What does one purchase after owning horns?


I have owned Avantgarde Uno's and sold them because of the lack of bass to horn integration. I loved the dynamics, the midrange and highs. Now faced with a new speaker purchase, I demo speakers and they sound lifeless and contrived. The drama and beauty of live music and even the sound of percussion insturments like a piano are not at all convincing. I have an $8k budget for speakers give or take a thousand. My room is 13'X26' firing down the length. Any good ideas will be appreciated. My music prefrences are jazz/jazz vocalist.
renmeister
Is it just me? I read the title of this thread, "What does one purchase after owning horns?", and thought the owner was looking for alternatives to horns but a speaker that retained many of the great things the OP likes about horns?

(and English is my first language...)

However somehow we ended up with a toddlers fight in a sandbox? I wonder how any of this is intended to help the OP or is it simply an outlet for those with anger management issues and baggage/agendas from previous threads (the last sandbox fight)?
Renmeister, there is a "free lunch" available when combining low-damping-factor specialty tube amplifiers and speakers designed to work well with such. The low damping factor in effect changes the woofer's electrical damping in a way that increases bass output relative to what you'd get with a solid state amp. If the speaker designer anticipated this, he has tuned the box so that instead of the lower damping factor giving you a bass hump, it gives you more extended low bass.

Aside from dynamics, one of the things a good horn speaker does well is radiation pattern control, and as a result the reverberant energy in the room usually has a similar spectral balance to the first-arrival sound. This is one of the ways in which a good horn system emulates the behavior of live instruments, and is generally not a characteristic of more conventional speakers (though as one might anticipate from my post just upthread, there are exceptions!). I believe that minimizing the spectral discrepancy between the direct and reverberant sound reduces listening fatigue, and can explain why if anyone is interested.
Shadorne - What I got from Renmeister's opening post was this: He sold his horns because he was unable to integrate the horn he loved with his bass output. So he went looking for alternatives and found no non-horns that matched what he had given up. That led him to ask for suggestions as to how he might overcome this seeming contradiction.

I think your ATC speakers might well be the answer but I'm basing that on reputation, having never experienced them myself. Most of the other realistic suggestions focused on other horn options or wave guides (another name for horns?) or highly efficient conventional models. And a few have mentioned ways he could use the speakers he no longer has more advantageously.

For the most part the thread has been constructive. But, as you suggested, Weseixas the Troll could not resist disrupting a thread about horns with his unwanted praise of all things planar. Unsound tried to resist corrupting for as long as he could but ultimately had to enter as well being as he is only human.

However, if we ignore their nonsense, there is no reason why this thread cannot return to its original constructive path.

If any of you feel certain that you do not like horns then go quietly in whatever direction you prefer. Those of us who do like them would like to have an adult conversation without your petulant interruptions.
Thank you for your co-operation in this matter. I promise not to invade your planar threads.