I'm still shaking my head the next day about the maggie thing.... so I guess in one way they were successful with their show. They raised attention levels about the product and made it memorable.... except in my case, I think for all the wrong reasons.
The overriding fear they had was that someone would come into the room and sit way off to the side, not get good sound, and then post on the internet about how awful the new speaker was. Fine. Point taken.
But that says some things. Maggie views all dealers and industry folks as morons. Although I'm sure there are more than a few in the industry, I personally (and from what I can gather in watching and talking with other attendees) won't comment publicly on anything I hear at shows unless I've sat in the prime listening spots at a minimum. Also, anyone who has ever been to an audio show knows that the rooms are challenging. I don't talk about bass and midbass performance for the most part because of the problems of acoustics and the fact that very few rooms have treatments. Exceptions are rooms with products that have EQ capability built in (Vandersteen being an example with their bigger speakers). Shows are to get a general feel for things as you listen through the known deficiencies of the rooms and find something you want to explore more by bringing in product and having a listen in a more familiar environment.
Maggie was the only demo I went to that was this far out in left field and unaccomodating. I'm sure there were other situations like this as I've been to rooms in the past at other shows where manufacturers wouldn't play other people's disks and had set displays. But in my opinion, it's pretty stupid to introduce a new product and then not let people listen to it... and I don't mean as left and right ambience to their reference center channel.
A great example of a completely different attitude was down the hall at Divergent Technologies, the makers of Reference 3A speakers and importer of the ASL tube products, etc. Dave Belles of Power Modules told me I *had* to listen to these speakers as he felt they worked very well with his electronics and he really liked the sound of them, especially for the price. When I first stopped in, they were playing one of their lower end models and it was a specific demo for some industry folks. The owner chatted with me a second and we made arrangements for me to stop back by and he would swap in the Grand Veena speakers and let me have a go with the system. I stopped by at the agreed timeframe and he moved things around, connected different electronics at my request in addition to moving the speakers into place, gave me the remotes, queued up my test disc, and let me play for a while. Guess which company I'm more likely to do business with if everything else is equal with regard to sound?
