Globalti
Legendary Member
I wanted to hear some electrostatic speakers, having heard some about 45 years ago and always remembered being blown away by the richness and depth of the sound. So I contacted a hi-fi shop. The owner invited us to his house on Saturday morning to hear some speakers. After some satnav problems we found the house, a huge pile on the outskirts of town and rang the doorbell... nobody came. Rang again.... nobody. So I hammered on the massive door and immediately it swung open revealing a man who asked us to remove our shoes and showed us into the lounge. First shock - the room was full of massive ugly wooden objects like giant Russian dolls, which I realised were speakers.
There were two others about 8' tall and looking like the monoliths from 2001 a Space Odyssey, which he told us were by a famous Danish engineer. The room was cramped, cold, damp and messy and one entire wall was taken up with CDs and records. There was a nasty green sofa and lots of unbelievably vulgar stands holding all kinds of amps and other equipment. The man took us up to a bedroom where there were some more conventional looking speakers arranged facing the bed. His dog was whining and sniffing at a door and he told us: "Oh my wife is in the bathroom". The door opened and a woman came out, grabbed the dog and scuttled out. The man put on a CD of a woman singing a jazz song, hopeless for demonstrating the speakers. He berated us with his views on the wi-fi business, saying that magazine journalists all live in million-pound houses thanks to the huge bungs they receive for writing good reviews, the industry is full of charlatans and thieves and there was only one way to buy hi-fi equipment, which is from him because only he knows what's good, etcetera etcetera. There was a record deck, which had an interesting clear perspex turntable and I asked the price: five thousand pounds. I was feeling intensely uncomfortable and could see that Mrs Gti was in a state of shock at the way what should have been a pleasant, relaxing experience was unfolding into something altogether weird and upsetting.
I realised I had made a mistake in approaching this bloke and an exit strategy was needed so I simply said: "Sorry, we're wasting your time, I can see that you are in a different world to the one we inhabit, we'd better leave now." He accepted but continued to berate us with his views on life, how everybody was corrupt, how he wrote the only true reviews for the hi-fi magazines, right up to the moment we got in the car and drove off. We felt we had escaped a bizarre experience and when we Googled those hideous speakers we discovered that they cost £75,000 and weigh 160 kilos each.
I realised then that the world of hi-fi is based on even bigger BS than I thought - when a length of speaker cable can cost £400 but you can buy 10 metres of 1.2mm two-core copper cable for £6 and we had just met one of its self-appointed High Priests. It was a thoroughly upsetting experience, especially the realisation that some gullible people actually fall for this mumbo-jumbo. People like him are the proof that if you price something extravagantly and make it look ostentatious there are enough fools out there for you to get very rich indeed from peddling falsehoods. How much of that applies in the rest of the world of luxury goods? We are still feeling upset by the experience two days later.
There were two others about 8' tall and looking like the monoliths from 2001 a Space Odyssey, which he told us were by a famous Danish engineer. The room was cramped, cold, damp and messy and one entire wall was taken up with CDs and records. There was a nasty green sofa and lots of unbelievably vulgar stands holding all kinds of amps and other equipment. The man took us up to a bedroom where there were some more conventional looking speakers arranged facing the bed. His dog was whining and sniffing at a door and he told us: "Oh my wife is in the bathroom". The door opened and a woman came out, grabbed the dog and scuttled out. The man put on a CD of a woman singing a jazz song, hopeless for demonstrating the speakers. He berated us with his views on the wi-fi business, saying that magazine journalists all live in million-pound houses thanks to the huge bungs they receive for writing good reviews, the industry is full of charlatans and thieves and there was only one way to buy hi-fi equipment, which is from him because only he knows what's good, etcetera etcetera. There was a record deck, which had an interesting clear perspex turntable and I asked the price: five thousand pounds. I was feeling intensely uncomfortable and could see that Mrs Gti was in a state of shock at the way what should have been a pleasant, relaxing experience was unfolding into something altogether weird and upsetting.
I realised I had made a mistake in approaching this bloke and an exit strategy was needed so I simply said: "Sorry, we're wasting your time, I can see that you are in a different world to the one we inhabit, we'd better leave now." He accepted but continued to berate us with his views on life, how everybody was corrupt, how he wrote the only true reviews for the hi-fi magazines, right up to the moment we got in the car and drove off. We felt we had escaped a bizarre experience and when we Googled those hideous speakers we discovered that they cost £75,000 and weigh 160 kilos each.
I realised then that the world of hi-fi is based on even bigger BS than I thought - when a length of speaker cable can cost £400 but you can buy 10 metres of 1.2mm two-core copper cable for £6 and we had just met one of its self-appointed High Priests. It was a thoroughly upsetting experience, especially the realisation that some gullible people actually fall for this mumbo-jumbo. People like him are the proof that if you price something extravagantly and make it look ostentatious there are enough fools out there for you to get very rich indeed from peddling falsehoods. How much of that applies in the rest of the world of luxury goods? We are still feeling upset by the experience two days later.
Last edited:
)
