OK, I'm in the game...
I just received my blue dot 950 (swap) with the LFE fix. It was delivered to my office, and before I could get it home, I thought I would bring it by a B&W speaker dealer that I work with regularly.

You see... I am not an audio engineer, but a simple architect who schleps a living designing studios and home theaters for some really knowledgeable clients. I also design churches, and other audio and video performance spaces on a regular basis. To paraphrase Kevin C. Brown in another thread recently, "Speaker placement can have more effect than a lot of high priced equipment." That is true, and the rooms audio characteristics are also huge factors that can limit the potential of the most expensive and/or spectacular equipment. So... on to the dealer showroom, with a very good demo space, and a pair of B&W Nautilus 800's. Alan Parsons uses B&W N800's in his studio, and he paid for them.

Before hooking up the 950, we listened to the Sunfire TG3, a Lexicon MC-12B, a top end McIntosh (can't recall the model), and the Meridian 568.2 (the el-cheap-o $7,500 Meridian Pre-Pro). We limited our listening to 2 channel only, and mostly in by-pass (or equivalent) modes. We all thought the Lexicon was the king of the hill, and by the way... the most expensive on the hill. All sounded good, as none of these high priced pre-pro's were lacking seriously in any category, but the Sunfire was the one unit that price being equal, we would have left an orphan.

We then hooked up the 950, with its' philistine neophyte unbalanced RCA outputs. You see, I have been threatening my speaker dealer friend for some time that I would do this... bring in this "sold over the internet" piece of equipment that he will not let me mention in his store in the presence of other potential customers, except my own clients. Well he and the other sales staff had heard of Outlaw, but never heard Outlaw equipment, so they were curious.

There are some general rules of thumb I use to determine the interest level of people in a particular piece of equipment, and they are...
1) how soon they go for the volume to crank it up,
2) how long they leave the volume cranked,
3) if after cranking, they turn it down, way down, and listen for dynamic characteristics at low listening levels, and...
4) for how long they just stare at the box.

After about 20 minutes, both listening and staring, my friend, who has sold over $70,000 worth of equipment to my clients in the past year, made me box up the 950 and go home. It was 4:00 PM, and some real customers were probably on their way.

Before I left, we spoke about the business of selling "quality". "Some things are just not priced high enough" to convince people it is worth their time and attention," he said. "People need to feel good about the sale; that they have got something special." He said that he felt that the Meridian had qualities that were clearly better... About the 950, he and the other sales staff agreed it made the system sing, and that is no small achievement. These speakers (N800's), and the two Classe amps (bi-amp configuration) expose every flaw in the supporting cast of equipment. "I have heard a lot of well respected components sound like sh**t on this system; this Outlaw passes," and then he just smiled.


[This message has been edited by AGAssarsson (edited March 30, 2003).]