| tonelab wrote on Mon, 01 October 2007 15:03 |
I recently went into one of the big chain instrument/pro audio stores and had this frustrating experience. The pro audio department was decked out with it's "listening room" - you know, the room where they have the premium gear, ICON setup, etc. I saw a mic that I was interested in buying and asked if I could listen to the mic, maybe print something to pro tools, etc. They said they weren't set up for that sort of thing. The guy is telling me this in the "listening room". I ask, "well, whats this room for? I see a DAW, a rack of outboard gear, microphones, speakers..." He says, "We're not set up for that...sorry."
I then ask the guy if i can return the mic if it doesn't suit me. He says no. He goes into the whole health dept. thing about not being able to accept returns on microphones. So I ask him how am I supposed to evaluate a microphone before purchasing? He says, "Trust me...it's a good mic."
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I had a similar experience in a Guitar Center store. The difference is that I was looking for a set of monitors.
I wanted to hear each set of speakers I was contemplating. So first I asked the guy if I could move a few around to get a better listening position. He refused to let me move anything. SO I asked him if I could play back a cd I had brought along for evaluation. Again he refused. So I asked that he just play whatever they had. He told me that they didn't have anything available to listen too. However he was confident that if I bought the most expensive monitors in the room I would love them.
If I bought the speakers and hated them I could return them. However, I am not going to just pop for the most expensive set in the room because the sales guy told me I should. I also didn't want to waste another hour of back and forth driving on a return. So I passed on buying anything while I was there.
Retail shops are usually a pain in the @$$ when it comes to audio equipment.
