We have several dozen dealers- a list is available. Admittedly not a large number, but they do cover a fair portion of the US, some of Canada, and Puerto Rico. There are some international distributors too. Many have been with us for more than a decade. Most serve their local markets- they are not involved in the Stereophile/TAS product of the month club. Our few, select dealers that do significant internet business can be located easily.
If we seem to move too slowly... a long time ago we saw that if we grew too fast, quality and ergonomic issues would arise with the cast marble process- another reason to avoid the sales fluctuations created by magazine-based retailers. I can understand how all this gives the impression we're resistant to new dealers.
I think it's important for the health of our industry to patronize retailers who go out of their way to listen to everything, and avoid those who primarily sell whatever is new or hot. Our acoustic memories are short. So are our consumer memories- one can hardly count the number of audio maufacturers that no longer exist, once well-known. And many of them failed after a few years of marketing to only the big mail-order retailers, finding themselves dropped in favor of the new.
This of course, means that those products, and their designers never had much of a chance to evolve, so today we see a lot of "me-too" product- I think a result of slip-shod R&D efforts, even from quite large firms, because product is being rushed to the market- selling because it's new for this Fall, not because it's a significant improvement in the art.
I feel strongly that non-time coherent speaker design is one indicator of this lack of extended R&D effort in the speaker community. Another is the ignorance of what "radiation resistance" means. That is one of the most important parameters of speaker design that determines the sound you hear over at your chair.
Radiation resistance is determined by the quantity and the sizes of the drivers chosen and their crossover points. It is the term for the acoustic load on the driver, and is why a larger woofer has more "slam" than a smaller one which goes as low on steady test tones- the bigger woofer sees a higher radiation resistance down there.
That is just the LF range- the effect of varying or inadequate radiation resistance higher up the scale means that the tone balance and dynamic response change with listening distance. This is not my opinion, but a principle of operation firmly grounded in physics and explained in the peer-reviewed AES papers re-printed by Old Colony Sound Labs.
Best,
Roy Johnson
Green Mountain Audio
