Twenty years ago, I worked at one of the premier Hi-Fi shops in New Jersey. Our clientele ranged from NBA superstars to wealthy financiers to famous composers. 

(I fondly remember spending an afternoon with George Walker, the first African American to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Together, we listened to a Super Audio CD recording, discerning the subtle coughs, sniffles and sips of water amongst the members of the orchestra, reproduced by his stunning array of McIntosh tube amps and Avantgarde horn speakers.)

Every client whom I met was looking for the best equipment that money could buy, but what is the best, really? It was during my time at the shop that I recognized the distinction between price and value — and how the line between those two concepts is blurred by psychology.

Here are some lessons that I learned as an A/V salesman:

The Salesman's Playlist Is a Loaded Deck

There are some songs that make cheap speakers sound great (e.g. Santa Esmeralda's version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood") and other songs that make great speakers sound mediocre (e.g. the woofer-rattling "I've Seen all Good People" by Yes). A clever salesman can use demo material to steer a listener toward whatever speakers he wants to sell. That's why it's important for shoppers to bring their own demo material to listen to; very few do.

Audiophile Cables Are a Waste of Money

For those willing to spend $32,800 on a three meter length of silver speaker wire, there are a handful of manufacturers that are happy to make it. However, even the best demo song or movie soundtrack was probably mastered on $5 worth of copper wire housed in a PVC jacket.

I know this because our house electrician specialized in wiring recording studios and he used American Recorder cables exclusively in his builds. When we tested his budget cables against “audiophile cables” from MIT, Kimber and AudioQuest, we couldn't detect a difference. Nevertheless, our customers hated the idea of cheap cables, so we dropped the line.

(Note: Some cables are legitimately expensive, like long-run optical HDMI cables.)

Even Expensive Speakers Are Relatively Cheap

In the pre-Internet era, a pair of $600 speakers cost the retailer $300. The store bought them from a wholesaler for $150. The warehouse bought them from the manufacturer for $75. And the manufacturer spent less than $40 in materials. This was a concept known as "keystone markup."

The retail supply chain has changed a lot over the last 20 years, but the ratio between a speaker's cost and its sale price hasn't changed much. The upshot is this: Never pay full price for speakers.

To illustrate this point, I present the price history of KEF's model Q150, which has a $599 MSRP (for a pair), yet is regularly discounted to $299. This kind of price fluctuation is commonplace.

Premium Brands Don’t Mean Premium Quality

During my time as a salesman, our top-of-the-line Pioneer Elite DVD players were made by Sharp Corporation. Ten years later, Audioholics revealed that Lexicon's $3,500 THX-certified BD-30 Blu-ray player was little more than Oppo's $500 BDP-83 stuffed inside of an aluminum case. Oof!

Notwithstanding the stories above, my time on the sales floor also taught me valuable and practical lessons about physics and audio engineering. For example, "the subwoofer crawl.” To find the ideal position for a subwoofer, the listener should place the sub where he or she sits, then crawl around the listening room until finding the spot where the bass sounds best. That’s where the subwoofer goes.

Running two subwoofers in a room? There is a chance that the monaural sound waves from one of the subwoofers may cancel out the waves from its sister sub. To combat this problem, many subwoofers have polarity switches or phase shifting dials that allow 180 degree incremental changes.

The A/V world is about nuance, but in the end, what looks and sounds "the best" is as subjective as any other sensory experience and equally prone to prejudice and placebo effects.

The ultimate decision of what is good or bad, worth it or not, is for the listener to decide.