Road trip to demo $10,000 speakers

Tomic60, I’ll look up HiFiBuys in Atlanta website in Atlanta and see what they have. That’s a drive and a half from here as you know though I did round trip it in one day once.

Steve, I’m curious about what you finally did to get the Kef R’s up to snuff. Did you have to buy all new equipment, cables, and the like? Sorry for your dismal experience.

It sounds like I’m really going to have to stay on top of the demoing process at these stores. By being insistent I might be able to wrangle an in-home demo when I’m ready to buy. I’ll check out the possibilities. One drawback to that is I’m going to be replacing my preamp and amp next. Maybe they’d bring an decent integrated amp with them.

Glupson, I certainly don’t need snotty. If I don’t care for someones attitude. I’ll let them know about it. I’m not really the shy retiring type. I think its probably a good idea to see if they would for a potential $10,000 sale, set up the kind of demo I want with a turntable and not outrageously expensive amps etc. A lot of good suggestions here on how to prep for these demos.

Mike

I was going to let this thread die a natural death but thought of one more question before I travel to audition some speakers next week. I've been sensibly advised that during speaker demos not to let to let  dealers get away with using equipment that is too high end or overly expensive to honestly demo the speakers.  

My question is, what would a reasonable ballpark figure be for a integrated amp or preamp/amp combination an audio dealer should use during a demo of $10,000 speakers. I'm only guessing in the $5000 range, but really don't know. I do know what kind of turntable and CD player I will be using already and can gauge that equipment in a demo accordingly.

Again I'm only looking for a ballpark price range on an amp or amp/preamp. to reasonably match the quality of whatever speaker I'm demoing and end up choosing. Price is a crude measure, but I want to ask them to switch theirs out if it's such a high quality component that I wouldn't get a legitimate demo. Hope I'm making sense here. Thanks for any advice and wish me luck. 

Mike

Even if you can not afford it right now, you shall allow 10K for amplifiers(integrated or pre- power combo) another 10k for front end (digital player or transport and dac combo or turntable) to get the best of 10k speakers.

If other equipment cost more than 10K, then you may ask dealer to scale down below 10K.

If you're going to the Baltimore area check on Command Performance AV in Falls Church.

I disagree with the OP, though of course understand him.
When auditioning good speakers you want to hear everything they are capable of. $100k preamp/amp with $10k speakers is good, generally speaking. But if you want to insist on more balance in terms of cost - yes, at least $10k integrated or preamp/amp.
Speakers don't have to be the most expensive component. Electronics is easier to upgrade. Again, in your place I would ask a dealer to bring out the best in the speakers I might consider.