Listening at the Dealer’s Place

So now you head off down to your pro audio dealer. I’ve got to say, I don’t think you can do this one by mail order, unless you are willing to spend a chunk of change on shipping, can afford to tie up all of your credit cards securing a bunch of speakers for study, and you have really good return privileges.

Pick a slow day. Take your time. Pick a batch of different speakers to try, over a wide range of prices. Don’t bother including really low-cost speakers, like Auratones, that you use for checking your mixes for table-radio behavior.

These days, most everything you evaluate will be powered. Passive speakers are OK to audition, however. You’ll have to factor in the cost of the amp, but at least YOU get to choose the amp, and decide how much power is enough.

So, you end up with maybe six or seven speakers to choose from, including powered and passive 2-ways and 3-ways. At first, you should listen to one speaker only of each model, making sure the level is the same. Don’t worry about brand or price at this point. Just listen to each speaker, getting it “in your ear,” so that you have an approximate mental impression of “how it sounds.”

Your goal should be to get down to three or four speakers that you would like to audition seriously. So, you listen and rank. Try NOT to listen to the sales person, who will have his or her own opinion and will be eager to share it with you. Just listen and rank. Try to answer the question: which is the worst speaker in the group? Once you have identified it, winnow it out. Then start in again, to find the next worst speaker.

When you are down to the four best speakers, ask yourself, can I afford any of these? Put them on your short list. Then go back to the ones you’ve winnowed out. Pick the best of those that you can afford, until you have four different pairs of speakers to study, that you could actually afford to buy, if you were so moved.

Now you’ve got to convince the dealer to let you take ‘em home to try, in the privacy of your own studio. Naturally, the dealer isn’t going to be keen to let you have four pairs of monitors for a month, so you probably will have to arrange to borrow them over a Sunday or something, and arrange for some serious high-intensity listening during that time. Serious groveling may be called for.

Why do you go through this? Because the way the loudspeakers sound in the showroom is NOT a useful indicator of how they will sound in your room. Simple as that. In the best case, you wouldn’t bother listening at all in the showroom, you’d just take EVERYTHING home, and really confuse yourself!