Dealer Dem Rooms

Posted by: Alex S. on 11 February 2002

I read Ken's Hi-Fi Ex thread with mentions of all their basement dem rooms and talk of the Cornflake shop.

I thought I'd ask which dealers have good dem rooms/set up.

I have a few experiences:

Grahams: Not great rooms but good set-up, as you'd expect. Quite difficult to assess anything, but at least it sounds better when you get the stuff home!

Phonography: The small room seems to need small systems. The big room's good. Very good set up.

Audio T Tun Wells: Good room for recreating average home since listening room is the front room of a converted terrraced house (more or less).

Billy Vee: Another home style room but not a good one. The ceiling's too low.

Any good dem rooms out there? And what if they're 'too good' and make anything you buy a disappointment when you plug it in at home?

Alex

Posted on: 11 February 2002 by ken c

i havent been to many dem rooms to compare.

i used to like the dem room at studio99 when they were still trading, but i had a very bad experience there, so best forget.

my dealer (infidelity) has a reasonable smallish dem room -- from which you can see and hear whats happening outside in the reception area (and they can see you) -- this can be a bit disruptive. acoustically, the room works reasonably well.

grahams dem rooms are very good i think, to the extent they are closed off from the reception room so you can listen without too many disruptions. they also have a basement dem room which is very well appointed -- used to have dbl's sometime ago -- but last time i was there - it looked for kitted for home cinema.

having said all this,i have been in VERY poor dem rooms (in terms of deco and layout) producing VERY good sounds indeed-- example -- RPM (no longer trading) in battersea. in my view this demonstrates something important -- the ability of the dealer to make the system sing.

so the dem room itself is of course a factor, but there are other other, perhaps more important factors to take into account.

as a matter of interest, what does naim's dem room look like these days?

enjoy

ken

Posted on: 11 February 2002 by Don Atkinson

I have always thought the dem rooms at Grahams were pretty good. they seem to give a similar sound to mine at home. They are well isolated and suitable in size to represent a wide range of living rooms.

I listened to some Mark levinson a couple of weeks ago at Cornflake. The building looked almost derelict in places but I found my way to a deep basement and a good sized room (approx 24'x16'x10,) This prooved to be a very neutral room, wooden floor partly covered with a rug but filled with heaps of hifi (only the Revel Studios speakers) I never felt as if the room was affecting the sound in any way at all.

A couple of years ago I listened to ML at Heatherdale Audio in Worthing. The shop had no dedicated listening room, but there were very few other customers so the display area doubled up for listening. However, the owner then took us to his own home to listen in a typical living room to his Reference system. It was awsome. Sounded as if it would be awsome in ANY room.

Made me think that REAL hifi isn't that dependant on room characteristics.

Perhaps Naim's CDSxxx/552/500/DBL is tollerant of ANY room (providing the structural engineer has checked out the floor loadings!)

Cheers

Don