Great question and one that I also was wondering about. When I was shopping for some expensive speakers recently, I couldn’t find any place to hear them. I called every dealer within several hours driving distance. Dealers whio carried the brand (KEF) told me they only could afford to stock a very limited selection of high end models. Can’t really blame the dealers. The investment to carry a wide selection of high end equipment is pretty big. I called the US distributor and asked how they could sell the speakers whien they weren’t available to audition. No satisfactory answer. You would think that consigning speakers or temporarily lending speakers to dealers is clearly in the manufactures’ interests since it obviously would promote sales. In the end, I bought KEF Reference 5 speakers but, because no one within several hundred miles stocked them, I didn’t I hear them until they were delivered (i based my decision on hearing the KEF Reference 3 which has many similarities). .
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.