Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

Try this for grins. Go to Devore Fidelity’s website and scroll through each authorized dealer, hitting the hyperlink to view each dealer’s site and lines. With some exceptions you will see that the vast majority carry what I call the small niche brands such as Well Tempered, Shindo, Leben, Sugden, et al. If audio dealers were movie theaters, they would be the small art houses rather than AMC Loews. These dealers are doing what they do for the love of the pursuit or they would not be selling such niche brands. By and large the owners of these shops will do whatever they can to please the customer but just don’t have the resources to cover the potential loss of income if a product is not available for audition because is out on loan and the inevitable wear and tear to the exterior finish of a delicate loudspeaker from being carted in and out of the store. I am not in the industry but having visited my Devore dealer selling out of his home as a pursuit of love supplementing his day job, this is my impression.

If you go to the dealer looking very serious in buying, And give your credit card info as deposit just in case something happen with the speakers. And sign a terms and condition papers? I don’t see any reason why the dealer will not loan you the speakers?Dealers can easily figure out if you are not seriously buying? Trust me they do.

I appreciate all the advice. I'm pretty clear about what I personally could do.

That said, keep YOUR stories about your experiences coming. Because there may be solutions out there or stories out there that might be useful to me or someone else.

I can repeat what was said before:  I told the dealer I would buy a pair I really wanted  but just in case what's the return policy. He said: don't bother, take it home and see you Monday morning. He was really friendly and low-key. Then, the other dealer in town is so "high-end", he wants to see your DNA analysis and medical records before he'd let you in the door

Hi there hilde: ) - I found my best way forward was putting myself in the shoes of any dealer I met. And I realised how terribly inconvenienced I would be, and what a time consuming affair it would be to bring even a DAC over for a customer to audition, especially if it was across town. And I felt that the only thing that would make up for it all would be the passion of a customer, so exigently expressed that he or she took the first step of making a sincere offer to pay for the audition, fully refundable if purchase was made, but a one-off fee otherwise. So that’s how Ive always done it. The thought of ‘spending’ such money unnecessarily has never occurred to me, since the knowledge and learning I would be receiving from the audition would be so well worth the cost, if I didn’t proceed with the purchase. The vital side benefit of this way of being, is that I would obviously be pressed to think very thoroughly through all my reasons for wanting the audition, and thus only proceed with it with an earnestness worth the effort, and not waste anyone’s time or effort over passing thoughts. Learning costs money, and I would argue that the education of audiophile listening is one of the most profound, with the plethora and uncountable products out there to choose from. It is unfortunate that there are more than just a few of us in our amazing hobby indulge ourselves with privilege and entitlement without a care for those who serve us, as the one with the money is king. I try to play an even field, and talk with dealers in a way that helps them understand I owe my education to them, and not as though they owe their livelihoods to me. I have offered to pay usd600 for auditions of every DAC a dealer had at a time when I felt very seriously about the educational possibilities of front end equipment in order to make an informed decision about a particular purchase. In this way, I have earned a modicum of regard from many dealers, most of whom stopped accepting my offers for audition compensation after the first time. Most did not even accept the fee the first time, after agreeing and arriving for set-up, as they had a decent gauge of my sincerity by then. My audio journey of learning has leapfrogged in powerful ways this way - the six hundred I’d offered earned me the opportunity to listen to the mola mola tambaqui; aqua formula xhd and xhd v2; a Aries cerat Helena; and a wadax atlantis DAC. With these dacs, in rotation, I was able to persuade another dealer in like manner, and got to hear the dCs Vivaldi stack, MSB discrete, reference, and select 2 dacs. The learning of what different dacs do at different price points, and what different typologies of dacs sound like, made the fee offered seem as a drop in the ocean : )

In friendship - kevin