[Audio Empire]

On Thu, 6 Oct 2011 07:23:56 -0700, bob wrote
(in article ):

On Oct 5, 8:19pm, Audio Empire wrote:

As the Brits would say, that is somewhat of a "sticky wicket". See, things
like cables, magic pens, mrytlewood blocks and special rocks et al, are very
high profit items and I'm sure most shops have to carry them in order to meet
the "needs" of their customers, many of which probably believe that these
snake-oil nostrums actually do something positive to their stereo systems. It
doesn't actually follow that these dealers (1) believe in the efficacy of
this junk themselves, or (2) that a belief in this audio voo-doo
automatically disqualifies a dealer for having the skill-set available that
allows them to do a good job pairing arms and cartridges or installing them.

It's not just a question of knowledge, it's also a question of
integrity. Say you've got a dealer who's willing to tell you that
mounting your CD player on little rubber feet will improve the sound.
Do you really think he's going to have any qualms about selling you a
cartridge that's a poor match for your tonearm?

Not at all, but that's a separate issue. I merely meant that there is not
necessarily any correlation between a dealer's acceptance of audio mythology
(in order to sell the stuff to customers who want it) and his ability to
correctly pair a cartridge with an arm or his technical expertise at properly
installing said cartridge.

Scott's proposition is that there's no problem because you can trust a
reliable dealer to steer you in the right direction. Given the state
of the high-end business, I think that is woefully naive.

It may be. Most stereo dealers, nowadays, don't sell many turntables (if they
carry any at all) and the knowledge may simply not exist at many shops.

More likely, the lack of this skill set is due to the proliferation of
digital sources over the last 25 years having supplanted the need for audio
sales and technical personnel to know about turntables and the other minutia
of vinyl playback. Those who DID know how to do this correctly are now
approaching retirement age and only a few younger people have undertaken to
learn it.

The impression I get is that much if not most dealer knowledge comes
from the distributors they deal with. So this problem might be dealt
with if sales reps are telling dealers, "These are the cartridges that
mate well with our turntables." But I don't know whether that's
happening either.

Neither do I.