Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

@hilde45 as a midway option to explore before taking next steps, would the dealer permit you to listen to their O/96 speakers at their location with your source, your preamp, your cables? 

I personally wouldn't want to feel obligated to purchase speakers if I brought them home to try.  I also would want to risk damaging while in transit and then having to purchase them.

Try this for grins. Go to Devore Fidelity’s website and scroll through each authorized dealer, hitting the hyperlink to view each dealer’s site and lines. With some exceptions you will see that the vast majority carry what I call the small niche brands such as Well Tempered, Shindo, Leben, Sugden, et al. If audio dealers were movie theaters, they would be the small art houses rather than AMC Loews. These dealers are doing what they do for the love of the pursuit or they would not be selling such niche brands. By and large the owners of these shops will do whatever they can to please the customer but just don’t have the resources to cover the potential loss of income if a product is not available for audition because is out on loan and the inevitable wear and tear to the exterior finish of a delicate loudspeaker from being carted in and out of the store. I am not in the industry but having visited my Devore dealer selling out of his home as a pursuit of love supplementing his day job, this is my impression.

If you go to the dealer looking very serious in buying, And give your credit card info as deposit just in case something happen with the speakers. And sign a terms and condition papers? I don’t see any reason why the dealer will not loan you the speakers?Dealers can easily figure out if you are not seriously buying? Trust me they do.

I appreciate all the advice. I'm pretty clear about what I personally could do.

That said, keep YOUR stories about your experiences coming. Because there may be solutions out there or stories out there that might be useful to me or someone else.