Noone is being brainwashed, I had never heard of Marantz or Paradigm or Energy, or SVS or any other specialized audio manufacturer before reading audioholics. It's just because they arent sold at Best Buy, Ultimate Electronics, and Circuit City which had been the only access that I had ever seen to audio products. Once learning about some of these other brands I began researching them and found some specialty stores in my area that carried them. For some things there is no comparison in sound from SOME models carried in Mass Market stores. I said some, there are products carried at these stores that hold their own against more known products. For example the Pioneer 1015tx I just purchased at Best Buy, checked out Marantz, Yamaha RXV line, Integra. For the money I couldn't beat the Pioneer, Best Buy even price matched it from an authorized internet retailer.
As for salesman never hearing about other products, I know from working in sales, no matter what you sell, your products are always the best, nobody can tell you different. And they will always push their products versus what they dont carry. Depending on where you go, they may in deed have never heard of any of these, I hate going to a place like best buy to look at audio, b/c I know more about it than probably everyone there selling it. If it's not something they sell, they have never heard of it, heck, even some of the stuff they do sell they dont know anything about. If you're going to specialty stores they are just feeding you BS that they have never heard of some of these brands, b/c everyone I've went into has pretty much heard of all of them, b/c they actually do research and learn about the products available so they can give pros and cons to sell their product over some other brand. Just as an example the Pioneer 9100tx and 9300tx, hundreds less than the supposed near duplicates of their Pioneer Elite counter parts, I was at ultimate electronics to check if they carried these and of course not b/c they carry the Elite line, I told the salesman they are the same receivers as the elite line, just rebadged to sell elsewhere. All he could tell me is that they were built using the same parts "but at different locations" and this different assembly plant made them worth the $400 more each. A completely BS statement but what does he have to gain from talking about the benefits of something he didnt sell.
