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Controlling the demo

Paul's Posts — 17 June 2012

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Controlling the demo

I was showing Carl, one of our sales reps, our sound room and talking about the prospect of increasing the availability of the in-home demo.  I suggested I have always loved the idea of people taking equipment home and trying it out – we used to have a slogan “your living room is our showroom”.

Carl countered with “I would never suggest this because if you can’t control the demo, you can’t ensure the results.  How would you know the customer has a clue how to get the most out of the equipment he’s auditioning?”  I have pondered this statement for a while – as Carl has a really good point.

Just recently I was demonstrating our experimental single enclosure loudspeaker prototype and I let the listener choose what they wanted to hear.  The listener was unimpressed because it sounded “normal” and met his expectations – although I had to smile because I don’t think it dawned on him that what he was experiencing as “normal” was coming from a single point source (but that’s another story).  It wasn’t until I put on a piece I knew would show off the system’s capabilities that his eyes lit up and his jaw dropped.

Counter the above statement with your experience at consumer shows where it’s become quite popular to bring your own source material and listen to different rooms with known music to test the systems.  While this is a great idea and one I support, it also perplexes me as to how might you answer the fundamental question being asked here?

How do we, as manufacturers, make sure you hear the best qualities of the equipment as perhaps only we know what those are?

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(7) Readers Comments

  1. David Bevin

    June 17, 2012 at 4:50 am

    Paul, several weeks ago you were blogging about how to grow the industry and who can the market/buyers trust. I think todays thought is an example of the same topic.
    Isn’t that a great conundrum? Do you trust that your gizzmo is good enough to satisfy the many who try it with their taste in music and under their restrictions of the other equipment and room but only sell “x” amount or do you weight the playing field (excuse the pun) in your favor by staging the experience and sell “2x”.
    The first method lets the buyer control the item as it will be used in the future, in the real experience; though they may never obtain the very best out of the item.The second projects the best features under your conditions which may be very unrealistic for the average user.
    The latter sells more product but over time people lose faith in the producer because it won’t live up to its best all of the time and the user only realizes its weaknesses having already purchased said gizzmo. The former sells less but the buyers buy with their eyes open to it’s flaws as well as its best attributes and that develops a cadre of followers who trust the producer as an honest dealer not blown with the hyperbole so common in this industry. Where would you rather be?

  2. Soundminded

    June 17, 2012 at 7:04 am

    The high end consumer audio equpment industry seems to be in a quandry. Its science is not sufficiently developed to produce convincing facsimiles of music from recordings to critical ears (at least it’s smart enough for the most part to have abandoned that claim), it has made only the most feeble attempt to deal with the vast range of variation of results due to room acoustics (more than one person has posted that “room correction” automatic equalizers are not satisfactory for them) and it has no way to deal with the enormous variables inherent in recordings, especially CDs and other digital media (legacy recordings,mostly LPs were more consistent if nothing else. Maybe that’s why so many peoople like them.) All this might not matter untll you look at the pricetags for this equipment and oxygen flows back to your brain once you return from a trip to the stratosphere. What’s the result? Endless expensive tweaks from speaker cables to cryogenically treated vacuum tubes and little tees to prop wires on, constant shopping and swapping invariably at ever escalating cost, and a dwindling interest in this market although the reasons are probably many and complex.But there is no denying that this is an industry that is pervaded by me-too-ism. Every new variant no matter how insignificant is heralded by advertisers as a “breakthrough” and audiophiles devour the reviews in the hobbyist magazines month after month. Who’s the latest to win the best speaker (amplifier, phono cartridge) in the world award of the month?

    The good news for the industry I suppose if there is any is that for most people who call themselves audiophiles, they are either not experienced with actual unamplified acoustic music and so don’t know what the real thing sounds like, or their expectations have been so lowered by a long history of advertising hyperbole and disappointment that they accept that what you get is what you get. In short they’re resigned to its severe limitations, ignore the claims, and buy what they can afford.

    Every now and than I venture out of my cave into the world to see what it’s up to. The last time was about five years ago. I’ll probably try it again soon. I’ll take a range of recordings I’m familiar with and I can guarantee that at least some of them will sound awful on whatever equipment it’s demonstrated on. Most will sound mediocre. Some may sound surprisingly good. Will the best of what I hear beat what I can do? There’s only one way to find out. And if it does….then for me it’s back to the drawing board. :-) The best news, for the DIYer, tweaks come cheap and there are no deadlines to meet.

  3. hahax

    June 17, 2012 at 7:36 am

    You can’t control the associated equipment for a take home demo but the software is probably the single most important variable in demoing a product. It shouldn’t be too difficult or costly to create a demo CD with cuts of the type of sound and quality of recording you’d like to show off your products. And perhaps it would be beneficial to create different demo CDs for different products since each product probably has different strengths you’d like to show.

  4. Dan Schwartz

    June 17, 2012 at 10:17 am

    The room is the single most important component, and no one knows the room like the person who uses it all the time. A manufacturer who knows his gear can’t control for how little he knows about his potential customer’s room.

  5. Soundminded

    June 17, 2012 at 5:33 pm

    So here’s the typical “controlled demo etc.” cycle.

    Step 1; Get the latest issue of the magazine in the mail, read the best speaker in the world of the month article, hunt it down, drive a few hundred miles to go out and hear the “controlled demo at the dealer, sell yourself on it, take out another mortgage on your house, listen to the controlled demo again “just to be sure”, plunk down the money, get it home, rip it open and set it up…and….wait a minute, maybe it needs a few days to break in. Days pass into weeks, the bloom’s off the rose, the honeymoon is over but….the next issue of the magazine arrives and it’s time to start hunting for a replacement.

    Step 2; Go back and repeat step 1

  6. oliver T. Finch

    June 17, 2012 at 9:26 pm

    At live performances one hears some familiar many unfamiliar pieces but all grab your attention.Why?” It is the very qualities which compel one to react positively to live performances when present in reproducing equipment makes one react positively. If a new piece of equipment has these qualities to a degree greater than the piece of equipment it is replacing the reaction will always be positive.It does not really matter whether the setup is technically close to perfect or not. Any one trying out a new piece of equipment always uses music he or she is familiar with and likes and if the new equipment is better it will always be obvious. So I think your idea of home trial is excellent. This was a common practice many years ago and resulted in greater sale. I always ended up buying the piece I liked if the price was right which it always was. Another aspect of this practice is that it encourages people to lose any hesitation they may have. After all what is there to lose. Regards.

  7. Frank LaFond

    June 17, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    Your used car salesman picture pretty much tells the story, Paul. “Controlling the demo” means showing off the good attributes of a product (a good thing), while hiding the faults (not so good for the consumer). The last time I visited the shop with a salesman who “controlled the demo”, I was shopping for a subwoofer. Each time he put on a song, he’d casually go over and sit on the sub. Finally I asked him if he was planning to come sit on the sub at my house every time I listened to music. The time before, I was in the market for a home theater receiver. After playing two stereo tracks, he asked if I was ready to buy the unit. I declined to purchase at that point, since this piece had a completely different signal path for HT modes than for stereo mode. So essentially he was asking me to buy it without listening to 80% of it. I haven’t been back to that store in years due to their “controlled demos”.

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