To all that worked in audio salons.

I lived in DC when I got started in this mess (mid 1980s) and I remember going to Excaliber in Alexandria with a freshly printed copy of Jennifer Warnes "Famous Blue Raincoat" LP to hear a CJ PV7 I had the hots for. The salesperson, who had never seen the album before, thought it sounded so bad he wanted to take it off the turntable and put on some "audiophile" music instead. I left scratching my head wondering why we perceived the sound quality of the recording so differently. A few months later FBR was one of the most popular LPs the salons were playing to demo their gear.

I worked at Audio Assoc. and AudioKrafters in the late 70s, early 80s. We used a lot of Telarc discs, Sheffields, Nautilus, and even a Yamaha demo disc. The Yamaha disc was surprisingly good.

Some "popular" music we used was Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg's "Twin Sons of Different Mothers", Steely Dan's "Aja" and "Countdown to Ecstasy", MFSL's "DSOTM", Virgil Fox organ discs, "Jazz At The Pawnshop" (yawn!), and MFSL's Al Stewart "Year Of The Cat". Also Poco's "Legend" sounded very good...

-RW-

Jean Michel Jarre, "Oxygene" "Equinoxe"

I worked for a large mid-fi, some high end stuff like KEF. Monitor Audio, Ariston etc as a part-timer in the early 80"s in Germany.

Steeley Dan's Aja was IT ! "The Wall" a distant second.
I carried a Schubert cassette in my pocket and used it when boss wasn't around . Worked for me.

Sound Chamber, early 80s. My personal demos were MFSL DSOTM, , ARS Musica Brandenburg Concertos on DCM Time Window, DiMeola's Elegant Gypsy, Police Ghost in the Machine, DG of Beethoven's 5th, CBS Masterworks of the 9th, Drum Disk, Track Record and Harry James Sheffields. Store demos were MFSL Finger Paintings, MFSL Year of the Cat, Riki Lee Jones on Nautilus, Kim Carnes on Nautilus, Jethro Tull Aqualung, Bowie Ziggy Stardust. No CDs; hadn't been introduced yet. Did have a very early Sony PCM deck that used small video cassettes, no pre-recorded material for it. One of our guys worked with Duke Jupiter and made a demo with it. Meh.