Speaker performance in a not ideal listen room/area

That's a big room!   There will almost always be a difference in how a system sounds going from the dealer to your home, even if your room weren't that big and even if it were more of what you'd consider an "ideal" room.   And there are plenty of dealer rooms that are set up poorly, where your system will actually sound better in your own home than in the dealer's facility.   The goal, generally speaking, is to match the speaker and system to the room - you obviously wouldn't try to fill that big room with a pair of small monitors, but you can put together one heck of an amazing system for $50,000 or even less.   And yes, there will be a huge difference between what you can create with $1000 and what you can create with $50K.   Don't let yourself be restricted by the fact that the room maybe isn't what the speaker designer intended, or isn't "ideal".    Very few of us have perfect spaces - we're all dealing with challenges, from tiny rooms to odd-shaped rooms to having too many windows or tall ceilings etc.   Your challenge happens to be trying to fill a big space - it's not perfect, but don't let that stop you.  Don't aim for perfect - just aim for great.

Doug, I think you misinterpreted the progression above.  The "comment" about a $1000 speaker and $50,000 speaker being the same due to room wasn't a comment by anyone responding on the thread.  That was the actual question posed by the OP.  Nobody responding actually said what you think was said - only the OP made that comparison, and in the form of a question, to find out if people felt that way or not.  From all of the responses so far, nobody here is trying to sell the OP on that sentiment.