How do you....

tonyb

.......tell someone there system sounds bad ?

Let me explain,
Neighbor says to me"C'mon over,you have got to listen to this cd"Being the curious **** that I am,I say sure.I will do my best so you can draw this picture in your mind.Walk in to his media room and turn around,faceing the doorway.to the left of the doorway is a 37 in LCD on top of a standard low rack,with some gear on it,cable box,panasonic AVR.To the left of that is a 4 ft tall rack,with solid sides,and has a 5 disc older sony dvd player,an older double casette player,and some stuff to download music off his laptop wich sits on top of the rack.Sandwiched between the left wall,and the rack,is his,midline Klipsch speaker.And I mean sandwiched.To the right of the door was the other Klipsch with massive toe in.Back to the left side,about 4 ft infront of the left speaker is what I consider to be a small sub from a computer system,butt up against the wall,faceing out to the center of the room.Oh yeah,the room....about 14 wide and 18 ft long from door to back.And has panelling from floor to ceiling.Top being 8 ft.Listening chair is straight back from the TV about 9 ft.I cringed before he played a note.Now I don't consider Klipsch to be bad,just not to my taste.He wanted me to hear a Patricia Barber cd he recently picked up.Stuck it in his 5 disc dvd player and hit play.Can you guess what I heard?? Sub first...attributed nothing but bad boomy sound,could not keep up with the speakers at all.Klipsch.....very forward,ear pierceing sound,reflection off the walls made it worse.He's a big jazz guy and likes female voices.The Klipsch did ok with that just too sterile for me,no emotion in the music at all.So without being rude,how do I go about putting him on the right path?Key here is not being rude.And yes,later on,I brought him over to listen at my place and his jaw almost hit his shoes.Never heard of Legacy,B&K,and the Butler,well,didn't even know what it was.So how do you guy's handle these things when it happens to you? Or do you walk away and say "Oh well".?

JimBRICK

let him listen to yours

Early B.

Never bad mouth a friend or neighbor's rig. If they're happy with it, you should be happy for them.

tonyb

Early B. wrote: »

Never bad mouth a friend or neighbor's rig. If they're happy with it, you should be happy for them.

Don't get me wrong,never said a negative thing.Just knowing it could be sooo much better and the fact that he likes music so much makes me want to help the guy out alittle.

Early B.

tonyb wrote: »

Don't get me wrong,never said a negative thing.Just knowing it could be sooo much better and the fact that he likes music so much makes me want to help the guy out alittle.

Let him be. He's already heard your system. If he asks, then help him. Otherwise, don't worry about it. Not everyone is called to bear the burdens of the audiophile.:p

MikeC78

I have a similar neighbor... As long as they are happy, don't say a word. (To each their own)

Some people have different tastes, my neighbor might think my rig sounds like crap compared to his.

Willow

Would you tell him his wife is ugly.....you don't

I know it's tough. I'm in the same boat. Every time we go to my dad's place for dinner, they have their Bose system and now I realize what not very good sounds like. But I can't tell them. They like it,they think it sounds good.That's all that matters. My step mom, everytime she comes over says to my wife, how can you stand those big speakers, my wife's answer "cause they sound good".

AndyGwis

I would pick out one thing that is the worst part of his system (speakers, source, setup/placement, etc), and then casually say something like "that sounds pretty good. The biggest difference I noticed in my system was when I. . . "

This could be, "bought a separate amp, calibrated my setup, bought a better sub, better source, etc." Make him think he's just one magic purchase away from having a system that would sound like yours. That will get the ball rolling on other upgrades after he sees it sounds better but still not as good as yours. Then, he'll be emailing you each week asking, "what's next?!?"

heiney9

You can't unless they start asking specific questions. One of my best buds has an HT set-up that consists of mostly Cerwin Vega (7.1). He is using a Denon 3806 to power the whole set-up. But obviously he and I have completely different ideas of what sounds good and how things should be setup, etc. He's into the wall of sound thing with a pair of CV's up front and (2) passive CV subs and 2 center channel stacked. He has a pair of speakers on the side and a pair in the rear as well as a rear center speaker. I did convince him to buy a Polk PSW650 which he completely blown away by.

He runs mostly NEO Matrix settings and while the system gets very loud and the PSW 650 pounds it sound like **** to me (compared to what I'm used to). He loves it because the sound he is getting is what he likes. When he listens to mine he can't believe how crystal clear everything is and how well the instruments are separated and how good vocals sound all the dynamics and snap of the snare and the decay of the cymbals, etc, etc. But he still believes different equipment won't make a big difference.

He will however buy POLK's for his next HT he builds when he moves into a new house. He really likes the Polks I;ve owned and he's very impressed with the PSW650. So he will be a Polk convert in the end, but what he has now is just a bunch of sonic mush that plays loud and hits hard.

We've stopped discussing home audio because we are so far apart in what we like and honestly he's not heard a lot of great systems other than mine. He has his preferences and that's fine because we can both hang out at his place or mine and still enjoy the music and concert DVD's, etc.

H9

AndyGwis

My brother has an Onkyo HTIB setup he got for $500 or so from CC. For movies in his perfectly sized HT room, it sounds very decent. Not reference for music or anything, but for movies you can hear the dialogue (even if it's not razor sharp), the sub is inside a 4X2' cabinet and shakes the wall, and it throws some sound out when needed.

Not what I would want, but not a bad setup for the money. Now, if he had it set up like crap or was missing out on an easy upgrade, I'd give him some pointers in a heartbeat.