The most important word of advise?

JohnK's advice is sound (pun intended). Buy Vandersteens or Quads, and similar everyman audio stuff, and get a grip on what folks are talking about. I sold audio stuff for years and only had one customer who I thought shopped intelligently. He came in with three or four of his favorite recordings and asked to hear them on equipment that he could afford. I gave him the demo room for the afternoon. He left without buying anything that day, and I always wondered what he eventually decided.

Samujohn, you sold no audio equipment to the one customer who you thought shopped intelligently in the years you were a salesman?

Not sure if that story legitimizes your advice in this thread, but it made me grin.

Tvad: Mostly customers were pre-sold by advertising. That was fine, but when I tried to give advice based on my knowledge, such as it was, I was met by arguments and questions derived from advertisements. Neither I, or my customers had any useful technical knowledge. For example, we were once treated to a discussion of FM tuner specifications by a factory engineer from Marantz. The ads all compared tuner sensitivity. He pointed out that the tuner sensitivity standards were set in the Thirties for table radios and were of no relevance to stereo reproduction, however, the engineers had to "dumb down" the circuits to meet the sales competition.
CD players were introduced as vastly improved sources. Unless you were deaf, you could hear how horrible they were, but sales soared.
Now all this was in the seventies, so perhaps things are a bit different now.

1.money,
2.cash,
3.wonga,
4..credit card.
5.partner's approval.
(perhaps #5 should be first)......

CLEAN POWER . BETTER AC OUTLETS .