Where Do I Start When Choosing Equipment?

by James Leahy

You can buy the best equipment available but if it is not suited to your installation you will not achieve the results you should. Before any equipment is recommended we do a detailed inspection of your living environment and design an equipment list according to your budget that will work well with what you already have. Equipment choice is an integral part of designing a system and more often than not the most important limiting factor which is the actual room that it will all be used in is not even considered in most purchases.

We come to your home and give you a specialized service as to what to choose, with dedicated advise and experience from hundreds of custom installations. Nobody takes more care with your Hi -End equipment selection than us.

Always choose equipment that sounds the best for your budget, not what should sound the best according to the manufactures specification's. One of the most firmly-established audio platitudes is the one that says "The specifications don't tell the whole story." One reason for this, of course, is that most manufacturers of home-type Hi-Fi equipment realize that the buying public doesn't understand specifications anyway, so published specs, if any, are likely to be too superficial for even the most astute buyer to learn much from.

The substance level is something I never appreciated till I had a couple of decades of experience under my belt. A discount system usually offers more features like more power or a greater number of surround sound fields for less money than a quality system might. Likewise, a cheap car like a Holden or Ford usually offers better specifications, like fuel economy, horsepower or number of radio presets, for a lower price than a Mercedes Benz. You may realize that the Mercedes Benz has a lot more fundamental quality for which there is no numeric specification, and so you probably understand why a Mercedes costs more even with worse specifications. Well folks, the same principles apply to audio equipment.

Now there is nothing wrong with trying to save a buck or two when you can. This does not mean going to the other extreme of being a total tight arse and just buying rubbish. I have no time for customers like this. Please go elsewhere. You would be amazed at how many phone calls I get asking how much for this and how much for that and the number of lowball e-mails I have to deal with. However, less than 5% of customers ask me how good something sounds. After talking with them for no more then two minutes you just know they are so fixated on spending 'x' amount of dollars they are buying on price rather than quality.

I have noticed that every time I have purchased a less expensive, tool, digital camera, Hi-Fi component, motor vehicle, item of personal clothing, or pretty much anything else you care to mention. I have always been dissatisfied with it's level of performance in relation to the better model. I could have afforded better at the time but tried to talk myself into the reasoning that the better model wasn't that much better when the reality was that it was twice as good. I just was not ready to accept the truth. Hence, I have had to sell the recently purchased item at a substantial loss and then buy the item I should have bought all along and that I wanted to buy. The short of this story is that it is more often then not false economy to buy inferior equipment for what ever it may be. If it is worth buying it is worth buying quality. In 99% of all cases you get what you pay for. I advise you to buy the best equipment that you can con your wife into letting you get at the time. To all the single audiophiles out there, you have no excuse. Sorry.

I do not know any customers that have been dissatisfied by buying a quality system and wish they had not but I know hundreds of people that have skimped on their system and are just as unhappy with it today as when they had nothing. It actually works out less expensive in practice to spend more on your system rather then less in the long run. You will enjoy a superior level of performance for your dollar spent. Also when it is time for you to upgrade just look at the resale values of quality brands like Audio Research or Rega on eBay and you will see what I mean. You can always get back a decent price for equipment like this because it has a world market and it is the finest of it's type in the world. Not so with poor quality Lo-Fi equipment purchased on price rather than performance.

The common comment I get from some would be VTL customers that covert the products I sell is that one day 'if' they win the big lotto draw they will come back and see me. When what they are really saying is that they do not place a high enough priority in their lives on a Hi-End audio system to buy it today. When people go on holidays, buy new cars and spend tens of thousands living life in the fast lane and the like but complain to me my stuff is too expensive I find it hard to take them seriously. The bottom line here is be honest with yourself before you tell another man his gear is not worth the money.

While my prices might not be the lowest in Australia I attempt to give a level of service & advice to my customer's that is matched by few dealers. Most of my customers that spend over $50K with me on their systems are far from millionaires. They are just average Australians with a mortgage and regular jobs. They just have different priorities then some and most wouldn't dream of spending more on their car then their Hi-Fi. The average family car today is around $50K but how many people in Australia have a Hi-Fi system even approaching half of this price... Very few

Customers constantly ask for my best price and to match prices in the U.S. for my products. For a start; the Australian prices are not the same as the U.S. price because there are so many more factors involved then the simple conversion into Australian Dollars. You are paying for an Australian Warrantee, specialty made power transformers for Australian conditions, freight costs, customs clearance fees, personal advise, local dealer support, economies of scale, personal demonstrations, 5% Import Duty and 10% G.S.T. to name but a few of the factors that contribute to the price differences. In many other industries there are similar price discrepancies. This does not mean that the price that your local Australian dealer is asking for is unreasonable. It has been in my experience that at the end of the day the lowest price is not ALWAYS the lowest price if you know what I mean.