Visit to Music Direct (Archived 9/14/2018)

After over 20 years of being a VPI dealer, this is the first visit we made to the Music Direct home base operation!   Starting the trip with a full tour and meet and greet of the staff, I was immediately impressed by the incredible size and staff of the building!  Imagine the largest record store you have ever been in, times it by five and you are still not even close to the wide selection of vinyl MD has to offer!

After the tour and salivating over all the choices, we checked out the listening rooms and hardware.  As a customer the first part you walk into is a wide range of used records you can comb through and demo on the spot with an active entry level system.  Aside from the used records, there are a number of used/trade-in hardware that is also available and ready for demo.

Next you walk into their main listening room which features a wide selection of brands with a VPI Player, Prime Scout, Prime Signature, Avenger Reference, and our partnered brand, the ML No. 515 on active display.  The systems were all intuitive and properly paired together to make sense for their price points.  There was also fair comparison set-ups where customers could easily demo two different products without any variables.   That is always the best was to get an accurate demonstration on the differences between products.

Their final room was their top tier system using the VPI Titan with JBL speakers, Lyra Atlas and more.  They certainly took care in creating their demo rooms because during a listening session a train went by and even though you could feel the rumbling from the tracks, nothing went through and interfered with the system. It was a pleasure listening to the Titan in this system.

Besides the fine company and fantastic music, the other object of this visit was for additional VPI training for the technical team at MD.  The training consisted of the ins-and-outs of the VPI product line and finer detailed point from build, upgrading, and servicing.  Of course the training was led by the new VPI CEO, Shyla Weisfeld (just kidding!)

The MD team also had presentations about the future direction and what to be expected from VPI going into 2019 with our 40th Anniversary!  Ending on a high note I had a chance to share some screen time with Brand Ambassador Bes Nievera.