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I just heard a Best Buy radio ad touting Martin Logan speakers....
Follow Ups:
... we'd be offering words of encouragement to everyone concerned. But this is an asylum and we're inmates and ...
and great for the consumer.
audio. it is their hi-end outlet. hey, i bought dynaco speakers from GOOD GUYS when they were a dinky store in pomona. still have the receipt.
so I guess Sumiko's in on it too. It will be interesting to see how the whole integrated Magnolia home theater thing works out. Will all brands lose credibility (see Ashman, John) or will some people get introduced to the high end who may have gone Bose?
Best buy sells Primare gear?? I actually think that by having some decent equipment available at stores like best buy may be a great thing for our hobby, it should introduce some decent gear to the people who otherwise would never get a chance to hear what a good system really sounds like!
Yes, the Magnolia home theater section (only in some stores) has a couple of Primare pieces.
sell product in ordinary shops?
I for one won't be buying ML any more if they lose their snob factor.
They sent me a whole dealer kit suggesting I should be a dealer. I threw it in the trash. And I didn't even have to think about it.
Over on the speaker asylum, you knock designs using full-range drivers, and to back up your point you share with us:"Some "full range" drivers are less crippled than other, but if it could be done well, they would be in stores everywhere."
Now here is a company trying to get their speakers into stores everywhere and you cast them off into the garbage.
Confused,
Guth
and be building plastic computer speakers pretty soon.I shouldn't be so negative, but really, does BB sell any speaker that could really be considered as more substantial than drivers stuck in a box? They sure don't in Canada.
I wonder if ML sold the trademark and has no control anymore? Or is it just "branding", putting a prestigious name on some cheap crap to catch the unwary? I guess ML has observed what some other "names" have done, and if it works, you can't blame them. I suppose dying rich and laughable is better than dying poor and respected, but I'd have to think about it...
I don't know if they make plastic computer speakers. And they're not in the league of the other two IMO.I just don't see how a "brand" can maintain its respected profile when it moves to downscale-style marketing. I've heard of brands that move upscale from their humble beginnings, practically all who get there went that way, but going the other way? When you go down, you stay down...those who knew you "when" remember...you have to change your product and philosophy to be compatible with mass-marketing retailers, they won't change to accomodate you.
Best Buy used to carry some halfway decent gear. I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD-565's on closeout there. The store that really went downhill was Circuit City, who used to carry Carver Amazing loudspeakers (pretty decent sounding) and some nice Infinity and DCM stuff, along with good Yamaha and Denon seperates. All gone now, to make room for the crappy boombox and Bose HTIB junk. They'll still try to sell you $300 worth of Monster cables to hook up all your junk with, though. Horray!
/*Music is subjective. Sound is not.*/
I was at BB tonight, to buy a stack of seedees only, in case you think I'm not a proper snob. Yeah, I sure laughed at the Cable section. My God they're expensive! (All my audio stuff is pretty cheap.) They don't even sell the (at best) mid-price-range stuff they should be selling anymore, must be part of the agreement with M. I thought exactly what you said. I think the cheapest M component-video cables were well over $100 for a few feet, to go with your $40 DVDP. Cables are *never* discounted at BB, here, it's a profit-center. To be fair, there are much worse cables than M, and they look nice enough, too bad you can't see them when installed.[Disclosure: I don't like BB much at all, but I like lots of the people who work there.]
I remember Polk speakers before it became a "consumer" company. The initial "Monitor" line (with the Peerless tweeter, and no letters after the numbers) was in my opinion one of the greatest entry-level speaker lines, ever.
Saw a professional wrestler last night whose initials are J.B.L. and the letters are prominently displayed (inside the familiar box logo) on the rear end of his tights.At least my ass is big enough to display the name "Martin-Logan" and not just the initials. Heck, its even big enough for "Gayle Sanders & Ronald Sutherland."
USA would be a fertile land of adspace,you could be rolling a pile of $$$.
J-Lo could surpass her film revenue :-)
They have forehead ads already.
sincerely beanz
....Bring it to them at stores they support instead of having them seek it out at the more "difficult to find" high end retailers. At least they will have exposure to this level of equipment. It's a beginning. Perhaps this is a good thing.
A guy who lives in my hood, had just purchased a new system from Magnolia at the mall. He was pleased by the improvements the Vienna Acoustics speakers and the Denon receiver were over his previous system. He told me how he caught the upgrade bug while browsing Magnolia. Diligent, he went home and checked the yellow pages for stereo in the area and found bupkiss, so he ended up at Magnolia.Best Buy / Magnolia is providing the consumer with a place to see and hear at convenient locations. Unfortunately, for my neighbor, one listen of his favorite CD then the LP version on my modest system his head dropped like Larry Stourch in an episode of F Troop. On the other hand he is listening again.
Hey Vic,Was checking out your profile to read up on the "modest system". Noticed your bass guitar details.
Just wondering if you own "Wood" by bassist Brian Bromberg. Its a decent jazz album, but I'm guessing that most any basehead would appreciate an album featuring, and dedicated to, a 300-year-old Italian double bass.
Off of the rows of washing machines?We aleady have done this: Fairly decent speakers sound like crapola at Circuit City. Best Buy is going to handle this better? Not my local one; I've been in there, thanks.
- This signature is two channel only -
A huge independent electronics store in the Chicago suburbs was, and still is, trying to sell Krell speakers. They started with the giant aluminum box series, I forget the name, and have since moved to the wood series. They had two pair of the big $37,000 model in the store for a year or so before selling them on Audiogon for about half price. I asked a salesguy once if they had ever sold any of the aluminum Krell speakers and he said no. They were sitting right next to some Bose floorstanders that were absolute crap and along a wall with about 20 other pairs of speakers. I don't know how a salesman could hope to convince someone to spend that kind of money when they can buy something for a tiny fraction that, in that setup, sounds just as good. This is in an area full of wealthy people who spend huge sums of money on all kinds of ludicrous high-end crap. If you can't sell 'high-end' anything to this crowd you're in trouble. I seriously doubt Martin Logan or Best Buy think they'll wow customers with great sound. Martin Logan stuff looks cool, though, and many people have never seen electrostatic speakers so maybe it will sell because it's so neat.
Their biggest joke was the $70k JM Lab Grande Utopias situated out on the main floor with a gas barbecue grill next to the left speaker, with the glass storefront behind them. I kid you not. They have nice kitchen appliances, though.Best Buy selling Martin Logans? I have mixed feelings about it. Bad, because some could assume all ESLs sound similar and get turned off. Good, in that people will find out there are other speaker technologies besides cones and horns, and eventually they'll discover there are alternative ESLs.
If the company otherwise maintains its quality standards... I guess we'll wait and see...
i've seen ads for them in more and more non-audiophile publications.
enjoy,
mark
It wouldn't be a bad thing to have ML speakers readily available around the country and (hopefully) with a healthy discount.
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