There may have been some of that decades ago back when JBL was known for being the studio monitor speaker, at least in California. For a long time now though its been pretty much down to individual dealers.
Here in the Seattle area the high-end dealer for years Definitive Audio has subjected its customers to the most harshly sterile analytical experience imaginable. Used to be Mark Levinson, now other stuff even worse if you can imagine that, just the other day I was in there and subjected to well over $600k worth of auditory insult. Right across the street however people with real world amounts of money to spend can buy all kinds of nice sounding gear at Hawthorne. Up until Stewart Marcantoni retired a few years ago we had Weekend Environments, which in case anyone wonders just how awful Definitive really was Stewart sold literally dozens of systems to people who ditched all their Levinson door stops for real music systems from Stewart, even though they had to make an appointment and take a ferry across the Sound to see him.
For years I went up and down the I-5 corridor, from north of Seattle to Portland, never did notice anything like a regional sound, not even any consistent dealer sound really. Except for Definitive. What I did notice though is dealers carry different brands. The one with Naim is gonna sound like Naim. The one with Krell..... hey they were the only one with a McCormack DNA-1, watcha gonna do?
There is indeed a SoCal sound. But it is to be found in the music recorded there, a whole different thing.
Here in the Seattle area the high-end dealer for years Definitive Audio has subjected its customers to the most harshly sterile analytical experience imaginable. Used to be Mark Levinson, now other stuff even worse if you can imagine that, just the other day I was in there and subjected to well over $600k worth of auditory insult. Right across the street however people with real world amounts of money to spend can buy all kinds of nice sounding gear at Hawthorne. Up until Stewart Marcantoni retired a few years ago we had Weekend Environments, which in case anyone wonders just how awful Definitive really was Stewart sold literally dozens of systems to people who ditched all their Levinson door stops for real music systems from Stewart, even though they had to make an appointment and take a ferry across the Sound to see him.
For years I went up and down the I-5 corridor, from north of Seattle to Portland, never did notice anything like a regional sound, not even any consistent dealer sound really. Except for Definitive. What I did notice though is dealers carry different brands. The one with Naim is gonna sound like Naim. The one with Krell..... hey they were the only one with a McCormack DNA-1, watcha gonna do?
There is indeed a SoCal sound. But it is to be found in the music recorded there, a whole different thing.