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watch king
 
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Default Comments about CES Show "fixes"

Recently I've been reading various comments in threads about amps and
other equipment to the effect that CES demo rooms are somehow set up
in ways that consumers can't or shouldn't duplicate and yet company
spoksmen disclose these factoids. I'm not sure I understand this
concept. I have been involved with the listening demo room set-ups
for 6 companies at CES(the diverse range of Cerwin Vega, ESS,
Marantz, Desktop, Christopher Hansen Audio and Lazarus). I've also
thrown a few muscles into helping people like J. D'Agostino when he
set up his Krell booths (in return for pizza dinners and beer on the
floor). I did this at 17 CES Shows and dozens of other shows both
foriegn and domestic. With the exception of a few toys like plungers
to hold records onto turntable platters and interconnects or wire, no
manufacturer I've ever heard of (that has lasted more than 3 years,
because a few bozos who only lasted 1 show might have done "who knows
what") would risk accepting anything added to their displays that
wasn't researched for weeks ahead of time like their lives depended
on it, BECAUSE their lives really did depend on these demos.

First of all, I would say that the huge mass merchandise companies
won't include almost anything they don't make themselves. So
companies like Yamaha (who might have one serious demo room) won't
have anything in their room that one of the corporate directors in
japan hadn't approved for use (lest they lose their jobs for being
too much of an independent-thinker and not enough of a slavish team
player). Moving down the food chain, companies that had smaller ponds
where they were bigger fish, (companies like Nakamichi, NAD or Proton
level players), would work on their demo presentations for weeks
before the show and unless they had a co-op promotion with someone,
their displays were absolutely firm weeks before "show-time". In the
more esoteric equipment rooms like Krell, B&K Components or Conrad
Johnson there were two perspectives to consider. Either the speakers
and other equipment chosen were acceptable to most of their current
dealers and/or the dealers they wanted to court, or they went for a
pair of the best possible sounding speakers they could borrow and
then took the advice of the speaker maker on how to set them up.

The speaker companies were almost uniformly opposed to ad hoc
"showtime" changes to their displays for 2 reasons. #1 they knew what
amps, turntable/cartridge combos, wire, CD player etc. would make
their speakers sound the best possible, and that would be all they
would use. More importantly it was the manufacturers who wanted to
keep any "acoustic presentation improvement products" a secret, so
they would benefit from better sound to steal sales away from other
manufacturers who didn't have this trick product. This meant that
speaker manufacturers would audition every possible CD player, amp,
phono cartridge etc. and after eliminating products which would turn
off their dealer base and potential new dealers, they would pick the
one that made their speakers sound the best. #2 they didn't want
retailers saying, "My demo room isn't set up like this" or "Our store
doesn't sell product XYZ, so could you please demo your stuff without
product XYZ in the room or I can't be sure I want to buy YOUR
product"." Either of these suggestions is death in the "confidence"
arena of selling. Actually this helped products like Monster Cable
which was the product most likely to be unobjectionable if not a
better sounding product.

So there was always a fine line that most manufacturers tread with
their demo displays. 99% of the lobbying to get products into
displays with high traffic is done weeks or months before the show. I
often pioneered ways to make product demos sound better. The
electrical line noise in Las Vegas and Chicago at showtime is pretty
incredible. So I would often use an array of very high power,
isolated, uninterruptible power supplies in my displays. The building
lights would go dim when I powered up my listening rooms first thing
in the morning, but I didn't suffer the background noises and power
brownouts that everyone else experienced. I'd also have an array of
amplifiers available for use if dealers wanted to hear a certain fave
amp with a speaker they were consiodering buying from me. These amps
varied greatly from Carver 500s to B&K Components ST 140s to Conrad
Johnsons to Bryston to NAD to Krell to Meitner to Acoustical Mnfrg
(Quad) to anything else that made the speaker I was selling sound
great (or at least okay). I would listen for hours deciding which
amps and wire to preconfigure and then which program material to use
with which combo.

No company president I knew would be willing to take on any new piece
of equipment or room treatment unless they were sure it would help
them sell their own stuff. If everyone else was using something in
the way of room treatment I know a dozen company presidents who
purposely wouldn't have that stuff in their room and would find some
other way to make their room sound good. That way company president X
could say, "It isn't the speaker (amp, etc) that my competitor, Mr. Y
is selling that sounds good, it's all that (insert room treatment
product name here) that (insert room treatment product name here
again) paid them to put in their room. So of course not only can't
you trust Mr. Y but since you will never convince your local
customers to buy all that stuff from (insert room treatment product
here) so you shouldn't be making demos with your rooms full of stuff
that will make your local retail customers wonder about your demos
(or worse yet, your local retail customers might ask you what your
equipmment sounds like without that room treatment stuff)".

There are exceptions to every rule and retailers like Lyric in New
York could sell almost anything they tell their customers is "good",
no matter what it is. But these retailers can't be influenced at
shows. In fact Lyric doesn't want any other retailer in the USA
selling something that Lyric knows sounds good. So it isn't going to
help many manufacturers to have their stuff in every demo room at CES
(speaker wire companies excepted). In addition any product that is
universally accepted doesn't need to have their stuff in every
display at CES. Most speaker companies would have wanted to use Mark
Levinson amps or maybe Koetsu phono cartridges at CES but not many of
them could arrange it. Once in a while companies would do anything to
use a product in their displays. If a certain speaker that sounds
great is notorious for making some amps sound bad, then quite a few
amp companies will want to show listeners that their amp sounds great
with this speaker. The same was true for turntable manufacturers and
fussy cartridges etc.

It seems ludicrous in an industry built on entreprenuers who are
brazen and secretive and who attack their competitors visciously at
every possible turn, to find all of them going along like sheep
according some unwritten rules from anybody. Just imagine how
important it is for companies to make 25-30% of their sales or
contacts for sales at CES. This means if they do even $300,000 in
yearly sales you'd have to pay them $50k to risk their company's
sales by putting your stuff in their demo room. Sure, there are some
products that people might always want (especially if they get to
take them home afterwards), but the products would have to be the
kind that would never put off a potential sale to a retailer and it
would also have to be something competitors can't bad-mouth me about.
I didn't get caught when a retailer would say "Your competitor says
your speakers only sound good because you demo them with Krell amps."
because I would then demo that speaker with anything from a Marantz
receiver to a Carver cube to a Bryston or Meridian amp or even the
lowest powered NAD receiver. But that's only because I was prepared.
Most other people just wouldn't take any chances with their biggest
promotional week of the year.

Finally everyone should beware almost anything a manufacturer says to
anyone except their mothers and their deathbed confessors. If you are
a retailer a manufacturer will always want to reassure you. If you
are a magazine employee, manufacturers will always say whatever it
will take to get a good review for their own products or to sow the
seeds of doubt about a competitor's product. To everyone else,
manufacturers don't really need to tell you anything unless you are
an attractive member of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that's
where they're at). The real "secrets" manufacturers have are
disclosed only to their most important retailers and magazine
reviewers, because if too many people get this info it isn't a
"valuable" secret any more. So unless you can make big sales for a
manufacturer you will likely not get anything truthful, and sometimes
they will just be testing your gullibility by telling you wild (read:
untruthful) stories to see if you'll repeat them. Sometimes a new
employee will blab something to the wrong person or a useless
blabbermouth "nobody", but they usually get fired soon afterwards.
Mystique requires mystery and half truths, and telling the real story
to anyone except people you've made big sales with for years and
years just doesn't happen for any company that wants to stay in
business. If anything Paul Klipsch pioneered a kind of cynicism with
his "Bull****" buttons. Unfortunately some of the things I read about
in this forum, that have supposedly been disclosed by some
manufacturer at an audio shows sounds like the kind of stuff either
designed to test a person's gullibility or would have been said by a
company employee who didn't stay in the audio business very long
(either the employee or the company or both). If anyone isn't willing
to say that (Name like Ed Meitner, John Beyer, Sid Harmon, or someone
else you can check with) said something specific, and can thus be
checked back with to verify, then it isn't likely true. Sometimes
with the right amount of alcohol or the euphoria of large written
orders (from credit worthy retailers and distributors) some notables
have said some pretty outrageous things. But it's rare and they
usually beg off afterwards with "I was misquoted" or "drunk" or "she
made it sound like she wanted to go back to my room". It's a blabby
business so if you blab too much people get too much ammunition to
use against you and it really can make your sales suffer especially
combined with the vaguaries of economic ups and downs, retailer
politics and squirrely magazine reviewers.

TTG

--
We don't get enough sand in our glass

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Ban
 
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Default Comments about CES Show "fixes"

watch king wrote:
It's a blabby
business so if you blab too much people get too much ammunition to
use against you and it really can make your sales suffer especially
combined with the vaguaries of economic ups and downs, retailer
politics and squirrely magazine reviewers.

TTG


That is also the impression I have from your post, anecdotes. What do you
want to express with it? What is your opinion about the things you tell
here. Did you in fact relay anything with it?
--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy

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Nousaine
 
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Default Comments about CES Show "fixes"

"watch king" wrote:

Recently I've been reading various comments in threads about amps and
other equipment to the effect that CES demo rooms are somehow set up
in ways that consumers can't or shouldn't duplicate and yet company
spoksmen disclose these factoids.


I'm not sure what your point here is. I've noticed at CES Shows dating back to
pre-1990 that high-end exhibits seem to have lots of the 'same' products in the
displays. I asked a loudspeaker manufacturer about this once on speaker cables,
interconnects and acoustical treatments and he said that most of the
manufacturers of these accessory devices will travel from booth of booth
offering to provide product for display purposes. He also said they had found
people attempting to install acoustical treatments in their booth when no on
else was on-site.

I'm not sure I understand this
concept. I have been involved with the listening demo room set-ups
for 6 companies at CES(the diverse range of Cerwin Vega, ESS,
Marantz, Desktop, Christopher Hansen Audio and Lazarus). I've also
thrown a few muscles into helping people like J. D'Agostino when he
set up his Krell booths (in return for pizza dinners and beer on the
floor). I did this at 17 CES Shows and dozens of other shows both
foriegn and domestic. With the exception of a few toys like plungers
to hold records onto turntable platters and interconnects or wire, no
manufacturer I've ever heard of (that has lasted more than 3 years,
because a few bozos who only lasted 1 show might have done "who knows
what") would risk accepting anything added to their displays that
wasn't researched for weeks ahead of time like their lives depended
on it,


This I will take as OSAF. I've seen products with no known sonic-impact
displayed in any number of high-end booths that have no KNOWN sonic impact.

BECAUSE their lives really did depend on these demos.



Actually there lives depend more on Urban Myth than sound quality.

First of all, I would say that the huge mass merchandise companies
won't include almost anything they don't make themselves. So
companies like Yamaha (who might have one serious demo room) won't
have anything in their room that one of the corporate directors in
japan hadn't approved for use (lest they lose their jobs for being
too much of an independent-thinker and not enough of a slavish team
player).



On this I'll agree. Major companies do not live on mushroom food.

Moving down the food chain, companies that had smaller ponds
where they were bigger fish, (companies like Nakamichi, NAD or Proton
level players), would work on their demo presentations for weeks
before the show and unless they had a co-op promotion with someone,
their displays were absolutely firm weeks before "show-time".



They would work on "presentation" I'd agree; but how about display acoustics?
I'd guess that all of that happened on site .... and that little acoustical
engineering was performed.


In the
more esoteric equipment rooms like Krell, B&K Components or Conrad
Johnson there were two perspectives to consider. Either the speakers
and other equipment chosen were acceptable to most of their current
dealers and/or the dealers they wanted to court, or they went for a
pair of the best possible sounding speakers they could borrow and
then took the advice of the speaker maker on how to set them up.


So what I hear you saying is that they hadn't spent weeks setting up the
booths. That they didn't "know" the speakers that sounded best with the
electronics (should have known that in design I'd wager). They'd choose
speakers acceptable to dealers (they didn't know that already?)

The speaker companies were almost uniformly opposed to ad hoc
"showtime" changes to their displays for 2 reasons. #1 they knew what
amps, turntable/cartridge combos, wire, CD player etc. would make
their speakers sound the best possible, and that would be all they
would use. More importantly it was the manufacturers who wanted to
keep any "acoustic presentation improvement products" a secret, so
they would benefit from better sound to steal sales away from other
manufacturers who didn't have this trick product. This meant that
speaker manufacturers would audition every possible CD player, amp,
phono cartridge etc. and after eliminating products which would turn
off their dealer base and potential new dealers, they would pick the
one that made their speakers sound the best.


I thought you said something different above ????


#2 they didn't want
retailers saying, "My demo room isn't set up like this" or "Our store
doesn't sell product XYZ, so could you please demo your stuff without
product XYZ in the room or I can't be sure I want to buy YOUR
product"." Either of these suggestions is death in the "confidence"
arena of selling. Actually this helped products like Monster Cable
which was the product most likely to be unobjectionable if not a
better sounding product.


Isn't this interesting. There wasn't a confluence of opinion on the best
sounding accessory products with any given manufacturer? Does this mean that
wires sounded different to different dealers and different customers with
different loudspeakers? Talk about a natural up-grade path.

But if "my" life depended on it I would make make sure that I had the right
stuff and I'd never change it from show to show. I wouldn't have to survey
dealers and engage in debate.

So there was always a fine line that most manufacturers tread with
their demo displays. 99% of the lobbying to get products into
displays with high traffic is done weeks or months before the show.


I'd guess that may be 'close' to true. But how about Micheal Green "Tunes?"

I
often pioneered ways to make product demos sound better. The
electrical line noise in Las Vegas and Chicago at showtime is pretty
incredible. So I would often use an array of very high power,
isolated, uninterruptible power supplies in my displays. The building
lights would go dim when I powered up my listening rooms first thing
in the morning, but I didn't suffer the background noises and power
brownouts that everyone else experienced. I'd also have an array of
amplifiers available for use if dealers wanted to hear a certain fave
amp with a speaker they were consiodering buying from me. These amps
varied greatly from Carver 500s to B&K Components ST 140s to Conrad
Johnsons to Bryston to NAD to Krell to Meitner to Acoustical Mnfrg
(Quad) to anything else that made the speaker I was selling sound
great (or at least okay).



OK so you are a dealer too?

I would listen for hours deciding which
amps and wire to preconfigure and then which program material to use
with which combo.

No company president I knew would be willing to take on any new piece
of equipment or room treatment unless they were sure it would help
them sell their own stuff. If everyone else was using something in
the way of room treatment I know a dozen company presidents who
purposely wouldn't have that stuff in their room and would find some
other way to make their room sound good. That way company president X
could say, "It isn't the speaker (amp, etc) that my competitor, Mr. Y
is selling that sounds good, it's all that (insert room treatment
product name here) that (insert room treatment product name here
again) paid them to put in their room. So of course not only can't
you trust Mr. Y but since you will never convince your local
customers to buy all that stuff from (insert room treatment product
here) so you shouldn't be making demos with your rooms full of stuff
that will make your local retail customers wonder about your demos
(or worse yet, your local retail customers might ask you what your
equipmment sounds like without that room treatment stuff)".

There are exceptions to every rule and retailers like Lyric in New
York could sell almost anything they tell their customers is "good",
no matter what it is. But these retailers can't be influenced at
shows.


So are you a dealer too?

In fact Lyric doesn't want any other retailer in the USA
selling something that Lyric knows sounds good.


So any product that isn't sold at Lyric doesn't sound good? Who is your
ermployer?

So it isn't going to
help many manufacturers to have their stuff in every demo room at CES
(speaker wire companies excepted). In addition any product that is
universally accepted doesn't need to have their stuff in every
display at CES. Most speaker companies would have wanted to use Mark
Levinson amps or maybe Koetsu phono cartridges at CES but not many of
them could arrange it. Once in a while companies would do anything to
use a product in their displays. If a certain speaker that sounds
great is notorious for making some amps sound bad, then quite a few
amp companies will want to show listeners that their amp sounds great
with this speaker. The same was true for turntable manufacturers and
fussy cartridges etc.

It seems ludicrous in an industry built on entreprenuers who are
brazen and secretive and who attack their competitors visciously at
every possible turn, to find all of them going along like sheep
according some unwritten rules from anybody. Just imagine how
important it is for companies to make 25-30% of their sales or
contacts for sales at CES. This means if they do even $300,000 in
yearly sales you'd have to pay them $50k to risk their company's
sales by putting your stuff in their demo room.


Of course not. But how many people who have demonstrated Monster Cable, Kimber
or Michael Green Acoustics products installed in their rooms have paid to do
so? If by chance what you say is true what is the cost? And how do the
recipients benefit?

Sure, there are some
products that people might always want (especially if they get to
take them home afterwards), but the products would have to be the
kind that would never put off a potential sale to a retailer and it
would also have to be something competitors can't bad-mouth me about.
I didn't get caught when a retailer would say "Your competitor says
your speakers only sound good because you demo them with Krell amps."
because I would then demo that speaker with anything from a Marantz
receiver to a Carver cube to a Bryston or Meridian amp or even the
lowest powered NAD receiver. But that's only because I was prepared.
Most other people just wouldn't take any chances with their biggest
promotional week of the year.

Finally everyone should beware almost anything a manufacturer says to
anyone except their mothers and their deathbed confessors.


Yes; I made reference to that implicit 'deal' before; "I won't tell anybody
that your bull**** is bull****, as long as you do likewise."

If you are
a retailer a manufacturer will always want to reassure you. If you
are a magazine employee, manufacturers will always say whatever it
will take to get a good review for their own products or to sow the
seeds of doubt about a competitor's product. To everyone else,
manufacturers don't really need to tell you anything unless you are
an attractive member of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that's
where they're at).


The real "secrets" manufacturers have are
disclosed only to their most important retailers and magazine
reviewers, because if too many people get this info it isn't a
"valuable" secret any more.


I'm not you're referencing the ampliifer/wire/bit manufacturer "secret" ....
this all sounds thre same, unless we've gone over the edge backward and rhen
I'm sure "you" won't tell.

So unless you can make big sales for a
manufacturer you will likely not get anything truthful,


OK I'd agree; but perhaps not for the same reasons you might express.

and sometimes
they will just be testing your gullibility by telling you wild (read:
untruthful) stories to see if you'll repeat them. Sometimes a new
employee will blab something to the wrong person or a useless
blabbermouth "nobody", but they usually get fired soon afterwards.
Mystique requires mystery and half truths, and telling the real story
to anyone except people you've made big sales with for years and
years just doesn't happen for any company that wants to stay in
business. If anything Paul Klipsch pioneered a kind of cynicism with
his "Bull****" buttons. Unfortunately some of the things I read about
in this forum, that have supposedly been disclosed by some
manufacturer at an audio shows sounds like the kind of stuff either
designed to test a person's gullibility or would have been said by a
company employee who didn't stay in the audio business very long
(either the employee or the company or both).



OK you opened the door. Do you have any specifics you'd like to share?

If anyone isn't willing
to say that (Name like Ed Meitner, John Beyer, Sid Harmon, or someone
else you can check with) said something specific, and can thus be
checked back with to verify, then it isn't likely true.


I'd check anything with Sidney Harman you'd like to offer.


Sometimes
with the right amount of alcohol or the euphoria of large written
orders (from credit worthy retailers and distributors) some notables
have said some pretty outrageous things. But it's rare and they
usually beg off afterwards with "I was misquoted" or "drunk" or "she
made it sound like she wanted to go back to my room". It's a blabby
business so if you blab too much people get too much ammunition to
use against you and it really can make your sales suffer especially
combined with the vaguaries of economic ups and downs, retailer
politics and squirrely magazine reviewers.

TTG


Thanks for the disclosure.
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watch king
 
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Default Comments about CES Show "fixes"

Sorry that a few of the readers here couldn't understand my initial
post in this thread. I tried to have a few audiophiles and audiophile
product makers check out my text and they all understood exactly what
I was trying to describe. Manufacturers of high end audio products
would never tell "secrets" to consumers at CES. They sell to
retailers and so they only care 90% of the time about retailers or
distributors and the other 10% of the time they care about magazine
people. It's the retailer's job to deal with consumers. Manufacturers
in general would prefer that consumers not be able to visit CES.

As to whether I am a retailer "too"(?), that's how I started. I sold
high end hifi in a store that specialized in Acoustical Manufacturing
(Quad) products as their primary line. I sold lots of LS3/5a
loudspeakers and lots of other mid fi electronics and speakers too. I
visited the stores of all the other retailers in Montreal and was
lucky because Montreal had the best mix of American, Canadian,
British, Japanese and continental European products in North America
or Europe. It was a very wide ranging education. That's where I met
Ed Meitner. He was a service manager at Norm Yaeger and Associates
(the Celestion distributor) and I sold Celestion speakers. The
service manager in the store I worked in was Albert Leccese.
Listening to consumers explain what kind of sound they wanted during
3 years in retail was educational. Some American audio companies
offered me jobs doing product training to store sales people because
these manufacturers thought I was able to clearly explain the facts
about how audio worked and why some products sounded better than
others. It was pretty easy as a retail salesperson/buyer to determine
which audio products sounded better than others and which sounded
best for the money.

So when I talk about how some retailers like Lyric in NYC would like
to be the exclusive North American retailers for the best sounding
audio products at each key price point (the way Lyric was once the
worldwide exclusive retailer for Mark Levinson audio products), it is
a reflection of having been a retail salesperson and buyer, having
trained retail salespeople for audio manufacturers and having sold
products to Lyric. It just makes sense and should be easy to
understand. I pick Lyric because they have been successful in the
audio business for a reasonable amount of time and much of their
longevity is based on their ability to recognize an audio product
that either sounds the best in its category or sounds the best for
the money in its category.

The staff at Lyric audition products both in their store and at
various shows like CES. They recognize products that either sound the
best overall, or those that sound best for the price they have to pay
for them. While they may sell other products that consumers ask them
to sell (whether those products are credible or not doesn't affect
the purchase of Lyric's core line-up), whenever Lyric identifies a
product that sounds the best for the money it costs them as
retailers, or products that just sound better than anything else in
that product category, they try to be the exclusive retailers for
that product in the largest possible territory. They do this so they
can set the price for their chosen products in their sales territory.
Making a profit is essential for a retailer so if there is no profit
in a product there is no way a retailer can sell it. Exclusivity
helps a retailer sell a product profitably. Manufacturers also
realize that it is important for retailers to make a profit so they
help retailers to do this.

It's the retailer's job to explain things to consumers and to help
consumers if there is a problem. Also most high end manufacturers
don't make complete systems so the high end retailer has the
additional job of finding and stocking the other parts of the system
that a manufacturer doesn't make. Retailers also prefer that
consumers not be able to gain entry to CES demo rooms because there
is only 1 week to try to audition as many products as possible and
consumers just get in the way of this process. So neither
manufacturers or retailers (or distributors) would feel like wasting
time on consumers at CES. CES is set up to be a business to business
interaction and consumers are not part of the equation of CES.
Perhaps there are unsuccessful manufacturers with time on their hands
at CES, and the unsuccessful might say just about anything, but if
these unsuccessful companies don't know the audio business well
enough to survive they aren't credible.

So unless we are discussing companies that won't stay in business
because they have no sense of the audio business, the notion that
there are "insider secrets" that get revealed to audio consumers at
CES is nonsense. Yes, some accessory product companies may rent space
in consumer audio demo rooms so retailers can see their products.
Likely as not the people in the demo room couldn't care if these
accessory products worked or not, and if these unnecessary products
degraded the sound of a successful manufacturers demo, they'd be
tossed into the trash. there are no after hours invasions and set-ups
because CES has heavy security and no one gets into a room for any
reason after show hour closing once that room's staff leave (that
midnight set-up comment was super ludicrous because CES has very
tough security to prevent thefts and CES would never risk lawsuits by
very hyper high end audio people because anyone was allowed illegal
access to any demo rooms after the staff left [that idea must have
been a joke right?]).

Even if these ancillary products worked it's unlikely that
manufacturer staff would waste their time explaining how someone
else's product worked. Successful manufacturers don't have a spare
minute at CES to talk to anyone but dealers, distributors and
magazine people. It is very unlikely that a manufacturer would claim
to be telling a consumer some kind of "insider secret" unless the
teller is an unsuccessful or unknowledgable demo room staff person.
Since there are some manufacturers who are trying to sell products
based on audio legitimacy even they can't explain, it's hard to
imagine any manufacturer telling anything to a consumer that would
really reveal the secret workings of the audio business.

Most successful audio manufacturers would love to reduce the numbers
of their competitors by putting as many of them out of business as
possible and these dozens of ultra-competitive manufacturers would
use exactly the kind of "secrets" that some people posting here claim
they hear about at CES. There are no "well kept secrets" or
"gentlemen's agreements" in the audio business because there are so
many huge egos in the audio business that no secrets like that could
be kept from being broadcast worldwide for more than about 5 minutes
when manufacturers throw dirt at each other. To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists. So unless a person posting here can tell you
who said exactly what about what product or which CES staff
authorized after-hours demo room break-ins, so everyone can verify
those words with the teller of this "secret" or "industry-wide
agreement" don't believe any of it.

Watchking

--
We don't get enough sand in our glass


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Nousaine
 
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Default Comments about CES Show "fixes"

"watch king" wrote:

Sorry that a few of the readers here couldn't understand my initial
post in this thread. I tried to have a few audiophiles and audiophile
product makers check out my text and they all understood exactly what
I was trying to describe. Manufacturers of high end audio products
would never tell "secrets" to consumers at CES. They sell to
retailers and so they only care 90% of the time about retailers or
distributors and the other 10% of the time they care about magazine
people. It's the retailer's job to deal with consumers. Manufacturers
in general would prefer that consumers not be able to visit CES.


Who said differently?

As to whether I am a retailer "too"(?), that's how I started. I sold
high end hifi in a store that specialized in Acoustical Manufacturing
(Quad) products as their primary line. I sold lots of LS3/5a
loudspeakers and lots of other mid fi electronics and speakers too. I
visited the stores of all the other retailers in Montreal and was
lucky because Montreal had the best mix of American, Canadian,
British, Japanese and continental European products in North America
or Europe. It was a very wide ranging education. That's where I met
Ed Meitner. He was a service manager at Norm Yaeger and Associates
(the Celestion distributor) and I sold Celestion speakers. The
service manager in the store I worked in was Albert Leccese.
Listening to consumers explain what kind of sound they wanted during
3 years in retail was educational. Some American audio companies
offered me jobs doing product training to store sales people because
these manufacturers thought I was able to clearly explain the facts
about how audio worked and why some products sounded better than
others. It was pretty easy as a retail salesperson/buyer to determine
which audio products sounded better than others and which sounded
best for the money.


So what is your occupation now?

So when I talk about how some retailers like Lyric in NYC would like
to be the exclusive North American retailers for the best sounding
audio products at each key price point (the way Lyric was once the
worldwide exclusive retailer for Mark Levinson audio products), it is
a reflection of having been a retail salesperson and buyer, having
trained retail salespeople for audio manufacturers and having sold
products to Lyric. It just makes sense and should be easy to
understand. I pick Lyric because they have been successful in the
audio business for a reasonable amount of time and much of their
longevity is based on their ability to recognize an audio product
that either sounds the best in its category or sounds the best for
the money in its category.


And how do they determine what sounds the best?

The staff at Lyric audition products both in their store and at
various shows like CES. They recognize products that either sound the
best overall, or those that sound best for the price they have to pay
for them. While they may sell other products that consumers ask them
to sell (whether those products are credible or not doesn't affect
the purchase of Lyric's core line-up), whenever Lyric identifies a
product that sounds the best for the money it costs them as
retailers, or products that just sound better than anything else in
that product category, they try to be the exclusive retailers for
that product in the largest possible territory.


OK but you gloss over the 'sounds the best' method.

They do this so they
can set the price for their chosen products in their sales territory.
Making a profit is essential for a retailer so if there is no profit
in a product there is no way a retailer can sell it. Exclusivity
helps a retailer sell a product profitably. Manufacturers also
realize that it is important for retailers to make a profit so they
help retailers to do this.


Sure; nobody disputes that a good manufacturer will try to protect his
distribution chain. Thanks for the clarification but what was the question?

It's the retailer's job to explain things to consumers and to help
consumers if there is a problem. Also most high end manufacturers
don't make complete systems so the high end retailer has the
additional job of finding and stocking the other parts of the system
that a manufacturer doesn't make. Retailers also prefer that
consumers not be able to gain entry to CES demo rooms because there
is only 1 week to try to audition as many products as possible and
consumers just get in the way of this process. So neither
manufacturers or retailers (or distributors) would feel like wasting
time on consumers at CES. CES is set up to be a business to business
interaction and consumers are not part of the equation of CES.
Perhaps there are unsuccessful manufacturers with time on their hands
at CES, and the unsuccessful might say just about anything, but if
these unsuccessful companies don't know the audio business well
enough to survive they aren't credible.

So unless we are discussing companies that won't stay in business
because they have no sense of the audio business, the notion that
there are "insider secrets" that get revealed to audio consumers at
CES is nonsense. Yes, some accessory product companies may rent space
in consumer audio demo rooms so retailers can see their products.
Likely as not the people in the demo room couldn't care if these
accessory products worked or not, and if these unnecessary products
degraded the sound of a successful manufacturers demo, they'd be
tossed into the trash. there are no after hours invasions and set-ups
because CES has heavy security and no one gets into a room for any
reason after show hour closing once that room's staff leave (that
midnight set-up comment was super ludicrous because CES has very
tough security to prevent thefts and CES would never risk lawsuits by
very hyper high end audio people because anyone was allowed illegal
access to any demo rooms after the staff left [that idea must have
been a joke right?]).


If you are referring to my comment it was no joke and in the case of Room-Tunes
was given by an exhibitor and didn't require an after-hour invasion. All you
have to do is get to the display 5-minutes before the other guy.

And you've also forgotten that many manufacturers will provide wires and other
set-up stuff for free (no payment offered) if the booth will accept it. But
thank you for the insight that some of them pay for display.

Even if these ancillary products worked it's unlikely that
manufacturer staff would waste their time explaining how someone
else's product worked.


Who ever suggested anything like that?

Successful manufacturers don't have a spare
minute at CES to talk to anyone but dealers, distributors and
magazine people. It is very unlikely that a manufacturer would claim
to be telling a consumer some kind of "insider secret" unless the
teller is an unsuccessful or unknowledgable demo room staff person.


Hey; I'm not a consumer. Whoever said anything about consumers and secrets.

Since there are some manufacturers who are trying to sell products
based on audio legitimacy even they can't explain, it's hard to
imagine any manufacturer telling anything to a consumer that would
really reveal the secret workings of the audio business.


Which is why snake-oil salesmen don't tell on each other. That was my orginal
point.

Most successful audio manufacturers would love to reduce the numbers
of their competitors by putting as many of them out of business as
possible and these dozens of ultra-competitive manufacturers would
use exactly the kind of "secrets" that some people posting here claim
they hear about at CES.


Let me ask you again. If a reputable manufacturer of outboard CD-Transports
knows that wire-sound is bull**** (and it is) then exactly why don't they call
the wire guys on it? Could they all just be good guys and happy to let other
guys acquire some of their revenue without complaint? Or is it more likely that
each if them would be happy bilking the end-user out of all his money the
second time around?

There are no "well kept secrets" or
"gentlemen's agreements" in the audio business because there are so
many huge egos in the audio business that no secrets like that could
be kept from being broadcast worldwide for more than about 5 minutes
when manufacturers throw dirt at each other. To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists. So unless a person posting here can tell you
who said exactly what about what product or which CES staff
authorized after-hours demo room break-ins, so everyone can verify
those words with the teller of this "secret" or "industry-wide
agreement" don't believe any of it.

Watchking



Let me ask this question again; why has no high-end manufacturer ever publicly
complained that some obviously non-sonic
application (like the possibly deleterious recomendation of Arnor All as a cd
protectant; or CD-Stoplight as a jitter reducer or speaker wire as a
sonic-enhancer) was not a good thing?

Because high-end isn't a competitive industry in the classic sense because
performance has become a commodity and much of it is basically antiques where
history, legend and 'art' has put audio performance at the end of the list of
desireable qualities.


  #6   Report Post  
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watch king wrote:
Sorry that a few of the readers here couldn't understand my initial
post in this thread.


neither this one


Most successful audio manufacturers would love to reduce the numbers
of their competitors by putting as many of them out of business as
possible and these dozens of ultra-competitive manufacturers would
use exactly the kind of "secrets" that some people posting here claim
they hear about at CES. There are no "well kept secrets" or
"gentlemen's agreements" in the audio business because there are so
many huge egos in the audio business that no secrets like that could
be kept from being broadcast worldwide for more than about 5 minutes
when manufacturers throw dirt at each other. To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists. So unless a person posting here can tell you
who said exactly what about what product or which CES staff
authorized after-hours demo room break-ins, so everyone can verify
those words with the teller of this "secret" or "industry-wide
agreement" don't believe any of it.

Watchking


Watch, you wouldn't make a good marketing guy despite the offers of the
manufacturers. And it is not the logic or the argumentation, but the
confusion. Jumping from one topic to the other you want to appear informed
and understanding. But it is overloaded with irrelevant details, the few
interesting informations are covered by the overflowing amount of words,
short: forget the career as a marketing guy. Train yourself to express
yourself at least in a pseudo-scientific jargon and restrain from too many
judgements.
To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists.

This sentence is an example of how *not* to say something.
--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy

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On 8/1/04 5:28 AM, in article nJ2Pc.225788$XM6.168288@attbi_s53, "Ban"
wrote:

Watch, you wouldn't make a good marketing guy despite the offers of the
manufacturers.


I wouldn't pass that judgment. First point is that many marketing types (as
well as most people) do exactly that when excited and enthusiastic.

Secondly - informal prose is *not* marketing communications. If other
companies are trying to get him "on board" it is probably due to his talents
or perceived talents in the arena outside of Usenet posts.

It is tempting, and also incorrect, in forming a complete opinion of
someone's talents and capabilities from their Usenet posts. I think if this
guy has job offers or at least interested parties - who are we to discourage
him or be in any kind of position to judge his abilites?

And it is not the logic or the argumentation, but the
confusion. Jumping from one topic to the other you want to appear informed
and understanding. But it is overloaded with irrelevant details, the few
interesting informations are covered by the overflowing amount of words,
short: forget the career as a marketing guy. Train yourself to express
yourself at least in a pseudo-scientific jargon and restrain from too many
judgements.


Merketing Communications is not not NOT Usenet posting - how can you
possibly suss out this guy's abilities based upon a disjointed Usenet post?

To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists.

This sentence is an example of how *not* to say something.


What is the "correct" way? I think he sums it up rather nicely.
  #8   Report Post  
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B&D wrote:
On 8/1/04 5:28 AM, in article nJ2Pc.225788$XM6.168288@attbi_s53, "Ban"
wrote:

snip
Watch, you wouldn't make a good marketing guy despite the offers of
the manufacturers.


I wouldn't pass that judgment. First point is that many marketing
types (as well as most people) do exactly that when excited and
enthusiastic.

Secondly - informal prose is *not* marketing communications. If other
companies are trying to get him "on board" it is probably due to his
talents or perceived talents in the arena outside of Usenet posts.

It is tempting, and also incorrect, in forming a complete opinion of
someone's talents and capabilities from their Usenet posts. I think
if this guy has job offers or at least interested parties - who are
we to discourage him or be in any kind of position to judge his
abilites?


I judge it because I have read it. He gives his opinions on some
manufacturers marketing methods, and I give it on his abilities to convey
his opinions. I'm judging it, because I cannot understand his words. To me
it appears confused and without much relevance.
If you write in a forum like this, you must be ready to accept whatever
answer is coming. He has not answered to any thread but puts a long post of
impressions, so I also expressed my impressions.

And it is not the logic or the argumentation, but the
confusion. Jumping from one topic to the other you want to appear
informed and understanding. But it is overloaded with irrelevant
details, the few interesting informations are covered by the
overflowing amount of words, short: forget the career as a marketing
guy. Train yourself to express yourself at least in a
pseudo-scientific jargon and restrain from too many judgements.


Merketing Communications is not not NOT Usenet posting - how can you
possibly suss out this guy's abilities based upon a disjointed Usenet
post?


So you think we are able to distinguish and change our writing style? Maybe
the effort to eliminate spelling errors or presentation is not that much,
but I think if someone cannot make clear what he wanted to express in
Usenet, he will neither accomplish it in marketing. His OP seems to give a
hint about such offer.

To make out that the
audio business is a gentlemen's business with unspoken rules of
behavior and secrecy is ridiculous except in the mind of inventive
conspiracy theorists.

This sentence is an example of how *not* to say something.


What is the "correct" way? I think he sums it up rather nicely.


I do not know, was he referring to anybody or is it a general statement? He
talkes like an Italian would do, a colourful language overly filled with
deep-sounding words, a roundabout.

(self censored)
I erased this part, because it wouldn't have passed the moderators. :-(

--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy

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B&D
 
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On 8/1/04 12:20 PM, in article LL8Pc.209494$JR4.192386@attbi_s54, "Ban"
wrote:

Merketing Communications is not not NOT Usenet posting - how can you
possibly suss out this guy's abilities based upon a disjointed Usenet
post?


So you think we are able to distinguish and change our writing style? Maybe
the effort to eliminate spelling errors or presentation is not that much,
but I think if someone cannot make clear what he wanted to express in
Usenet, he will neither accomplish it in marketing. His OP seems to give a
hint about such offer.


They require different styles - poets, prose both formal and informal,
fiction, journalism, etc - all have people who are better or worse at
either.

I am not saying that he is good, bad or otherwise, just that it is difficult
to form an accurate opinion based upon Usenet posts.

And, of course, you can have an opinion about whatever you like based upon
any criteria you choose.
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