"Absolute best" used speaker for $8-10K

I'll second Chris #1's vote for the Avantgarde Duo's....... I'm loving mine.

Chris #2

I don't know how big your room is and I don't understand your $8,000.00-$10,000.00 unless that's just a "I want a really good floor standing speaker".

The reason that I bring that up is that I believe that the Thiel 2.4 for around $4,000.00 new is a very good speaker that you might consider.

Thiel's may be very demanding on the quality of your equipment, but being that accurate isn't necessarily a bad thing. With your extra money you could even upgrade your other equipment.

I hope that you'll at least give them a listen, I'd take them over the B&W 803 D's that I've heard without a second thought. That's nothing against B&W, eight months ago I finally replaced my B&W Silver Signature's that I had for the last nine years. I didn't get the Thiel 2.4's because I have a small room, 10x12, and the Harmonic Precision Caravelle monitors worked better.

I would vote for the Nautilus 800N because it has a wide freq. range. And it had the best look of all the speakers in this range. I can give the right proportions of voices and instruments. It gives a very good image of a recording. Just take a change to listen to them. It is one of the few "big" speakers who is capable of giving the intimacy of a very good small monitor. When you listen to recording with only a few instruments it can blow away almost every speaker. I done this tests with many popular speakers in this range. Listen and you'll understand

With a really good system in front of it. IMO Eidolons are hard to beat at any price.

Good Luck,
Tom

Thank you all for your recommendations. Room size is around 20 x 30 and music is mostly soft rock, adult comtemporary and jazz.
I absolutely love female vocalist like Celine Dion, Diana Krall, Patricia Kass and Norah Jones are just some of my all time fav.
The closer and the more intimate I can get to the artist recording and that is my ticket to audio paradise.