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Road trip to demo $10,000 speakers

I'm going to take a several hour road trip to the Washington DC/Baltimore area to demo some speakers in the $10,000 range for a once in a lifetime purchase. I plan on listening to some Magico A3's, Aerial Acoustic 7T's, and Spendor D-9's. One of the dealers also has Paradigm Persona 3F's on the floor, so I'll take a listen to them too. While I'm up there are there any other speakers in that price range you'd recommend I try to locate and take a listen to. I'm open to and welcome your suggestions and will take the time to research each one as well.

I'm not in the market for used equipment. Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Mike



skyscraper

Showing 7 responses by twoleftears

twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 

@skyscraper

Gifted Listener for Vandersteen, Magnepan, and my favorite there, Vienna Acoustics Liszt.

Evolution Audio for Aerial.

Command Performance for Dynaudio, Focal, Devore.

But you must get yourself to Deja Vu, for Harbeth.

The nearest store to DC with Spendors is in Philadelphia.


Capital AudioFest.  Check the list of exhibitors.  It may or may not be worth the investment (time and money).

twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
At Command Performance, they have three main rooms.  Heard the Dynaudio Contour 60, Devore 0/93, and Kanta 2, in each of the rooms.  I liked the Kanta best of the three, though it didn't make my shortlist.  YMMV.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 

Yes, years ago I visited the guy in Uptown Audio when he still had his last shop, before he moved his business into his home, which is I imagine where you went.

That's why I was trying to suggest specific stores and models, approaching DC from the southwest (rather than just throwing out lots of names of speaker brands).  Gifted Lister is the first stop, and after that it's a toss up between Deja Vu (don't be deterred by the industrial estate), Evolution (haven't been there since they moved), and Command Performance (again a strange semi-subterranean building, but there's a convenient parking lot).

After that you might consider JS Audio, though my experience there wasn't great.  North of DC I haven't explored.  But as well as the Baltimore area you might consider Delaware, where there are a couple of good stores with interesting makes.

twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
@skyscraper, if you're going to do Gifted Listener, Deja Vu, Evolution Audio and Command Performance, you'll definitely need to overnight somewhere in the area.  With those four, you get Vienna Acoustics, Vandersteen, Magnepan, Linn, Audio Note, Harbeth, ProAc, Aerial Acoustics, Dynaudio, Focal, Devote, Neat, Magico, and probably others.  That takes time.  Throw in IQ Home Entertainment, and you get a couple more.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
@skyscraper I've never been to Audio Art, but I exchanged emails a while back.  He runs his operation out of his house, and I got the impression that, obviously, he could only stock a fairly limited number of items.

Audio Exchange is the one real store I'm aware of.  Sonus Faber, Paradigm Personas, B&W, some other brands.  Depends on how much time you have and how many miles you want to drive.

Boonies...  All relative.  Where I live the one real store dedicated to audio went over to the dark side a year ago=now doing only custom home theatre install.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
Yes, one final recommendation was going to be take plenty of detailed notes of your listening impressions.  The sequential experience inevitably puts the ones you hear first at a disadvantage.  After 6-8 auditions, what you heard with #1 will start to get hazy...
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
Did you get your speaker cables sorted out?
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