I’ve received many B&H catalogs ether as hand me downs, and runins with people on the West Coast, or in the mailings these days, but I never made it there till October. I’m familiar with J&R in the Lower Manhattan area though.
Located on the West Side of Manhattan, just a couple blocks away from the Garment District (the off Fifth Ave stores that go from West 34th & 5th to 35th and 8th. I made the visit since it was on the way to the Javits Center, for that fluke of an East Coast NAB Show. This place is a must if you like broadcast grade A/V equipment (the enterprise class for videographers, audio, what have you.) I got studio grade headphones there, and you can buy any professional and commercial class stuff there. And if you can’t make it to New York, you can go online.
The store is still family owned and operated, devout Jewish faith, so they operate on a different calendar obviously and they close on every holiday in their religion.
Regardless, its a nice place, tight at times, busy, busier on other days; but you do not get the New York hustle by the sales clerks, (at least the people I ran into). I never liked using that phrase still I actually visited the city. Given their online catalog and paper catalog business, the warehouse is in the store. You’ll hear things grind up and down on the ceilings. The checkout is like going to some warehouse depot. The logistical operation is rather interesting to see for a family owned business with brick and mortar with a digital presence.
The phones were mixed of Polycoms and generic 2500 sets, which would most likely conclude it’s over a cloud or sorts.
Hey, those headphones are the ones I got, must be popular!
Sidenote:
It’s more common if you see a SIP phone, that it’s going out a cloud as opposed to an Asterisk. I say this because the Raspberry Pis and old PCs are actually more inefficient than having it run of some server and handling just a dozen users without problems. You may have ITSPs running off an Asterisk, because they have the scale to do so. Asterisks do work well in some applications, but to have it be a complete PBX would be just insane, and expect it do more than a dial tone service.