Gone are the days of the great audition.

There is a new model developing. HiFi seems to be becoming more of a cottage industry, with one man operations selling direct. They often offer home demo's with owners of the speakers. I have Daedalus speakers and Lou Hinkley offers that to potential buyers.

I would find this more useful anyway, you feel less under pressure than in a shop, where time is money, you can listen in a home setting and speak to an owner who has long term experience with a product

Would you travel and pay an "audition fee" at an audition house? Perhaps allowing you to compare 16 different speakers exclusively from on line retailers?
You don't buy them at the audition house, you just go there to pay for the capability of personal comparison and listening pleasure. How about that?

Not likely 16 manufactuers really want their babies in that much head to head battle, if you had to pay for the speakers you'd need an awful lot of auditions.

Rocker...that is where i was heading. I'm wondering if there is a business model there. I would gladly pay 100 bucks for a few hours of listening with no pressure from salemen.
I'm sure audiofests are similar, but you have to wait and wait for them to come every year!
I'm still waiting to hear suggestions for the perfect speaker that will expose the high fequencies on my prima luna prologue 5. A local dealer offered to let me bring it in and try it out with some of his Linn,Vandersteens and Sonus Fabers...

02-16-13: Jmacinnis
So what type speakers would be "unfriendly" with a 40-60 watt tube amp then? Sensitivity below x???

With tube amps it's more than just a power thing; it's an output impedance/damping factor thing as well.

First, with the power, it's a combination of speaker sensitivity and room size. 36 wpc may be plenty for a speaker of 87 dB efficiency and up in a mostly enclosed room up to--say--14x18. If it's a much bigger room or open architecture and you listen to big band, metal, and/or largescale orchestra, the power may not be enough. If you listen to more acoustic small ensemble music it could be fine.

The other part is that some tube amps have a high output impedance, which means they need to see a load of 8 ohms or more. Some speakers also require a higher damping factor (related to the amp's output impedance) to control woofer cone excursions. These factors comprise what is often meant by "tube friendly. That is, a speaker with a higher average impedance and no great requirements in damping factor.

In the case of your PrimaLuna, however, it has large enough output transformers to offer 4-ohm taps, so that part of the "tube friendly" equation is taken care of. Your amp is very highly reviewed internationally. Still, for a floorstanding full-range speaker the GoldenEar Triton series have built-in amplifiers to power the low bass drivers. This provides an easier task for your PrimaLuna to shine where it's best--the upper bass and above, especially the magic you get in a tube-driven midrange. And there are two locations in Greater DC where you can audition them.