I've shopped at Audio Vision over the last 10 years or so and bought around 15K worth of kit there. I'd agree with most of the reviews below --- both the good and bad. Cris and Randy are cool to work with - decent guys who pretty are pretty straight up and know there stuff. But Antonio, the owner, is just a piece of work. He is incurably arrogant and opinionated -- sort of a parody of a bad hi fi salesman who takes his opinion on the inherently subjective subject of hi fi gear just a wee bit too seriously. I suppose I could deal with that, but I feel like I was sort of treated shabby to boot. For example, after big upgrades several times on some gear over a period of less than I year, he gave me a serious, serious haircut each time on my trade in -- contrast this with places like Music Lovers which will give you up to 100% trade in if you buy something twice the price. The difference is that Music Lovers want you to become a long term customer, whereas Antonio really just focuses on the business on a transaction by transaction basis. I also had trouble getting Antonio to demo stuff. I recall one time I wanted to demo a couple of turntables and he was constantly poking in the room trying to hustle me along even though there was only one other customer in the place. Another time I wanted to demo a couple of speakers and he made some snide remark about how he was hoping I wouldn't do "that side by side comparison thing". But when I returned a couple of weeks later to do just that and give them a good listen, he was impatient with me listening for more than half an hour in total even though the store was once again virtually empty. Bottom line is that I do everything I can to avoid shopping there -- I always walk away with the feeling like I've just spent time with a used car salesman. I will now only buy stuff there that I feel I can't get anywhere else.
more