Best Buy selling Vienna Acoustics speakers

Yes I have seen and auditioned them . They really sounded terrible !
First , there are no decent amps , pre's or sources for auditioning . Nothing with any good clean power ! Where I am , the only thing to use are A/V receivers such as Yamaha and other ilk of that nature .
Second , they are sitting on a shelf , against the wall and among a myriad of other speakers . No stands or long speaker cables were available .
Third , they are not properly broken in . When I asked the 'salesman' if they were broken in , he looked at me in bewilderment !
It might be the place to make a purchase , if you know exactly what you want . It is not the place to find out if they are the speaker for you .
This was my first experience with Magnolia . Maybe a step in the right direction but not a completed effort !

Best Buy bought Magnolia a couple of years ago. Since then, I've heard Logan, Vienna and Sonus Faber demos at Magnolia with MacIntosh electronics. (I've bought a half dozen Sonos bundles from these guys) Properly treated rooms, but....

Ask the salepeople to move the speakers into a decent position. Their standard demos leave a row of speakers against a wall which isn't going to help anyone very much. The salespeople seem very nice, though only a few are well informed. This isn't bad service for a large chain retailer. OTOH, it isn't a high end "boutique" experience either.

Marty

If Best Buys is as bad as Tweeter was demoing Vienna Acoustics speakers, it's a waste of time. I do have a lot of respect for the Vienna Acoustics brand, I have owned the Beethoven and the Strauss. However, I never heard them sounding good in any Tweeter store. Poor placement, poor electronics, etc. It was really sad, I'm surprised that Sumiko allowed this to happen.

Anyway, very good speakers, but they need room to breath and good electronics to drive them to hear what they are capable of.

Cheers,
John

Hate to say it, but it's sad that Magnolia got bought out by Best Buys. Why do I say that? Because you now have the same kind of "ignorant knuckleheads" working the Magnolia side of Best Buys, as the rest of Best Buys. I went to try and listen to some Vienna Acoustic speakers, but no decent amps/pre-amps, no stands, the salesperson didn't even know how to turn the sub-woofer off, so I could listen to speakers by themselves. Don't know where you live at Marty, but it appears the Magnolia in your "neck of the woods" is certainly a "cut above" the Best Buys here in northern Va.

Of far more importance is that Vienna Acoustics and/or its importer have sold
out, going the mid-fi route. When you see brands that were previously
considered high end being sold at places like Tweeter, Circuit City and Best
Buy, it doesn't bode well for that particular brand. Fortunately, there are still
lots of better options.

Perhaps even worse is that some people may hear how bad these "high-end"
speakers sound in this environment and incorrectly conclude that the mid-fi
stuff is just as good or better than the stuff some of us have spent thousands
-- even tens of thousands -- to acquire.