Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

Trying to make a decision about purchasing a component by listening to it in a dealers showroom is challenging to say the least. In home auditions where equipment can be mated to your partnering gear and listening environment are an essential part of making good decisions. This is fairly easy with most electronics and dealers are often more flexible with short-term loans for these as opposed to speakers (unless they are small bookshelf models). The best dealers working with an established client will take the time and effort to bring speakers to your home, set them up for audition, and leave them with you for an agreed period of time. However IME this is understandably rare. For these reasons the approach that many take is to buy used. Here you can try components out at your leisure and resell what doesn't work out--usually without much of a loss. This was my approach for the first 20 years in the hobby and until I really figured out what I liked sonically and had strong relationships with manufacturers whose products fit my needs and who helped me to upgrade as they made improvements along the way. 

Most dealers will offer a discount on new equipment. Not all but most. I would work out the final sales cost beforehand. 

I may be wrong but I never heard of anyone not paying retail for a new, unboxed pair of current DeVore  speakers.  There aren’t that many dealers and they watch out for one another.  

+1 @bill_k and that’s what I did. The dealer lent me speakers on Saturday evening and I dutifully brought them back Monday and actually ended up buying the next model up. To me, a brick n mortar dealer’s core strength is giving the ability for listening auditions both in store and at home unless we’re talking about bohemeth speakers where it just might not be logistically feasible, but the 0/96 is definitely not that. If you’ve got two dealers and one has a very subpar listening room I agree with @stereo5 and get on the phone with DeVore and he might have something to say to these dealers. I certainly would if I was him. BTW, if you have a Joseph Audio dealer within driving distance I’d highly suggest giving their Perspective 2 a listen as they’re in the same price range. And if you end up buying them go back to both DeVore dealers and let them (and DeVore) know they lost a potential sale because they’re not customer centric and/or weren’t willing to make the effort.  I’d think losing a $13k sale would get their attention because they don’t seem to value the customer and maybe they’ll rethink the next time a guy like you comes through the door.  Best of luck.

I've had mixed results, mostly positive, but it's been 20 years since I did a home audition.

I had a local dealer that I had done business with for a long time, that would let me take home any speakers he had for an extended period, e.g. 1-2 weeks.

There was another local dealer from whom I bought my most recent pair of speakers, who would let me home demo only if I paid a fee.  Part of the fee was refundable if I bought the speakers, and part was not.  The dealer was not gonna deliver nor set up.  It was the non-refundable part that made me balk.  This was after auditioning several pairs of speakers in the shop, and deciding which speaker brand I wanted.  I wanted to home demo the floor standing model first, and if that didn't work, the bookshelf model.  The odd that neither would work seemed unlikely given the size of my room.

I ended up buying from a distributor I had dealt with in the past.  He shipped the fairly large speakers from St. Louis, and a dealer from Austin who happened to be vacationing in SF (I was in Marin) came over and set them up.  If I didn't like the speakers, I just had to pay for return shipping.