Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

Yes, Utopia was demoed in a large room.  However:

1) Amplification: and yes, Boulder amplifiers were used.  Good observation, but I don't understand why you think they would be a bad choice.  I thought they quite complemented the Grand Utopia for showing off industrial cranes and forklifts needed to place the big heavy things, shiny boxes, and packaging for the marketing people. 

2) Personal: resellers.  You've covered that one very well...

3) Experience of listeners.  I honestly didn't give them a chance.  The large room was full of chairs and people wandering around, talking, etc.  My wife and I went in to see the turntable, and cartridges.  Just a few bars into the loud pop music booming through the Utopias and I felt it was time to go. 
I have listened enough, to enough systems, to usually be able to tell if something is worth critically evaluating within a pretty short time anyway.  But I usually need to find a "sweet spot" and music I am famaliar with, so I'm not blaming the speakers or amps for the recording, etc.  e.g. at the Avantgarde exhibit, I could tell by a piano run that an integration problem was around 300Hz. (Unos sounded terrible in that small room).   I ask if that was near where the woofer crossed in, and was told it crossed in at 280Hz. 

Anyway, yes, good luck to new owners. 
Maybe GM Lab publishes numbers, and resellers will come out with "magic tape measure" and bend the customer, I mean speaker, over 1458 different ways!
Robert

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site