Have you ever wondered why speaker manufactures do not consign speakers to dealers?

@Larry5729,

You could join the Colorado Audio Society (CAS). Its full of like minded audio folk with many fine systems to hear when they have meets at various members' houses.  

How feasible is it to expect a dealer to have 1 example of every model carried, then work with company distribution to drop ship all orders ?   There would be an investment requirement to have basic stock but not as much as needed to carry inventory.

All of the above underscores why brick and mortar dealers are on the decline. I don’t want it to be that way, on the contrary, I would like to see a fluorishing and robust audio dealer network. But when I wanted to home demo Vandersteen 3As from a San Francisco-based dealer years ago and was willing to put up my credit to cover any damage in the transit, boxing, they refused. I only lived a few miles away at the time. They had an in-store demo pair that wasn’t in perfect condition either as you could see they had been moved around quite a bit by the various scuffs. I called Richard Vandersteen and spoke with him about my experience with that particular dealer and his reply was, to paraphrase, "yeah, I’m not happy about it, but some of them are like that." Sheesh.

I have no problem with such dealerships going bust if that’s the "common" approach to "selling."

Cutomers come FIRST. They are the LIFEBLOOD of ANY business, big or small.

@tastyfreeze: "I hate the traveling to demo but do not have any other choice."

Yes, you do. You can in-home demo directly from high quality manufactures such as SVS, PS Audio, Schiit, Liberty Audio, Wyred 4 Sound. I'm sure there are many others and the list is growing.

Stevecham, you are absolutely right about your above feelings.

We just boxed up a pair of Paradigm Persona 3F and a Naim amp and preamp/dac streamer and drove 40 mins to a guys house to home demo.

If you offered to put the gear on your credit card, help box and unbox the speakers the dealer was being difficult. 

There has to be an elastic relationship, as long as a key piece of demo gear is not out ouf our shop for more than a day we have no problems with lending out test gear. 

As per quality gear you can get from the above list, sorry most of them have restocking fees of 15% and without having a whole host of products to compare them with which is what a store offers you, it is hard to make a real judgement. We have had at one time JL audio, Paradigm, Kef subs all in the $1,500-2,000k price range for our clients to demo. 

If someone was considering PS Audio and didn't need a 250 watts, the new Krell amplifiers are freaking amazing sounding as well as the new Coda amps. 

Dave amd Troy 
Audio Doctor NJ