Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo "Ringer" demo cd's

My first "ringer" experience was with a "demo" cassette tape, (used for the "new" personal cassette player/recorders) I somehow ended up with, from my local music store.....(when I was a kid). The sound was MUCH better than regular, pre-recorded cassettes. Since the songs were not by the original artists, I soon lost interest in the tape.

My next encounter was with Ford's (to demo automotive audio) "loran" brand demo cassettes (from the 80's)....great sound from "cherry picked" songs, and loran's production values, (original artists too).

Fast forward to the late 90's.......I wandered into the local factory outlet mall, and went into the Bose store.
I wanted to hear the Bose wave radio/cd.
The salesman had a
"Bose demo cd" in all the units on display....... (even with that "ringer" cd, I was not impressed with the sound).

Finally, not too long ago, I was looking (pre-Axiom) at Martin-Logan speakers at my local Sound advice/Tweeters.
The salesman pulled from his desk..............that's right, "special" cds that he kept for demo's.
The reason I wanted to post this, is to alert "newbies" (and anyone else) to make sure when auditioning speakers, that you are just auditioning the speakers, not special, "hi-fi" cds too.

Which is why it is recommended that you take your own CDs, with which you are intimately familiar, to demo ANY sound equipment. When I have someone come over to listen to my Axioms, I always ask them to bring their own, familiar, CDs.

Last week my wife and I went to our town Christmas tree lightning. At the party, they were giving away Elton John CDs to everyone, I was not that interested in them but my wife insisted and took one. On our way back I put it on my car cd player and it didn’t play. Jokingly I told my wife that the cds most be burn mp3s or a defective CD lot and that explains why they were for free, but when I check again the case it read that it’s a demo SACD, one of those samplers SACDs that ships with a new SACD player. I play it on my Denon2200 at home and let me tell ‘ya , it's a awesome SACD, probably my favorite SACDs from my collection and it was free!
I bet that the party's organizers have no idea what a SACD is and probably are still wondering why the darn CD won’t play

Jack,
I'm not surprised to see you have your "ducks in a row", my post was pretty much for the "newbies".
I have seen several posts of late, where someone has auditioned speakers, and have some unusual descriptions.......of how they sound.
Since it is more important than ever, to be aware of the "source" material used to judge speaker sound, and we have covered recently cd's, and their many current stages of mastering, I thought I would cover the "demo cd" factor as well.
hopefully, that should cover all the bases, so when someone does a speaker review, we'll get the true picture.