Road trip to demo $10,000 speakers

That's certainly a good idea.
I would also add this for in the room listening - turn the volume up and down not too fast. Good system should essentially sound the same and coherent, its character should be unchanged. Then leave it at your preferred listening level. In addition, listen near field as well, and walk around in the room. If you like it from any listening position, including in another room - that's good.

Shkong, thank you, yours is a reasonable suggestion. I'll keep it in mind when shopping for amps too, sometime in the future.

JackD, Good suggestion, Command Performance is actually my first planned stop. Spoke to them only a few days ago. They carry Magico and Focal, both of which I'd like to hear. 

Inna, How dare you disagree with me? (just kidding) I suppose there's no reason not to do it both ways, both to hear what the speakers are capable of doing, as well as what I might expect to be hearing at home if I don't win the lottery. I'll do the volumes changes and walk about the listening room when listening as you suggest also. Thanks for your suggestions.

Audiokinesis, thank you for your interesting out of the listening room suggestion to check how natural the reverberant field sounds, which as you say will correlate with possible listener fatigue. I will definitely try that out, and would have never thought of doing so without you suggesting it.. 

Mike

While you are at Command, don't overlook the Neat speakers and Devore.  They may not have the more expensive Neat models in the shop, but, that brand is worth exploring.

As to how to audition speakers, I suggest doing a lot of the listening at quite low volume level.  It is easy to get juiced when speakers are played at high volume, but, that tends to be deceiving.  If you listen at your normal, comfortable level, or even lower volume, and the music sounds flat and uninvolving, you should be concerned with being caught in the trap of looking for more and more power to get satisfying sound.  I think this is common problem with a lot of modern, high-end speaker-amp combinations.  

Also, set aside a lot of time for your visit to Deja Vu.   I doubt that you will encounter another place anything like it anywhere in your travels, so take in everything they have to offer.  In particular, listen to the custom-built stuff because it sounds quite different from most modern speakers.  The more mundane "regular" brands include Harbeth, ProAc and Audio Note.  

+1 on L.I.A.R. Live music, especially with unamplified instruments, always sounds "live" no matter where you sit or stand. If a system can pull that off, then its the optimum match among the components and high quality package. That's my acid test whenever someone asks me over to listen to their system and most systems, even some very expensive ones, can't reproduce that illusion from the adjacent room.
Duke speaks the truth.  

Thanks for mentioning the Neat speakers Larry. I've never heard of them before. I'll look at them while I'm at Command. I'll make sure I explore normal listening levels as you suggest too. Deja Vu does sound interesting.  I'm probably going to have to overnite in DC to take in all these places and speakers. Thanks

Kalali, I will definitely try listening from an adjacent room as you and Duke suggest, even if they think I'm leaving or ducking out. I can probably dig up some live acoustic music to bring along too. I think I might have some old well recorded live acoustic ECM label recordings I could locate. Thanks,

Mike