The only reason I went to Good Guys in the first place is its only a 15 minute bus ride from me (I don't drive, I'm from New York originally, that's my excuse) and they were the only place nearby. Incidently, I will be going to Ken Cranes in the next week or 2- my sister will give me a ride. What I was expecting was, given that Good Guys sells higher end stuff than Circuit City or Best Buy, was at least a sound experience where I would have a good rough idea if the overall sound quality was noticeably better, fully realizing that the speaker and CD/DVD set up and accoustics are different from my home. I would bring my own CD in to test the Denon system and play it at the same volume I do in my apartment. If it was only subjectively better, I wouldn't bother with it. Sorry, I had no desire unless there was an apparent difference in sound quality to my ears, of buying the system, unpacking it, disconnecting my system, connecting the new system and then if I wasn't impressed with it, disconnecting the new system, reconnecting my old system, repacking the new system and then go through the further hassle of returning it to the store. If you don't see that, well one of us is in left field looking in right.




Quote Originally Posted by Woochifer
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. What are you expecting to find out by having the receiver hooked up? The sound quality differences are typically subtle at best, and don't really come out until you push the receiver to a fairly high level. You won't find out much by playing them at the store. With some of the questions that you've been asking lately and the assortment of purchases that you've made, I think rather than spending more time in audio stores, I think you need to spend less time looking for new purchases to make, and more time at home getting to know your system and setting it up so that you're getting optimal performance out of what you already have. Dumping more money into the system after you've already made all these other investments is not a good ballpark idea of the sound quality of their systems, in this case the Denon receiver.
I realise that the speakers and CD/DVD player and accoustics would be different to that of my home, but if I brought my own CD in, I would notice if the quality was noticeably, note I did not say subjectively, better. As far as the volume, you lost my on this one, I was going to play it at the same volume I listen to in my apartment. The offshoot was, under these conditions, if I noticed a substantial difference, I'd then compare prices online and get/try out the best deal provided, there was a return policy. If I did not hear a noticeable improvement, I did not want to go through the hassle of opening up a system, unhooking my system, connecting the new system, unhooking the new system, reconnecting my old system, repacking the new system and then returning it to the store. Do you see where I'm coming from or not? Unless there was potential for improvement I wasn't going to mess around with this & my experience at Good Guys set up did not allow me to make any determination. I will go to Ken Krane's next week. Even Circuit City had a better environment for trying audio equipment out. I considered Good Guys to be a step above Circuit City and Best Buy, till this experience and stand by my words.




Markw is correct in that if you're going to obsess about that last nuance of difference between different receiver models, then you should just buy it, try it, and if you like it, keep it. Good Guys has that 60-day return policy, so you got a lot of time to figure out if the new receiver's a big step up over what you currently use. If you want a store that has more of the Denon receivers available for audition and doesn't have everything patched through a selector switch, then forget about the chain stores and seek out an independent retailer that stocks Denon.

Good Guys is actually a huge step up from Best Buy and Circuit City, so I don't know what your expectations are. You once mentioned that you liked your shopping experience at Fry's, so why not go back there and look at their Onkyo, h/k, and Yamaha models? Denon is stocked at Ken Crane's which you also like, so why not shop there instead? For what you're expecting the stores to provide you, I doubt that those stores will be much better than GG. Fry's doesn't have the majority of their receivers hooked up either, and their demo rooms are even more limited in the options that they provide. The help that I've had at Fry's is much worse than anything I've ever seen at Good Guys.

Also, with GG you need to keep in mind that they went to a two-tiered system with their commissioned sales reps about a year ago, and it's now more of a crapshoot with the quality of help that you get over there. They kept their top commissioned sales reps and laid off everybody else, replacing them with lower paid and less experienced sales reps.

Everybody at some point has had their fair share of bad shopping experiences at electronics stores, but calling Good Guys the worst ever? That's quite overboard.