Margin on speaker sales by high end dealer

Someone mentioned, buy used. I have done this several times (at a dealership). If they have a demo item you are in the market for, you can get a good deal and a full factory warranty.

Three_easy_payments is correct. 40%-50% GROSS margins might seem like a lot. However, once rents, utilities, insurance(s), wages, unemployment, flooring costs, etc. have been paid, the dealer might be left with 10-15%, if they are lucky. Then, they get the privilege of paying income taxes on that. So net profits could be less than 10% when all the smoke clears.

Too many people have no idea about business or how they run so they try looking at things like gross profits in a vacuum and think that when they buy a $12k pair of speakers, the whole store closes early and rents a private jet for a trip to Milan for the week, or something.

three_easy_payments and also paradisecom are both exemplifying exactly what I outlined, above.  We are on the same page.
emergingsoul, however, seems to have a view of business whereby the consumer would only be purchasing directly from the manufacture.  He doesn't state it that way, but his ideology of how business should operate, regarding profit margins, leaves only the "Direct to Consumer" business model as an option.  I imagine he would then complain they should be selling the items at a lower price since they have cut out the middle man.  An endless cycle of simply not understanding any business models at all, and that he (and all consumers, I guess) should basically be able to purchase products with little to no profit in play for the manufacture and/or the retail process to flourish.  An utter lack of understanding of business.

Upscale Audio carries many brands.  They are the US Distributor for Prima Luna and maybe one other, that I am not certain of.  The majority of the brands they carry are the same as with any other quality audio retailer.  I have known the owner for over 40 years and he is an upstanding guy and runs a wonderful business, catering to his customers very well.  I'm not quite sure what the issue is with the McIntosh unit cited above, having a dealer cost of $6K and a selling price of $21K.  Something is odd about that.  Trust, the margin for most electronics is about 40% and is not 3 to 6 times markup from cost.  A $10K retail item has a dealer cost of about $6K.
I worked in the consumer electronics industry for over 40 years, both home and car audio electronics of high end brands.  I managed the Western States of sales teams and for total sales & distribution.  I engaged with about 250 independent retailers and over 400 outlets, in total.  Not bragging, but I know this industry well.  High quality electronics have a profit margin from a low of 35% to a high of 45%.  Speakers have a profit margin from a low of 40% to a high of 55%.  There are typically backside business program benefits that range from 3% to as high as 10% but on most of the high cost electronics and speakers the average is around 4% to 5%.  And that is only if you are doing some substantial business volume.  The small retailers quite often do not see any backside program benefits.
This notion of exorbitantly high profit margins is simply incorrect.
Support your local independent retailer as often as possible.  If you can't because where you live there are no brick & mortar retailers then seek out any of the manufacture authorized e-commerce retailers.  The playing field is fairly level for all of these retailers and the vast majority of them are honest and upstanding business people.