My go-to dealer is 1500 miles from my home. I recently was interested in some $12,000 speakers he sells and he shipped them to my home. My only obligation was to pay for shipping if I didn't buy them. I ended up not buying and it cost me a few hundred dollars. I really like to hear speakers in my home, not a dealer's room, so this worked well.
Have you ever wondered why speaker manufactures do not consign speakers to dealers?
How many of you have wanted to hear a pair of speakers and the dealer only has a pair of their low end speakers to listen to? I would say in most cases, dealers in Colorado have limited availability of speakers to listen to on their floor. How then is it possible to purchase a speaker without listening to it first? You would think speaker manufactures would want to sell their higher end speakers and consign at least three speaker models to dealers so they could have them available for their customers to listen to.