$3000 stand mounted speakers?

Compact floorstanders taking up same (or less) amount of real estate are so much more sonically satisfying IMO than stand mount bookshelves (my opinion only, but I demand full, room filling sound (which bookshelves can struggle with) -- personal taste), something like the Spendor A2 at $2.6k, but if you must go stand-mount, lots of great recommendations above ...

Plus I hate wasting money on stands when I could put it into the speakers.

Again, just my opinion. Back to normal programming ...

(that said, I own six pairs of bookshelves across several systems - best of those is Spendor SA1, but you can do better than that with $3k budget I’d imagine)

Check out the Revel 126be....  I owned the 106 and they were great with 40 watts of el34 in my medium room

surprised nobody has mentioned the Audience 1+1 V3, I have the 2+2, 4+4 and 1+1 All v2+, they have a very good WAF factor, i plan upgrading to the new V3, as a single driver with no crossover they have a coherence and tonal detail that belies the price, check out the latest reviews, here is a user review
https://www.audioshark.org/speakers-10/review-audience-clairaudient-1-1-v3-speakers-15287.html
for more bass a rel sub works very well

Legacy Studio HD

Harbeth P3ESR (with or without adding a REL sub) will be the only speaker you ever need to buy again