Speaker Recommendation Help Please.

You might consider Harbeth SHL5plus XD, which aren't small standmounts and could use placement a bit away from the wall, but are fantastic and are excellent with the Hegel H390. 

I like your layout - I love open concept and the modern touches.

And I have a different layout but very large open area with 12'ft ceilings and an additional tray that goes up as well as the stairway going to the ground floor.

An area rug and comfortable couch are excellent additions for comfort as well as sound treatments - I also have cellular blinds as window treatments to help manage the sound.

I am a big fan of Sonus faber - I have the Olympica Nova Vs.  Previously I owned the the Sonetto Vs.  

That being said I think you have an excellent pool of speakers - you're real decision is what is the sonic character you like.  Tweeter characteristics, the construction of the cabinet and efficiency of the speaker. 

Enjoy the journey! 

As others have said, where ever you end up with speakers, a large heavy area rug for your seating area would be really important. I would also look to drape the fireplace with a fabric buffer. Think like a heavy curtain material as a valance. Let your wife have at it there. Can change with the seasons as a decorative touch. You could test the affect it has on your sound with a blanket initially. Those hard marble edges that close to the speakers will make upper mids and highs messy. A plant (ficus, fern, ivy) on the right will help diffuse your widow wall on that side.

Speaker comments and recommendations to date are good. I would also look at closed box, or front ported, and would also add in that I think speakers with ribbon tweeters would work well in your space and add some of the sonic experience you are used to with your headphone lineup.  If acceptable to spatial plans, I would also consider moving the seating area a foot or so closer to the kitchen area and widening the speaker placement to compensate. Adjust toward a 10’+ from speakers to open up the sonic space a little more, rather than near field.

I don’t know what the issues would be for Canada, but you may want to look at the Ascend Acoustics Luna. http://ascendacoustics.com/pages/products/speakers/luna/luna.html.

Give them a call, they offer in home trail, and are responsive to phone inquiry and are helpful. I am not a super high end audiophile, but find their speakers very natural sounding, accurate, and fast responding. Even their Sierra line would work with 1 foot from front wall and damper foam in the rear port. My listening space in an apartment is awful, no depth, no space behind listening position, 8 ft. ceiling, about 10’ deep so closer to near field, and very close left wall are real issues. Would love maggies cause i love their sound, but I don’t have the space for them, or a lot of speakers that I could really appreciate.

I haven’t heard the Paradigm Active 20’s, but will say that I have heard their passive small speakers, and find that to my ears they only work well in a very narrow volume range. Balance of woofer and tweeter only work well at reference volume or slightly above (maybe 85 to 90db didn’t really push them higher). Terrible at lower volume (the dark sound you referenced, and no coherence ).

M y first thought was to echo the earlier recommendation of Larsen loudspeakers which are deliberately engineered to be put up against the wall.   I found them to have a good tonal balance and clarity, but they also had a rather 2 dimensional image.  Being up against the wall, that's not surprising and something I'd consider to be an acceptable compromise as getting rid of the wife isn't an option.

But the Larsen 9 is a $15,000 loudspeaker, and you still haven't bought a power amp yet.  So if you're in that price range, then I heartily recommend the Dutch & Dutch 8c, which is one of the very best loudspeakers I've heard at any price.  Just extraordinary.  They have some of the very most amazing imaging I've EVER heard in any loudspeaker.  They also have a very powerful deep end.   It's a complete system.

The D & D 8c is much more than just a good loudspeaker.  It is a tri-amplified powered loudspeaker with built-in DSP EQ as well as a built-in DAC.   Part of the setup is that it accounts for the distance to the rear wall, and it is also engineered to play with a wall directly behind it.  

You don't say what you use for your source, but if you're strictly digital, then this is the whole system.  You could use a laptop for your digital source and just connect directly to the D & D 8c over the house network and you're done.  No preamp and power amp with cables and such.  Talk about a happy wife!

Note in this photo that the speakers are just a few inches in front of a flat wall behind them.  Looks like your situation to me.    They retail for $12,000, which may sound like a lot, but it's a total system cost.  Remember that most any other loudspeaker will still mean you're buying amplifiers, cables, etc, and all that stuff has to go somewhere.

Nicely detailed post!  Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has got one.  As someone who has the Sabrina X's, I highly recommend them.  Although I have a small music room, 11x11x11, they are perfect for me, and I have them about 2 ft from the rear wall.  They are driven by a Pass Labs 250.8.  Don't worry about placement . .  although it's always good to have a Wilson dealer set them up, you can easily get them in close to if not the perfect place.  They go plenty loud (more than I will ever need).  Since they would be set up for your listening area, 10 ft is great, toe'd in slightly.  Plus they have all of the latest Wilson tech, like the tweeter from the super high end model, and the entire cabinet is X material.