There is no excuse for not auditioning before purchase, unless you can get a dealer/manufacturer to send them to you with a 7 day return policy with no restocking fee.
Somebody mentioned they wouldn’t fly because it would be an expensive plane ticket. What’s the alternative, spend $100k on a speaker and you don’t like it, so you send it back with a 15% restocking fee, which would be $15,000. So what’s more expensive, a plane ticket or the restocking fee?
Or worse case, you can’t return the speakers so you sell them, probably at a 20% loss or more if you can sell them.
Spend a few bucks and go to a few audio shows and listen to as many speakers as you can. Or you can travel to a few dealers that carry the speakers you think you might like, it can be a little vacation and it could save you a lot of money in the long run.
1 more thing, when people ask an open ended question like you did, you could get tens to hundreds of responses all giving you unique set of speakers. How will this help you? Same goes for relying on audio reviews. This is the worst thing you can do since every review of an audio component in a magazine is the best of the best, never a negative review. Again, how is this going to help you make a decision?
Good luck