DIY home audio advice

I'm needing a good DIY project speakers and amplifiers. I'm open to suggestions--In fact I'm almost desperate. Over the past two months I've read four books on loudspeaker design (one by Colloms, 2 by Weems, and another), scoured the forums of DIYaudio.com and here, and looked at every kit/design I can think of from zalytron, speakercity.com, madisound.com, Elliot Sound Products sound.au.com, sealelectronics.com, etc. I don't want to spend more than $1,000 for speakers minus the cabinets and no more that $500-$700 on amplifiers. I'd like for it to be an upgrade from my Biro L/1's and Van alstine Fet/Valve amp (that's the problem). Which is why if the kit speaker has a text book crossover, I'd be interested in Biamping, if an electonic design of the same slope is equivalent? I.e. is 4th order passive equivalent to 4th order active?
I'd prefer a two way design. No MTM D'Appollito designs--I have strong reservations on them, especially when the cost of the extra driver is added. The zalytron kit jupiter/mars seems interesting, the one with the 8" cabasse driver?? Does anyone have experience with it, and if so how smooth was the frequency response in that system? I really like the raven tweeters (however, the hiquphons are nice too). The seal electronics kits seem the best so far amps, short of building from scratch off the circuits presented at sound.au.com, which I can't do yet, but hope to get to one day. But please feel free to throw out anything you want.
My concern with D'appolitos is that as one moves vertically off-axis the upper driver is advanced in the time domain to the ear relative to the lower driver and at certain angles cancellation and reinforcement of frequencies occurs. Not to mention, even on axis, the ambient energy in the room with such designs tends to have some weird things in the 1khz region. The Biro Technology website has an very good article on it. I still won't discredit the design, John Dunlavy does them religuously, but with the cost of the extra driver thrown in, there are other arrangements one can do, at least for bass performance. I'd still prefer a two driver two way. I had seen a kit called the Murphy Blaster 1 that looked well designed using the Hiquphon tweeter with a GR-research or peerless mid/bass, but I've never heard anyone's experiences with it and skeptical if it would be an upgrade, although I don't doubt its good value for the money? And if I wasn't interested in upgrading, I'd almost go for it.

Any help appreciated. Sorry its all a little disarray.