Yes make sure to call ahead and let them know you are interested in demos, so they can schedule time for you and get things set up, so you don’t mess with any of their plans
And being honest is a bigger thing too, don’t try and trick them into thinking you are going to buy, be upfront that you are not looking to walk out of there with a system
Yes, thank you and @Polygonhell for the store advice. When I’m close to the savings I want, I’ll email them through their website and ask when they have an open spot. I’ll be honest and say I’m just trying to see what’s out there. It’s a route I’ve been afraid of persuing for a while. (Still want those spatial’s to win out after trying things tbh 
)
It depends on what you end up demoing, it’s hard to compare a traditional speaker to open baffle, pretty different, but some really like open and some don’t so it depends for sure. Perhaps you end up demoing horns or planar or something and that catches your attention. You never know lol. Lots of good stuff out there. (Also if you are into open baffle have you looked into pure audio project speakers?)
Totally agree with you.
I imagine that this is true too for evaluating a new headphone, piece of gear or component change to the system?
I have several lists of tracks, all familiar to me and that I enjoy that I use to hear changes or determine if the qualities I like in those tracks remain. However, sometimes I feel that hinders me to a degree because I have a preconceived notion on what it should sound like, if that makes any sense. IT slows my evaluation down. I almost always dislike everything new and it takes me an unusually long time to come around hearing the differences good or bad.
Same question here too, different angle should I listen to new music when evaluating. Perhaps not exploring new genre, but different artists and track sets than are part of my library?
That’s what I do personally, if I’m going to evaluate things, I’m just going to hit it with normal use with a mix of my entire lib, if it only holds up to cherry picked test tracks that’s no good to me
If you are looking to quickly evaluate, I’d stick with music that’s actually known to you, music you care about which evokes an emotional response, and judge from there. If you are doing more long term eval then new music might be cool to introduce in, but if you are doing more limited time eval then stick to what you know
I should add something about that in there actually
Random, but important advice. Keep all of your boxes, especially if you think you may want to resell in the future
For me, if you take the time to enjoy the step you’re on, you’ll forget you “need” to take any other steps up.
I learned how to evaluate a reviewer . using my own preferences as a reference.
To not get to hyped by zeos reviews.
Buy a product for what it offers right now, not for what it might offer in the future.
A good example of this is Roon.
Ever since Apple Music came out with a lossless tier many Roon users question of its future.
Nothing wrong with that.
But if Roon meets your needs as you are right now then enjoy using it.
If they fall in the future then move on.
First 3 things I bought off his req i utterly loved (mk3 argon, nanna v1, and honey h1) so I got lulled into a false sense of security. Then I bought starlights for full retail and just oof man. Those are rough for the price. Like a solid $500 iem, bjt I think I paid like 800-900? Not a good move
Hands on > Reading about it
Hard relate
My intro to HiFi started nearly 20 years ago when I bought a new house with room for a home theater. I started by shopping for projectors and quickly discovered that video was going to be very expensive, so I decided to shop for audio, instead.
Some of the very first advice I came across for how to audition speakers was “listen to what you know.” Initially, that advice felt like a cop out–after all, I owned a couple thousand CDs spanning multiple genres. So, how do you narrow down the choices when you like “everything”?
I ended up burning 3 CDs worth of various tracks covering a variety of styles and took those all over the greater Phoenix area to audition every setup I could find. I must have listened for hundreds of hours before I finally settled on Sonus Faber Cremonas. They were quite a bit more expensive than I had originally expected to spend on audio, but I had experienced soundstage with depth on them, and they excelled with every type of music I threw at them.
That whole auditioning experience led me to appreciate the intent of the advice to “listen to what you know” in a proper context: that is, music is both art and science, and although you can certainly focus on tracks that do certain things objectively (like “Why So Serious?” for sub bass), the fact is that we listen to music because of how we connect with it emotionally, and the tracks we love best are the ones we’re most attuned to pick up on subtle nuances and details across different playback chains. Plus, well, that’s the material we want to hear at its best.
–
Headphones have afforded me opportunities to explore a far more varied range of products and tunings and technologies. In retrospect, it feels like exploring headphones might be a good precursor to doing the same in speakers. The reason is preference.
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned in HiFi is that there is no one singular definition of “best.” There is no one, universal measurement for audio “goodness.” There are, perhaps, a handful of ideals one might define to prioritize certain things, but the bottom line is that objective performance might inform where system bottlenecks exist, but measurements do not, cannot, account for personal tastes.
MidFi level headphones are a good place to discover personal preferences–there is a lot of variety, stuff is easy to drive, and sound quality is good enough to get a feel for how audio presentations can vary and what aspects you find appealing, like how important is soundstage? Are V tunings more fun than more neutral presentations, or are neutral tunings a better representation of what the artist intended? Answers like these fall within the realm of opinion, and you have to try stuff to discover your own preferences.
FWIW, my head-fi chains of choice are May → Susvara on a McIntosh 8207 for ultimate “realism” and VC on Pendant for sublime musical tuning. MEST MkII customs are in a category of their own thanks to the uniqueness of bone conduction; they’re a favorite for portable listening, and a frequent choice even at home on a desktop rig.
So that’s at least 3 “best” playback chains, not counting my speakers. And then there are still certain headphones I like for certain things, like 1990s for aggressive Industrial music, or Denon 5900’s smooth stylings for chill classic rock.
Point is, a lot of people (myself included) start out looking for THE best audio products, and there’s not a THE best. There are as many best options as you need there to be, like knives in a knife block, or ice cream flavors. The best choice at any given moment is a function of preferences, mood, etc.
Perfect explanation for every intro post so far 
This whole paragraph is excelent btw. Strong, strong agree.
Welcome btw
It’s actually insane to me to think you got into HiFi stuff 20 years ago. I feel like I am probably one of the younger members here lol
This is kind of where I’m at right now tbh. I think I’m slowly getting there, but there are some high end headphones I have watched tons of reviews/videos on that I would really like to test out… problem with testing things out is audio meets aren’t really a thing with covid still running rampant, so the longer I sit curious, the more I want to buy some of them! 
Welcome to the forum by the way 
Yeah, access to gear can be a real pain. Turns out Phoenix is a desert for headphones, too.
I felt my way through headfi through series of careful purchases. The upside is that it’s maybe the most efficient way to get experience with gear: buy something people like and enjoy it! Get to know it, and see how people compare it to other products. Use that to pick a next purchase, and so on.
The downside is that once you start down that path it can become a runaway train, lol. And an expensive one at that.
I bought HD 650s around the time I put my theater together (2004-ish). I paid about $350 for them at the time, which was pretty uncomfortable. I was fine with those for years.
Fast forward to a few years ago, and I picked up a 6xx from Drop so my wife could have her own set. Then I decided I should get a real headphone amp, so I got an Aune X1S. Then I wondered what “tube sound” meant, so I got a Little Dot.
Eventually I decided I just wanted to learn as much as possible, and that led to getting in pretty deep. Like, I have to keep a list in my profile to recall what I have, lol. I also went a little overboard exploring certain product lines. For example:
The trap of MidFi is that there are so many competent products that it’s easy to sink tons of money into collecting them. It’s also impossible to know, without a lot of listening experience, what you should try and what’s maybe safe to pass up.
There are a lot of ways to work through that phase. I chose brute force, buying up gear opportunistically as sales presented (I got a bit lucky). I wanted to keep around a selection of reference headphones to help compare and contrast for friends. I saw others buy used and constantly sell off gear to trade up.
At the end of the day, though, it’s all about accumulating experience, and you can’t really screw that up–just pick something that seems appealing and dive in. Just be aware that everything is great, there’s always better stuff for a little bit more, and you’ll spend as much as you let yourself spend. I used to find $350 uncomfortable, and now if a thing isn’t at least $1000 I automatically assume it probably won’t be worth my time.
Strange how that works, but I’m far from the only one, lol. It’s nice to feel in good company.
And thanks for the welcome.
Im trapped in midfi and kinda very comfy here. nice price-to-sound-signature ratio 
This… is true haha. I thought I would be fine with like ~500 bucks for my set up and now I have like over 3k invested probably at this point and plan to delve deeper in the future. Finding new sounds and signatures is genuinely so interesting… even if it isn’t to my taste, just trying new things out is really fun - exploring the world of sound. I would imagine that’s how most people end up in this hole of HiFi that I am now invested in lol.
Yeah, I feel like that’s about where I’m at right now tbh haha. I am curious what is your favorite focal, since it seems like you have almost all of them in that picture 
I really do appreciate your insight though, glad you are here!!
