seeking advise please on my short list for new speakers? (15k budget)

ATC SCM 40As can be an endgame speaker.  Owned a pair for 5 years and loved them.  Only replaced by ATC SCM 50As.  

The ATC 40s will reflect each upgrade you place in front of them.  They particularly like the Gaia ll footers and XLR interconnects at the preamp side.  I doubted that until I converted unbalanced to balanced.  Of course you will need run XLR at the speaker side.

Sub is optional.  I found them quite adequate, but then mostly listen to non-bass demanding acoustic and vocal artists.  The attack speed on these is ridiculous. The immediacy of the performance is where they live.  

Best of luck finding what works best for you.

The persona 7f have some overbuilt woofers meaning you can eq the h e l l out of them if needed, however those speakers, even tho' they don't need gobs of power they are hyper sensitive to source. Dali Epicon is an older design dealers will deal. Dynaudio generally has great bass, Are you buying new electronics for the new speakers? If not home demo is essential.

The best realistic and natural sounding speaker is Wavetouch speakers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kodwkAktfOw

In the recording you can hear/understand the human voice and audio sound at the same time which no other audio system in the world does that and that makes WT a true natural sound speaker. Also, WT sounds the closest to the original music.

The original music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=682ePZmXKMo

Alex/Wavetouch

+1 for ProAc - with their outstanding ribbon tweeter (and I was a 'no ribbons' guy before I heard these). The D48R is in your price range. I have the prior model - the D-40R - and love them.