[ProtegeManiac]

  Do these places burn there headphones or not?

 

 
 
I don't see how that is a good business practice to turn a profit 

 

[Walter Green]

LOL you know what i mean?

 

[sheldaze]

  Reviving a 6 year old thread, apologies. Hopefully a place or two has popped up in central Virginia I haven't been able to find since this thread was made. I've tried Best Buy but the selection there wasn't great, Guitar Center had maybe 7 headphones in boxes and not possible to demo, Audio Visions has a couple randoms to demo. So far no Sennheiser. A decent selection of Sennheiser or Hifiman would be awesome!

Not sure how far into central Virginia you are. We do have a fairly active community in the MD/DC/VA area, and we've basically held all our meets in VA between Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax. A small meet is scheduled for this weekend, just inside the Beltway.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  LOL you know what i mean?

 
Jut messing around. Kidding aside, demo units are pretty much "broken in" in all ways mechanical break-in can happen unless they just took it out of the box a day or so ago. People trying them out will break-in and soften the earpads, as well as put the drivers through their paces by listening. It won't have to be intentional for the store staff but in some cases if the player for the demo isn't whatever customers walked in with the headphone could be left running after one user didn't kill the source.

 

[amyprashar]

The only national-chain store I know of that sells decent headphones and lets you try them out is Guitar Center. Aside from that your best chance to hear anything close to a wide number of headphones would be at a meet. The Meets forum is here: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/list/24

The meet closest to you geographically that's next coming up looks like the North Carolina Canfest on 8/14, if that's not too far away for you. If you're remotely serious about auditioning headphones though, I think you'd find attending any kind of meet to be a very worthwhile experience, even if you have to travel a little bit to get to one.

Only the Wired ones they have..No wireless. Sad really sad. No store keeping wireless HP on demo. How to buy without listening to em'