Selling high quality audio equipment requires that potential customers have a place where they can listen to that equipment before they make a purchase decision. The goal of the customer is, after all, to purchase a lasting experience rather than a cartful of electronics. For them, it’s all about the sound. That means that high-end audio stores need one or more listening rooms in which to showcase the performance of the equipment.

The room should be small enough to be reminiscent of the room at the customer’s home in which they plan to place the equipment, yet big enough to accommodate several listeners and a sales associate without crowding. Comfortable and stylish furniture should be present as well. While the customer will listen with their ears, their comfort and surroundings can influence their experience as well. The room should be designed with furnishings that a typical customer might aspire to own. The goal is to have them be just one step above what the clients have in their own homes. While you’re not selling furniture, you want the customer to know that they can take a piece of this experience home with them – the audio piece.

Of course, of primary importance is the sound quality during the demonstration. If it doesn’t sound good in the showroom, there’s no way that you’ll ever convince a customer that it will sound better in their home if they pay good money for it. Most rooms will require some acoustic room treatments for optimal sound quality. Commercial spaces especially tend to have ductwork, flimsy ceilings, and other components that can make noise when they vibrate in sympathy to a certain resonant frequency being played within the room. The space above the ceiling should have a good layer of acoustic insulation. This will not only help absorb any extraneous noises, but will also act as a physical damper to prevent ductwork and other lightweight materials from rattling or “singing” along with the music being played.

Second, the walls of the listening room should be acoustically damped as well. The demonstration room is intended solely for careful, critical listening. The crispness and vocal clarity is going to be a focus for a potential customer. Echoes from solid wall surfaces can selectively reflect different frequencies in this range, making the music sound unnatural by changing the tonal balance that reaches the customer’s ear. No amount of EQ will fix this effect for the entire room since it is almost certainly going to vary with every seat in the house. The application of acoustic wall panels, however, can help reduce or eliminate this kind of room audio distortion and help maintain the purity of the audio between the loudspeakers and the customer’s ears.

It takes preparation to make a sale. Ensuring that the listening room is designed and equipped to provide an audio experience that the customer will want to take home is a big part of that preparation.

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