only have a couple of different chassis sizes and button/jack arrays. As you go north in the line, virtually all of your money goes INSIDE the component to deliver superior sonic value. Nobody I’ve ever seen, is even close for the money. It’s an absolutely remarkable line of gear.

During Covid their production fell to a trickle- like everyone else who builds in Europe or N America. But starting in spring of 2022, Atoll started kicking it into high gear. They are showing the audio market that all the Chinese brands they compete with, are second tier. It isn’t very close either!

Atoll has heft and warmth that NAD, Hegel and the mainstream can’t match. It has grit and kick in the bass that Hegel can’t beat. And… it makes products so efficiently that they ought to sell for much more.

Their integrated amps alone are stalwart. They run away from the pack at $1200-$4500. The IN300 at $4500 is so powerful and so full sounding, that I could make a very good case for not spending a penny more on electronics. Just buy THAT and the best speakers you can.

Likewise for Atoll CD players and separates. What a fabulous line of gear at great pricing NOT made in China!

I’m thrilled to have found Atoll to inject new enthusiasm into this business even if it’s late in my life. As of covid, brands made in China, which is almost everything moderate in price, aren’t close to Atoll in sound or reliability. What a find!

Atohm

Atohm isn’t related to Atoll, but they’re friends. Atohm is also made in France. I learned about it through the American importer, Emilios, who brings in both brands.

I’ve heard a million Euro speakers over the years. There are big names like B&W and Kef. Lesser names like Naim, Linn, Harbeth, ATC, Castle, Spendor, Heybrook and a thousand others. What they all have in common is, a smooth, non aggressive character. BUT, what they also have in common is that they can’t HIT HARD in their modestly sized cabinets. It’s a tight window to where you can play loudly enough- to where they break. And let me tell you, these polite Englishmen don’t just roll over for repairs. They KNOW you were clipping your amp and that’s why you destroyed their tweeters.

Atohm is built like a brick outhouse. It can play deeper bass at a given size than these other boys. Further, they can play a lot louder than these competitors. It makes Atohm unique in that it sounds lovely, but can fill up an American living room. Check out a Sonus Faber for $4k. It comes in a stylish box but you don’t get much weight or dynamics in your music. With Atohm, you do!

Wharfedale

The speaker market is tremendously competitive, as you surely know. Imagine a rugby scrum. Somebody invariably picks up the ball and runs with it. They usually don’t get very far before they have to pass off. Nobody runs forever. It seems a newcomer emerges from the scrum for a while, only to be tackled and surpassed by someone else.

This was Elac for a couple of years. They came out with some respectable, cheap products, but had no idea how to run a biz and provide dealer support. For example, I needed a tweeter for a B5. I called Elac. Finally someone called back and said, “If you want a warranty repair you have to send us the speaker.” WHAT?! Are you crazy buddy? UPS the entire speaker to Calif for $40? Just send me your $5 tweeter. The UPS cost more than the part. They got angry and said they would do it this one time, but next time we’d have to send the speaker in. And guess what? They sent an entire B5 speaker. They were too lazy to even stock and ship PARTS. Are you joking? Nope. These goofs are so busy trying to sell on Amazon that they don’t pay a moment’s notice to servicing people who have ALREADY bought from them. How short sighted!

Fortunately, Wharfedale picked up the ball and had a nice run. The Linton in particular is a fine value. But as time has gone on, W has just punched out so many average speakers to go with a few good ones. During Covid, since these were made in China, we could still get them. Bryston of Canada, virtually shut down during that time. They played Covid by the rules.

Now that Covid is mostly behind us and Bryston is manufacturing again, we don’t need Wharfedale any more. The Bryston speakers sound better and are much tougher. Bryston now offers its little brother Axiom line and less money. They’re terrific! And yup, we don’t have to send our money to China.

Klipsch

I picked up Klipsch in about 2009. Flanners had gone bust and the Heritage lineup had too big a following to ignore. These are American speakers of incredible efficiency, dynamic range and horse power.

About 90% of our clientele lives on classic rock and these easy to drive towers bring you plenty of foot tapping octane without being the least bit amplifier fussy. If you go hear Steely Dan live- you’re listening through a pile of horns on the stage. Well, that is precisely what K gives you for your living room. It amazes me how many of my customers want to BLAST classic rock. These guys aren’t 18 any more, but they still want to let ‘er rip. The Ks are a better choice than any number of inefficient pretentious speakers that are featured in TAS & Stereophile.

If you want to play at strong R&R volume, you need highly efficient speakers. You can’t play Magnepans or Logans at this volume no matter how much you spend on amplifiers.

Heresy 4 ,Forte 4 and Cornwall 4 in particular, are extremely popular speakers that you can drive with a garden variety amplifier or receiver.

McIntosh

I picked up Mac in about 2007. Some die hard audiophiles look down their nose at Mac for making pretty amps with luscious blue meters. So what?! How haughty- and absurd!

Mac amps with autoformers sound smooth as silk. By the way, these same snooty audiophiles that rip Mac often listen to their favorite brand of tube amps- with autoformers! These guys are the pot calling the kettle black.

Mac’s reliability is solid. The sound is always warm and enjoyable. And by the way, it’s OK to buy gear that is FUN to own because it looks as good as it sounds.

Nothing resells better than Mac either. As long as I’ve been in the biz, I don’t understand why more companies don’t steal Mac’s use of big meters. As long as the product sounds great, what’s wrong with making it aesthetically pleasing and fun to own? Of course those big meters are part of what makes Mac sell so well. We don’t hold it against a car- that it has style. Why do snooty audiophiles go for a box that espouses greatness but looks like it was made in your grandpa’s basement? They have screws on the face plates complete with paint scraped off as some doink cranked ‘em down too hard.

Mobile Fidelity

MoFi introduced its first turntables in about 2018. They’re built like a tank. They also offer outstanding cartridges and phono preamps. How nice… to have this level of solid build quality at fair pricing. MoFi started at entry level but has evolved to offer a top flight MC cart to mate with its UltraDeck. It’s an absolutely fabulous pairing for under $4k. It competes head to head with $10k + competitors- and is made in the US no less.

MoFi tables don’t use sprung suspension design. Hence you can walk across your living room floor and they don’t skip. With Linn and many other sprung designs, your 20 pound dog will make them skip as they walk across the room. MoFi’s sound great and are much more usable than the bouncy springy guys.

 

Isotek

Isotek is a welcome necessity to our audio systems! Isotek proved that mains conditioners and cables can IMPROVE the sound of your music system wonderfully. In fact, as of 2022, if you don’t have a conditioner like Isotek’s Polaris, Elektra or Aquarius v5, you’re not hearing nearly what the rest of your gear can give you. Line hash is like snow in our TV pictures back in the day. Strip the line snow out and the clarity in your music improves a good 15-20%. We can prove it!

I’ll plead with you… don’t believe naysayers who contend that conditioners don’t matter. They do.

Kimber Kable

Ray Kimber started Kimber Kable in 1979. From the outset his cables were cutting edge and affordable. Kimber’s products continue to be as good as our industry can offer, at a wide array of pricing. Whether you need fine interconnects (Tonik, Hero, Carbon) or speaker wires (4/8 PAIR up to Carbons), Kimber remains at the cutting edge of the art for performance and price.

All you have to do is read our TESTIMONIAL section of our site to see how customers have appreciated the distinct improvements yielded by great cables and conditioners!

Ray Kimber proves that being a nice, honest person is valuable in business. You would think that goes without saying, right? But Ray is on the short list of forever terrific people to work with, even 40 some years down the road. I’ve sold Kimber Kable since 1979 and never wavered. The products are great. The people are a pleasure to deal with. Rarely are there problems. But I know if that happens, I won’t have to lose a wink of sleep over it. Ray and KK will make it right.

Ray, like Julius, Sandy, Randy and a few others, make being in the business feel like being in the hobby. He continues to bring ear opening products to affordable price points and is always friendly and classy in the process.

Vintage Gear

Vintage gear looks really cool. But it rarely works right and typically sounds lousy. It invariably has a high noise floor and harsher sound than today’s gear. As an old person myself, I can tell ya- that gear didn’t even work that well brand new.

I recently heard a system with a Marantz turntable and receiver from the 70s, with brand new Orto Blue cart. It was driving some JBL 100s that had been refoamed. This system was downright fuzzy sounding compared to what we sell today. Looked cool. Sounded blurry. No thanks.

Seriously, think of the materials used in speakers in the 60s and 70s.

Likewise, the electronics had lousy parts and workmanship by today’s standards.

Some people try to make a business out of working on vintage gear. They’ll get their mitts on old speakers and screw in whatever drivers fit- because the originals are toast. They’ll slap a Datsun door on a Chevy body. It’s a formula destined for failure. People flush loads of money trying to make

old gear work. It’s a bad idea. If you like vintage gear, buy NEW products like the KLH 5 and Leak electronics, that LOOK vintage, but are contemporary under the hood.

Price Hikes

Times, they are a changing. There used to be a fair amount of warning for price hikes. Now we’re lucky to get 48 hours! This is important info. It allows me to contact customers that are on the fence and give them a heads up.

Suppose you have been looking at a product for two grand, to pick a number. You have listened to it, read about it, budgeted for it- you’re just about ready to buy, but have to line up a few ducks first. Then you walk in the store and the price is $2400. Some customers accept reality. Prices go up from time to time- that’s life. Rats! But I’ll take it. Other customers get so upset that they become literally unglued. “How could this happen?! They were 2 grand two weeks ago!” Some stomp out in disgust as if the price hike was a personal affront to their integrity. In short, we need a month’s notice. We don’t get it any more.

Here’s an example. On Dec 1, 2021 I got an email from Magnepan. “As of today prices are…”

Approximately 15% higher. Now, Magnepans are great speakers. They are well worth the new higher

prices. But I had absolutely no advanced warning. I couldn’t call any customers that were “thinking

it over.” Welcome to the not so warm and fuzzy biz world we live in now.

UPS & FedEx

The main freight companies that move our gear get worse every day. They have such a strangle hold on the “small box” (under 150 lbs) transportation world that they can’t be bothered to do a good job. We know it’s not an easy job, but they don’t treat our electronics with respect.

We have had them LOSE Magnepans! How do you lose a 6’ tall, 102 pound box? When we call the rep all he can do is look at the same tracking # on the computer we have. “I dunno.” Thanks a lot buddy.

Freight pricing is full of sleight of hand antics. The computer app you operate to ship- displays only a portion of the freight charge. The fine print below adds another 25% in some cases.

If I order a single 35 pound box from Marantz, for ex, in Calif, the freight might be $25. That’s fine. If I ship that same box from me to Calif, it will be $60. Not fine! Why? Because Marantz is a big company that gets a better deal. As a small biz who ships about 5 cartons per day, we pay a much higher price than Marantz, much less Amazon.

It’s no wonder Amazon has taken over the world. The freight they eat when shipping to a customer is incidental. And, talk about power- you see US mail trucks driving around on Sundays delivering Amazon products. That… is power.

I pay about $250 to have Mac send me a 160 pound amp from NY via UPS freight. I had a customer with a vacation home out west who wanted me to ship him one. I said fine and blasted it

out UPS freight, just as it had arrived. I figured the invoice would be $250-350, acceptable for the size and price of the $15k unit. Much to my shock and awe, I got an invoice from Tforce for $1050!

Who is Tforce? I called. They are the FREIGHT company UPS uses. Hmm. I entered the info in my

UPS portal like everything else. I learn that Tforce works for UPS. I said- OK, regardless, you can’t rip people off by charging $1050 for an amp that cost $250 from NY to Mke. They said, not our problem. Call UPS. You know where this is going, don’t you? I called my UPS rep who is as unhelpful as you can get. He says, it’s between you and Tforce. Oh? What about my typing it in my UPS World Ship Portal? Of course it ISN’T THEIR PROBLEM. Back to Tforce. We spend far too many hours of our day fighting unethical companies who are supposed to be on our side.

Fuel Surcharges

Our manufacturers are ever clever, or so they think, by taking margin from the dealer.

Rather than change the cost on our sheet, most have added a “fuel surcharge.” But it’s quite

funny how this 3-5% charge got added, but never gets eliminated when gas prices drop.

Oh, and of course UPS and Fed Ex have done this for years- the CROOKS. You type in

the info to ship a pair of speakers to Mr Jones in Las Vegas. It says $50. Then you scroll down and see the additions, one of which is always a fuel surcharge. That holds whether the price is $5 a gallon or $2 a gallon. Just try to call a human at UPS to discuss this- or anything else for that matter.

It’s Getting Weird

Our vendors are so far off on availability- they’ve virtually quit guessing. We have sold loads of NAD M33s. We have a dozen or more on order at any given time. Since C19 when we’ve asked the company when the gear will be in, they say, “30 days.” They don’t even think. They have guessed without putting any effort into it. Well, it went to 90 days. And now, they won’t even guess. “We have no idea. Order more so at least you’ll get some.” THAT… is a ridiculous way to do business- but that’s where we are. We have a long list of everything that sells well on order. We get the gear in trickles. But just our luck, one day the dam will break and 100 pieces will land at the door on the same day. The point is, it’s literally impossible to forecast now. I’ve never seen this before, in

almost 50 years of being in the biz.

The good news is Atoll has replaced NAD in our shop and this specific NAD problem is no longer ours.

Further, some importers haven’t a clue. I love CD players. They’re indispensable and each has its own character of sound. The Marantz SACD-30n is a real game changer, a true state of the art player for $3000. Not everyone can afford that. I read a great review on the Synthesis Roma CD-14 from Italy- and beautiful with rosewood face. I know it won’t be as good as the Marantz from what’s inside, but the American importer said it will run $2k US dollars. I asked the importer for a full price list. $2100. Looks great. I ordered a demo to audition. He calls back a few days later. “Oh, I made a mistake. The price is $3800.” Seriously? We don’t need them at anywhere CLOSE to SACD-30n money. From looking at photos of the guts of the player, $2k would have been more than enough.

Companies are making more mistakes now too. We had a boatload of KLH Model 5 speakers on order. Recently ONE pair showed up along with 42 other speakers- that I had not ordered. 42! The cantankerous driver said if we wanted the KLH5s we ordered, we’d have to accept all 44 boxes. Well, I DID want that pair since getting these was extremely difficult. Getting even one pair would help.

I called the sales department and of course they pulled a Sgt Schultz. I took it upon myself to unload all 44. Most truck drivers are happy to help. Not this guy. He just jabbered on his phone as I did the work. I wheeled all 44 into the shop. All I can say is… it was a nice day and my Model 5 customer was thrilled.

I finally got hold of the sales guy in Dallas the next day. He said, “Sorry, put them back on the pallets. We’ll have them picked up.”

Ummm, NO. Four pallets of speakers… and the wood was in splinters from being tossed around. It’s a big enough job just to wheel 42 speakers out into the parking lot. And by the way, thanks a lot for messing up our carpet with your dirty boxes. There was no way these speakers were going back on pallets to be shrink wrapped. I told him, the trucker can pick up 42 cartons. The trucking company called ten minutes later. “We’re not picking these up unless they’re put back on the pallets and shrink wrapped.” This kind of hooey didn’t happen pre C19. In this case, I put the sales manager in a headlock. “If you want the speakers back, come get the 42 boxes. I’m not paying for them.” Who wants to do business like this? How about- everybody just do the right thing and not try to make life more difficult.

Oh… you’ll like this one. When KLH was ABOUT TO SHIP me my first pair of Model 5s,

the NSM called and said, he wanted me to use this pair to SWAP for a guy who bought a pair from them online and changed his mind on the color. HUH?! So, I buy these walnut speakers from you, and give them to someone who bought mahogany off your site- so I end up with used mahogany speakers instead of sealed walnut speakers. Is that what you’re trying to mandate here? Yes, that’s what they requested. I told the NSM, no dice. I will take care of MY customers. When Bryston got back to making speakers regularly I booted KLH. It was a cool vintage looking, OK Chinese built speaker.

Trades

I hate trades. Jim Bongiorno and I agreed on this topic.

At least half the products people bring to trade in have problems they’re trying to flush. Yep, that’s right. They’re trying to blow a fast ball past us. Call it what it is. Be very leery of used gear unless you buy it from a store who will stand behind it with a solid warranty.

When we test something and find a channel out or distorted, the customer invariably goes, “Gee, didn’t do that at my house.” Yes it did. This isn’t a surprise. It’s so pervasive that I am surprised when we check out a perspective trade and it’s fine.

Further, when we discuss trades, every customer promises his gear is in mint shape. You guessed correctly, it rarely is. It’s often beat up and not worth remotely what we had discussed.

More proof of this is the number of calls I get from left field. “I just bought a used such and such on audiogon and it showed up with a channel out. The seller said it was fine but… can you fix it?”

No. We’re not interested. You can bet someone has already worked on it and butchered it with a plethora of messy solder joints. We support customers who buy from us.

When I sell used gear it’s with a 90 day warranty, and I’m always generous beyond that. If I take a unit on trade that doesn’t work right when I sell it, guess who is on the hook for a repair? Further, you can bet before the product was traded in, there were attempts to repair it.

After getting scorched over the years, I’m very careful about trades. Sometimes people get angry with me. I’ve learned a few things. For example, you can’t move heavy speakers without nicking or scratching them. I’ve had guys buy Magnepans and want to trade up a few months later. What they bring in looks 20 years old with scuffs and nicks all over. As you might infer while reading this, when I point out the scuffs, “Gee, I didn’t notice those.” And then they get angry with me that their speakers are worth half what they paid- a month later.

I have seen this within two weeks. The customer buys model X and the wife says, it’s OK to trade up to Y. You can’t move speakers like MG 1.7s that weigh 110lbs, without them incurring nicks and scuffs- which greatly devalues them. Hence speakers that are two weeks old are worth as much as their condition allows. Fellas get ticked if they’re worth half what they paid. But if you scar them in the moving and handling process, you’ll lose significant value.

Atoll Electronique

Even though I’ve been in the hi-fi biz forever, it’s still like Christmas morning once in a while. And that is the case with our recent acquisition of Atoll. Atoll is made in France, not China. The prices are reasonable. The performance is stellar!

During Covid the majority of what we could get was from China. Rats! The N Americans and Euro companies had reduced production dramatically. Now that we are on the other side of Covid, for the most part, N Americans and Euro companies are coming back strong.

Atoll is barely more than NAD, Marantz, Yamaha etc. Its gear is flat out BETTER and I’m thrilled to be able to offer this French built line, vs Chinese gear.

Most Chinese gear is made in job houses. They make gear on contract. The same dang house can make a dozen brands or more during a few months. Even brands like NAD and Hegel are built in China.

Atoll is built in its own factory in France. These guys are SMART and build from a basic platform. They have settled on a couple of different sized chassis and build their gear on them to

be super efficient. On the same chassis with the same buttons and connections, they make a handful

of integrated amps. The base unit is outstanding for about $1200. At each step north, every $400-500, you get a good slug more of hardware because they planned so well. You get more or bigger

transformers, filter caps and output transistors. I think we will see Atoll become the dominant lower to mid level brand in electronics over the new few years. Post Covid, their production has ramped up

and the industry is learning about them.

And no, I don’t want to buy from China. Their quality is always generic if not sketchy. They took advantage of pricing opportunities during Covid and are lousy business partners for a myriad of reasons.

I find it a true BLESSING to have found Atoll- even if in my later years in life. I’ve never had such a SOLID LINE of well built, great sounding stuff. Almost every customer would do well to go lighter on electronics, with Atoll, and heavier on speakers! Even when you compare Atoll to the big dogs like Mac, there isn’t much difference!

Freight Nonsense

To file under the category of, unnecessary hassles when you’re running a business- is dealing with unscrupulous freight companies.

We shipped a 130 pound amp to a customer in Portland. We opened our UPS portal, filled out the info, the quote came up as just under $500. That’s crazy but, the customer said OK. A truck showed up within a couple hours- T Force. The unit got to Portland, but T Force refused to deliver it to the customer. He lived in the sticks and had to go get the unit at their terminal 2 hours away. The charge included home delivery. Sounds manageable, if just annoying.

Then we got the invoice for the shipment, which was $1050. I called T Force to ask why the price was double the portal price, and why they didn’t honor delivering to the customer. You might think this would be a 2 min call. No such luck. Chase, chase and chase some more. Finally I got a rep who said T Force has nothing to do with UPS and the price I saw in my portal was irrelevant. I told the rep, you are most definitely aligned with UPS. You showed up to pick up my unit after I entered it in the portal. How else would you know to come get it?

T Force couldn’t be bothered to respond to my complaint and said if I didn’t pay the $1050, they’d sue me. Well, I’m not paying. This precipitated numerous calls from them after they didn’t get their money. The calls turned into threats. I told them, I’ll pay you the $500, not the $1050. This has gone on for about ten months with nothing settled. I typed up a document spelling out the details. Every call I get, I offer to email it to them. They don’t even care. They want $1050 and there’s no more discussion to be had on the subject. Well… there is, cuz they’re not getting $1050.

If you’re wondering what might go into running a business, beyond the fun of the music and equipment consider situations like this, where a company you deal with, is untenable.

Freight Warning

You cannot, safely ship heavy merchandise via daily UPS or Fed Ex. Any box weighing

over 40-50 pounds is highly at risk. Our manufacturers typically ship to us in quantity, with speakers or amps strapped to pallets, often within shrink wrap. No human is picking up each box and moving it. Freight companies use pallet jacks or fork lifts. If you take products like heavy Mac amps and ship them ground UPS or Fed Ex, there’s a 50% chance that the glass face will crack or the heatsinks will get bent.

The same holds true for heavy speakers. If you’re shipping heavy speakers or amps, they need to go on a pallet. THAT price might turn into my Tforce battle above.

Online Trickery

Another word about used gear… This is quite disappointing. There are so many scammers out there on audiogon in particular- that I’ve long since quit using it as a source to sell used gear.

They call from LA or Texas or somewhere far away. They order your power amp. You’re excited to sell it. When you do, you go buy a replacement. Then you get THE CALL from the liar who says, I got your amp and a channel is out. You say, no it isn’t. It was fine when I sent it. The caller says, give me $500 off and I’ll keep it. Otherwise I’ll return it and post negatively on you on audiogon.

By then, you’ve bought the new one. You don’t want the old one back. You’re angry cuz you know it was fine when you sent it, and you know the caller is lying to manipulate a lower price. Further, nobody wants a negative post as it will quash future audiogon sales attempts. ANDDD if you sold it through ebay, ebay will support the scammer and KEEP their commission as they force you to refund.

Most sellers just acquiesce to be done with it. And that perpetuates these scams. I recently had a fellow sell his Mac- this happened and he was not having it!

He said to the Texas caller, fine, send it back. Of course it came back at the Milwaukee seller’s expense. He checked out his Mac and, no surprise, it was perfectly fine. It weighed 100 lbs and the round trip freight was about $400- to have some crook try to take advantage of a play that works the vast majority of the time.

And of course, Craig’s list is the worst. If you have to sell this way, meet the buyer somewhere other than your house. I had a customer buy a new CD player. He wanted to sell his old Sony for $200. The Craig’s list visitor was invited into his kitchen. A two year old squawked in an adjacent room. Dad checked on him. It took ten seconds. When he came back to the kitchen his CD player and the visitor were gone. And who knows what else. It’s awful.

EBay

Skunks and liars abound! After running into numerous scammers on audiogon, I thought I’d try eBay to see if that crowd is any better. It isn’t.

I had a handful of sales go fine. And then the nonsense arrived- in spades. A fellow bought a used Mark Levinson DAC from me. It was $17k new. It worked perfectly! It had scratches on the top. I posted the unit for $5k with 8 photos of the unit and said there are scuffs on it, but it sounds great. A fellow sent a low ball offer that I ultimately accepted because I had the unit a couple of months. I don’t sit on used gear long. He got it and at about two weeks demanded a refund and posted in the eBay system that it was DEFECTIVE due to the scuffs.

This really disappointed me. I was livid. This lying sack just got cold feet for spending money his wife probably didn’t authorize. It worked fine and was in the exact condition stated. Ebay supports the buyer if he says “defective” and I had NO option but to refund at Ebay’s demand. I got stuck on round trip UPS, about $150. Oh, and eBay will not refund the commission they took. The buyer was a scammer and when I tried to get eBay to intervene, they wouldn’t. They always support the buyer- even with a well documented scamming case.

There were two other sales where buyers got items and said they would return the units if they

didn’t get some money refunded due to XYZ. Just BS, like the audiogon story above. Good riddance to eBay!

My point in going deep here is that buying and selling from audiophile sites is NOTHING like buying from a reputable dealer- where you get a real warranty from people who will support what they sell. My eBay experience showed 20% of the buyers were working the DEFECTIVE bogus claim game to get money back or refund. It is a well known blatant scam that you are vulnerable to on every sale you make!

Biz Since Covid

During covid everyone was stuck at home. Families quite going on vacation. The audio biz did very well. Many guys treated themselves during this time.

Manufacturers are smart, and greedy. They kept raising prices. To call them being “opportunistic” is ignoring their flat out greed. Here’s an example. GoldenEar sold the T7 when covid began, March of 2020, for $2200 per pair. They raised it 10% almost immediately, citing increased costs. No problem. Everyone understood. Now we were at $2400 per pair. By Christmas 2022 they raised pricing again. By Christmas of 2023 T7 was up to $3k. Yep, a 25% increase for the exact same product. As covid relaxed, surprise surprise, T7 dropped to $2800, then $2500, then back to $2200. They’ve just played the market. NO THANKS. See ya.

I am picking on GE here, but could have pointed out the same antics from numerous vendors,

almost all of whom build in China. Well ya know what? I’m STILL PO’d about this TRICKERY. I thought it was a stinky pile when they were doing it and I still do.

Since covid went down to a trickle in about fall of 2022, I’ve been booting the Chinese built gear the Hades outta my store- including ALL of the Chinese speakers.

You see companies like B&W, Kef, Mon Audio, GE etc, design in N America or Europe- and hire a vendor in China to build its products. Then they go on to insult us with pricing gesticulations like gasoline. I’m not on board. I’m trying to replace them all. The only gear I have left from over there is entry level stuff where there is no N American or Euro equivalent.

I know THEY don’t notice that I kicked them out. I’m just a single shop keeper in Milwaukee. But I’m doing my part (!) and have made my stance since 2022.

Oh, there’s a new wrinkle in the page. Since much of the audio pipeline was filled during covid, biz has been slower since mid 2022. We’ve CAUGHT manufacturers making special offers to big dealers and onliners that they never offered to US, the shopkeepers. It’s more than a little off putting when you spend time with customers, doing demos and talking, to educate them on products- and then find that someone.com is selling the product we showed- for under our wholesale cost. Of course I follow up to see if the offer is a mistake, and have been told, “Well, they bought a ton of them.” No heads up. No nothin. We find out after wasting time and effort- essentially becoming a sales agent for someone.com

Singers

While I’m a classical piano fan first and foremost, I love female singers too. Yep, they make me lust and I want to hear the unique character of each woman’s voice.

Nope, I don’t want to hear Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and hundreds of other men that literally cannot sing and don’t speak to me. I want the girls!

For me the best voice ever belongs to Ella. It’s no contest. But I hate scat singing and that was a big part of her era.

The first pop voice that slayed me was Marilyn McCoo. She was Whitney Houston before Whitney Houston.

I like women with power, not cutesy, thin and waify deliveries. Give me Ann Wilson, please. Also, Joan Armatrading, Karen Carpenter, Aretha Franklin, Rosanne Cash, Tracy Chapman, Sara Evans, Crystal Gayle, Shirley Horn, Natalia Kills, Anne Lennox, Ani Lennox, Shelby Lynn, Janelle Monae, Allanah Myles, Pink, Grace Potter, Rihanna, Robyn, Kate Bush, Beyonce, Bonnie Raitt, Sade, Phoebe Snow, Susan Tedeschi, Tina Turner, Jennifer Warnes, Cassandra Wilson- and of course my current fave, Rachael Price.

 

Many Thanks To My Guys!

I’ve always hired guys that can do things that I cannot. I’ve been fortunate to have talented fellas to help support AE customers. I hope you remember some or all of the AE staff!

1977-1980: Doug Powell

1981-1987: Jon Spelt & Paul Franklin

1987-1996: John Stackpole & Rob Munger

1987-1998: Chris Loss

1995-1998: Doug Mitchell

1990-2000: Eric Knitter

1990-2006: Mike Scott

1990-2020: Glenn Avery

1996-present: Jacques Sewrey