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Dealer Spotlight: Coup de Foudre Audio Video

By Rich Teer | June 12th, 2011

Earlier this year I was in Montreal for the Salon Son & Image (SSI)show. While I was there I had the opportunity to meet with a few of high-endaudio store owners and audiophiles not in the audio industry. One ofthe dealers I visited was Coup de Foudre Audio Video, just a few blocksfrom the hotel in which the SSI show was held.

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The store has the usual show room floor and dedicated demonstrationsuites (three of the latter), but what makes Coup de Foudre possiblyunique—and especially interesting to a gear head like me—is that thestore is also home to a well-equipped multitrack recording studio ownedby much-in-demand audio engineer (and Coup de Foudre co-owner) GraemeHumfrey! Packed with a large mixing console, 24-track 2” tape decks,and loads of ancillary processors, the studio was like an Aladdin’scave for me.

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Jennifer and Graeme are two of the most laid back and unassuming high-endstore owners I can think of. There’s not a trace of the snobberythat in some stores can sometimes make potential clients of entry-levelgear feel unworthy. (People who know me know that I appreciate a greatdeal of informality; these guys are right up my alley!) But don’t lettheir appearance and easy-going nature fool you: these guys are seriousabout providing the best high-end audio experience for their customers,and they know their stuff.

After listening to some music in one of their dedicated audio rooms anda tour of their impressive facility, I sat down for a chat with Coup deFoudre’s co-owner and store manager, Jennifer Cytrynbaum.

What’s your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.

My background is not actually from the world of music, although I am amusician and guitar player. I’m a self-taught, punk rock, power chordplayer, and I’m a fan of music and have been for ever. My industryhistory is not technical by any means or from the world of hi-fi atall. I started in this business back in 1995, working at the AudioCentre. I started there as a receptionist and at the time Graeme wasthe high-end manager. The Audio Centre on Sherbrook Street was one ofthe longest-standing, most respected shops in town, and at that time hehad just received Wilson [Audio] and he had a high-end room of which heoften kept the door locked. There was a volume of calls for the high-enddepartment and I kept having to run from the reception to Graeme’s roomto knock on the door and handle his clients while he was demoing. Onenight he was having a private event for Wilson speakers, and we werealone in the store. It was closing time, I was closing for cash, andhe was preparing for this evening demo. There was a 300 pound pair ofspeakers that needed to be moved and he came out and said, “Would youhelp me move these speakers?”. He looked at me sort of sarcasticallybecause I was a receptionist, and I helped him move these 300 pound pairof speakers without breaking a sweat. I think that was his “She’snot a wimp” moment, and was the first part of our relationship.

The second part of the relationship was him allowing me into the high-endroom. He would say things like, “This room is not for little girls,”and would close the door in my face. But because I was handling allof his important clients, I stepped in to the role of the assistant tothe high-end. When Audio Centre left Sherbrook Street and expanded intoCavendish, where they had a much larger floor space, I parlayed myselfinto the position of assistant to the high-end in the true sense of theword, where I was not only negotiating with Graeme’s clients, but Iwas also dealing with the high-end suppliers at that point, helping tobring gear in, and making sure that gear was sent in a timely fashionto his clients, and following up with birthday gifts and little stuffedteddy bears to keep them placated between waits for gear. So I’ve beena part of this business for a while.

Where did you get your love of hi-fi?

My brothers! When I was a kid, I had two older brothers who were reallyheavily into vinyl and they had hundreds of albums. I’m five or sixyears younger than them, so I would sneak in and listen to the 1960sand 1970s rock music. They had guitars, they were fanatic listeners,and they would test me on my knowledge of the albums. So they might show mean album cover and I needed to know who the artist was. They might play apiece of a song and insist that I know who the band was, and these wouldgive me privileges, to be able to sit in the room and listen to them. Iremember them locking themselves in the basement, listening to SteelyDan when that album came out, for about three weeks straight, analysingevery section of the tunes. Tons of Jimmy Hendrix and The Doors, so inthe 1970s, coming up in this I had an appreciation for not just the musicof the time, but also the gear. I was not allowed to touch the arm onthe turntable, so this is a bit of a vengeance here, where now I have mycrazy sound systems where, if my brother comes in, I say to him, “Youcan’t touch that!”, the way he used to say to me when I was a kid,and now I have my own vinyl shop where I can pick the albums that are thingsI’ve been fond of my whole life, in 180 g or 200 g. Even now, with mylove of punk rock, I think I’ve got a 200 g Ramones album, Buzzcocks,and it says right across the album somewhere in here in these racks,“Do not touch, do not open”. They’re my personal albums, so Iguess I’ve always been a fan of the music and the gear.

Revenge is best served cold when it comes to brothers, right?

[Laughs] Yes it is!

So how did you start Coup de Foudre?

When Graeme left Audio Centre he went back to recording and I managed amusic school for a couple of years. I was the headmistress of a privatemusic school running 300 students, dozens of teachers. We were off inour own corners doing our own thing, and at some point we got a callfrom a shop in New York and Graeme was going to be picked out to workin a store in Manhattan. We began the process of negotiations for that,which fell apart at the eleventh hour due to an immigration issue. I’man American citizen and I was in the deal. The two of us would go, hewas going to work in Manhattan, we were looking for a place in Brooklyn,and the idea folded. When we left the Audio Centre business we sort ofthought, “OK, we’ve kind of burned our interest in being a part ofthe commercial world of hi-fi,” which was becoming corrupt. There werea lot of big box stores, the politics weren’t great, and we had a realspecialised interest in what we were doing. That high-end room and thehigh-end department was its own entity, and it didn’t really fit intothe world of what was happening in the Montreal hi-fi scene. Thingshad become stagnant, we were frustrated...

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When the deal fell through in New York, Graeme and I sort of lookedat each other and said, “Well, why don’t we just do this forourselves?”, and within 72 hours we put in a couple of phone callsto old associates in the US and in Canada, and the Vegas show [CES]was coming up. We decided maybe a week before that show that we weregoing to Vegas and that we were going to open up our own store. We hadno appointments booked with any of our suppliers, we had no advancewarning to anybody that we were going to be there, and through thechain of our network of connections, within about five days we werebooked solid with all the top brands in the country. We were booked into see Avalon, DeVore, and a bunch of other brands. We made a list of 20of the brands we wanted to see, it’s still in a notebook that I havenow, and we just walked through the show and checked every one of themoff. We had a store in theory before we had a physical location, andour first hi-fi show. People were caught completely off guard that wewere back in the business, so when we walked into Las Vegas, all headsturned. They said, “Holy shit, Graeme is back. Jennifer and Graeme asa team, Graeme being the musician, the talent, the engineer, the ears,the industry sales guy, paired with Jennifer’s business sense, this isgonna be a major wave in Montreal. Things are going to happen now thathaven’t happened in the past.” So there was a lot of ripple effectin there. We did the hi-fi show here in town before having a store! Weconfirmed with our suppliers that we were going to do the first showwithout a showroom. Avalon Acoustics sent us a pair of Eidolon Diamonds inthe dead of winter. It was just prior to spring, there was a snow storm,Graeme and I drove in our car to pick up the speakers at the airport,we brought them into the house to break them in and invited friends tocome and listen. We broke them in in our living room. Nordost were sendingus cables, there was all kinds of support prior to getting to the show,and the day of the show the room was empty except for the speakers anda few little things that we had, and all of our suppliers showed withgear. Within about two hours the room was stocked! I’ve got picturesof that first show, we had a banner in the window, we had no address,our logo wasn’t even complete, and all of our suppliers came and showedus massive support, everybody showed up.

Isn’t it amazing when people do that and help you out?

Oh yeah! It was absurd; in this building the second floor was ourlistening room while the construction was going on. We had clientscome in, listen, and purchase loudspeakers from us before we ever hada showroom! So yeah, it was pretty good. Magic.

How important is it for you to have a great relationship with themanufacturers of the products you represent?

It’s absolutely imperative. In fact, it’s not just the relationshipswith the manufacturers, but the understanding of the entire productionand distribution process, because if I’m here representing a productto my client who has a relationship with me, I need to be able to back it 100%with my own loyalty to the brand, and if there’s something wrong withthe distribution chain where there is some corruption or there is someengineer that’s been fired from the production line or there is achange in the distribution process where my geography is not protected,or the product is some way in flux, then I can’t adequately representthe product to my client and so because Graeme knows the history ofthe industry so well and he’s been in it for so long, before we everstart a relationship with a manufacturer we are aware of the designersbehind the product, who is shipping it, who else in North America has theproduct so that the brand has proper representation world wide, so thateveryone stands in the same position when comes to the representation ofthe product because anything that someone else does with a product thatI have on my floor ultimately effects how my clients feel about theirpurchase. In the high-end, it is absolutely necessary to understandwho is behind the product that you’re representing and not just thedistributors but the manufacturers themselves, and even the designersbehind the product.

From a political standpoint, there are issues that we have personallyabout how manufacturers represent their product at a certain price. So,if a product is mass manufactured and the philosophy of the company is tomake more profits than it is to make great music, then I am uninterestedin participating in a business relationship with them. The priorityhas to be the music above all else, or the film in the case of a videoproduct, and that no expense is spared in the design and constructionof a high quality product that I can back. Even from the entry-levelproducts that I carry that may have a retail value of $1,000, I need toknow that I can call a telephone number and have a human being respondto my requests about a small home theatre amplifier because whoeveris coming in to this store is spending their hard-earned money on myword that the product is worth something, so it needs to have eitherintrinsic value in terms of the construction of the item, componentparts, or quality of construction or quality of design. If not, thenI’m a liar, and my $1,000 product represents my $100,000 product. Icannot have those two items inside my store and not have a relationshipbetween them either by quality or by philosophy. And so the smallerproducts still need to reflect that overall idea that the music comesfirst and that a small DAC inside of a small CD player needs to be agood DAC, and that the chassis cannot just contain a circuit board witha bunch of chips. It needs to contain component parts that have value,and have value over time so that when you leave here, the thing that youjust bought maintains its value over time either by pleasure because youenjoy it so much over a period of years, or because in the marketplaceit is respected as an item that contains some sort of quality of designor construction. That is hugely important to me.

Do you sell used gear in addition to new, and if so, roughly whatpercentage of your business comes from buyers of used gear?

In the hi-fi world that we’re in, a lot of people are in an evolutionof systems, so even if you’re a college kid that’s buying your firstsystem and you come in looking for a serious piece of hi-fi becauseyou’re a fan, I know that in ten years that client will be developinginto a home, into a wife, into a family, and if they remain in thisgeography and they are my client, I want to be able to cater to themthrough their whole musical evolution. They’ll go from a CD playeror little music server to a basic turntable to a bigger turntable to abigger pair of speakers to a... So a large portion of our business isin the trade in, trade up, used business. It’s important to us thatclients feel that they can have a relationship with us that spans theirwhole desire in the world of music, and yeah, we do a lot of that.

I guess not many people come in and say “I’ve not got a system,here’s a $500,000 cheque”. They usually tend to work their way upthe audio ladder as they become more interested.

Yeah, I would say about 30%. Oftentimes people will be ten years intotheir old system, and the value of it after ten years, while sentimental,is not necessarily marketable. So they have that great amp that they’veloved for ever but I can’t take it back on trade-in towards somethingnew, or they’re just ready to pass it along to their son, or it’sgoing into the basement or into the country house, or somewhere else,and they want a brand new system from scratch that’s based on somethingdifferent to what they’ve been doing in the past.

How has the global economic slowdown affected your business? Are morepeople buying used gear than before?

Noooo. I think that the people that have... Look, Montreal is nichemarket, and the products that we sell are considered luxury goods, despitethe fact that we have some items that are entry level and in a restrictedbudget range. In the last 18 months, I’ve noticed that the people whohave been spending on systems under the $5,000 mark have stopped spendingon those systems, and the people that are in that protected range,those that have disposable income and that have always had disposableincome continue to spend in the $10,000 and above category. So althoughit has slowed down considerably, like most people between 20% and 30%,we’re seeing an increase in those clients in upwards of $10,000 range,and they’re still buying big turntables, big amplifiers. They’reinvesting in quality pieces that they know will last them a lifetime.

What are the benefits of buying from Coup de Foudre?

Having a team as dedicated as we do here in this store, with the type ofhistory that we have both from a sound engineering standpoint with thestudio, with the musicians, with qualified consultants that we have here,that would probably be the largest benefit. It’s having a relationshipwith people you trust, understand what it is that we do, and help tosatisfy your desires. That’s our single most important goal. Asidefrom the fact that we have the world’s finest brands, we are probablyone of the top five in North America that’s able to offer Wilson Audio,Avalon Acoustics, Shindo and Spectral and VTL in the same store, and havequalified the people to be able to help you experience that preciousmusic or film I think is probably the greatest benefit that we have,and we show it to everybody. If you’re coming in to buy a $300 system,we’ll still play you a $300,000 system to say, “This is why we dothis. This is the ultimate experience of being there for the moment ofthe creation of this sound experience, of transporting you to that daywhen Miles Davis and his band recorded that sound you get shivers as ifyou’re in the best seat on the house.”

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So what are some of the brands that you represent?

In the entry-level we do Cambridge, Arcam, JM Labs (the Focalseries). Moving up from there we have VTL, Audio Physics, DeVore, Leben,Shindo, Clearaudio, Benz, Brinkmann in turntables. We do Wilson andAvalon in the high-end loudspeakers, Transparent cables, Cardas cables,Audiotorium 23 cables to go with the Shindo stuff. We are fans of theNordost power cables, we do MIT to go with the Spectral. Actually,Spectral is our most recent addition, and in Canada we are the onlySpectral dealer, and according to Rick Fryer, who is an extremely devotedengineer, we will be the only ones in Canada. It’s been years sincehe’s been in this marketplace, and certainly one of the most exclusivebrands on the planet. Because he is an engineer and lover of music morethan anything else, he gets to pick and choose where he puts his product,and how many pieces he builds in any given year, and so we are immenselyflattered to be able to offer them.

How would you describe your average customer, and roughly whatproportion of your customers are new (as opposed to repeat) business?

I would say that it’s about 50/50. The returning clients are seriousbuyers. They are in a portion of our business which is the stabilisingfactor and continuing growth for them, to satisfy their needs, and thenew client coming in is someone who’s heard from someone else that weare serious at what we do and that we can be counted on to take care oftheir needs, including a pipeline that is from designers and architects,and general contractors who work closely in people’s homes and whenpeople are trusting you in their home to develop a sound experience fortheir living you need to have a certain amount of confidence. So it’simportant that word of mouth referrals and the associates—other peoplein industries that deal in people’s homes—are able to say with someconfidence, “Coup de Foudre will be able to help you realise your dream,your project.” Even in a small sense, like speakers mounted in yourkitchen ceiling, so that when you’re preparing your dinner you canenjoy your music. That’s wonderful for us.

Roughly what proportion of your clients have analogue sources, andhow has that trend changed over the past few years?

We have a serious split in our clientele right now. I would say thata good 30% of our clients are listening to analogue sources, and theother portion who are moving away from CD and the whole frustratingexperience of that medium are now moving towards media servers. Computerswith mass storage, external drives, silent chassis, networking systems,wifi, transportable systems that make it easy for them to listen to avolume of music at an instant touch. So it’s a split, but I think thatoftentimes you’ll have both in the same listening experience. You’llhave the people that understand that they want their volume of musicwith it be in FLAC, AAC, or MP3, or whatever compressed format it isto be stored on hard drive to be able to access it anywhere, anytime,is wonderful. But to have a serious listening experience you need tohave your turntable. So while they’re cooking their dinner they’llbe listening to a playlist, and when they sit down with their cognacat the end of the meal, they want to hear their turntable. They want tosit down and drop the stylus and listen to an entire side of an album,rather than the schizophrenic experience of “next track, next track,next track”, and they can truly relax at that point, and really listento the music. That’s another experience altogether, and usually werecommend the two in conjunction. We will say to people, “If youhave your albums, hang on to them. Don’t sell that collection thatbelongs to your brother, cousin, uncle, grandmother. Keep those albumsbecause there will be a time when you are ready to sit down and listento and appreciate music in this way, and when you are, we’ll be hereto help you with the first used turntable at $600 where you can listento those scratchy 1980s albums that you’ve managed to hold on to,and build yourself up to the point where every garage sale you passyou’re pulling over to the side of the road to pick up that new pieceof vinyl or hunting through the ’Net for that 180 g pressing, Japanesepressing David Bowie, whatever it is you want to sit down and listen to,because there is no way to compare those two experiences”.

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We’ve listened to the top CD player, next to a similar price pointturntable, and because of the way sound is, which is an organic waveform, your brain automatically responds to the naturalness, the microfrequencies and harmonics that exist in an analogue source, that impactemotionally and psychologically in a completely different way. Thereis no disputing that fact, so even the best digital sources—andwe’re listening to EMM Labs, you know, Ed Meitner’s XDS1, one ofthe top CD players on the planet at this moment—and it still cannotreproduce that thing which is an analogue sound wave, which your bodyfeels, which your emotions respond to in ways that are so subtle that itslays the digital domain. Unfortunately, it is what it is, and even inour studio, where we have a very sophisticated digital suite for mixingtunes, we take the digital, transfer it to tape in order to accomplishthe type of dimension and weight and interest in the sound before we putit back into digital to send it off to the mastering suite. And it is amassive difference, right from the types of transformers that are usedin the analogue outboard part of the musical process, anybody who knowsanything about music in general or the production of sound knows thatyou cannot accomplish in zeros and ones, or squared off digital music,what a sound wave does. It’s just physically impossible.

Very eloquently put! I think for our readers, you’re preaching tothe choir, but it needs to be said. You host several after-hours eventsevery year. What impact do they have on your business, especially fromnew customers?

Oh man, we do all kinds of things! I’ve even shown wedding photographsin our theatre, at a private party of 20 people after a wedding partybecause they wanted to see them on a projector. I host studios thatwant to listen to their master tapes for the first time and need a high-ressystem to detect defects in their master recordings. I host movieparties; on Halloween I have friends in here for a Scary Movie marathon,and we have popcorn and my socks are tucked into the chair at the endof the night. We host events with manufactures, parties of every type:video launches, album launches, and so on. How these things affect myclient base in general: having the kind of space that I can receivepeople in great numbers and offer a venue of this type is great. Notall stores have this, but the grassroots, hands on, face to face,casual, social contact with clients—even if it is around a tube amp,or around a musical event—is vastly important to the type of confidenceand comfort that I feel in my marketplace. People come to us to hear thelatest, newest, most interesting. They share their experiences with us,and that affects a lot of things. As far as am I concerned, that’sthe finest way to market in your neighbourhood.

How do you decide whether to take on a new line?

We listen, above all else. People send us stuff all the time, theywant to be in the store and there are good brands out there that arerecognised, that are a license to print money, and we have refused someof those because they just don’t sound or look right. Aside from thelistening process, by group agreement, we all listed, we all share ouropinions about the system. It’s not a hierarchy here where if Graemesays “It’s good” we all say “Yes, Graeme, it’s good”.If someone in the team says it’s not good and here’s why, we have an opendiscussion and we listen to other people’s opinions about what we shouldbe listening to on the team. But basically, if it doesn’t sound right,we can’t have it. If it doesn’t look right we can’t sell it becausewe cannot lie. We’re sort of built that way, and honesty is a goodstrength but may be shooting us in the foot from a business perspective.

What’s the best demo session you can remember? And the worst?

There’s no specific individual demo that I can cite, but some of myfavourite demos usually involve someone who is discovering sound for thefirst time where after 30 minutes of an explanation of what 5.1 is, orwhat two channel stereo really is all about, when I start up the system,whatever the system is, and the speakers begin to image and they say,“It’s sounds like the singer is right there”, and they pointbetween the speakers, and they’ll say things like, “Is it just thatpair playing in the room?”, it gives me a true sense of joy that whatI am doing is somehow correct. Or the ability for a good film demo tocompletely evaporate the separation between the viewer and the picture andsound in front of them, and their defences are down and they’re invitedinto that experience, it is grand: one of the grandest experiences.

Shitty demos for me are usually based on a technical failure, somethingthat is missing, a cable that isn’t there, a power cord that isn’tright. One component, and because we are so exacting in the way weset up a demo, when we’re scrambling to put together a demo and therooms are full and there’re people trying to get in to listen andyou can’t find that interconnect that you know you have to have inthis system in order to make it sound how you want. Because we don’tset up crappy demos with crappy anything, my heart starts to pump andI feel like I’m going to fail, like I will not be able to present thething the way it should be presented and the panic sets in. The gear isalways good, I know I can execute a good sound, but if there is even aminor missing detail in the set up of a system before I play it for aclient, it’s disturbing to me. Or we’re looking for a piece of demomaterial in our thousands of discs, and I know this client really lovesthis one artist and flipping though drawers looking for that piece soI can give them what it is they want hear, and I can’t find it, thoseare the things that stop me from being able to execute. But in terms ofus properly demoing a system, we usually nail it. The gear speaks foritself, we just need to be there to plug it in.

As a specialist audio dealer, you presumably have access to prettymuch whatever gear you want. What’s currently in your home system?

[Laughs] That’s good! I’m not sure I should be mentioning all thesebrands, but I have a pair of ProAc Tablettes on a Maestro tube amp inthe kitchen. I have DeVore Gibbon 8s in my living room with my Unison S2tube amplifier. I have a custom Clearaudio turntable that was designedby Danny Lebreck here with a bamboo platter that was built from scratchfor me with individual component parts of my choosing. And I have EraSat 3 with a Sub 8 along with an Arcam Solo 2.1 theatre system witha Runco plasma television in my third room. I have a smaller RuncoLCD as well, Tivoli radios, Canto, lots of little things, I have Shureextreme high-end headphones, I have a pair of Grado GS-1000s, I mean Ihave tons of gear and often times I’ll switch stuff out, “OK I’mgoing to listen to this now, or I’m going to listen to that now”,but basically I’m tube analogue. Sometimes I’ll plug in my iPod,sometimes I’ll listen to digital files... That’s pretty much it.

Presumably you’ve become friends with many of your clients over the years?

[Laughs] You know what, as a retailer, I don’t really have time tomaintain relationships that could be considered friendships in the truesense of the word. Friends spend time hanging out and doing things,but I suppose that my greatest friends are within this business becauseit’s where I spend most of my time.

What’s next for Coup de Foudre?

I guess in the month of July we’ll be having another event in the storearound the jazz festival, so at that time I’ll be bringing in new Avalonspeakers and doing the official launch of Spectral within Canada. Thatwill be an event that I look forward to. Graeme’s working on a bunchof mixing for some very great local Quebec producers, so there willbe more work coming out of the studio, and I would like to evolve thatpart of our business into the world wide web and be able to offer highresolution recordings for purchase so that people can hear what we’redoing in here, so I guess more of the same. More of the same!

Contact Information

Coup de Foudre Audio Video
1110 Bleury Road
Montreal
QC H2Z 1N4
(514) 788-5066
www.cdfaudio.com

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