Cost no Object but Small Room

i think you have gotten a lot of good suggestions, but will just throw in my 2 cents for the Merlin VSM-MXe. I have an 11x18 room and I don't think for a room this size there is a better speaker, at least not for my taste, which as you know differs from listner to listner. I also think very highly of the Verity line. With your size room probaly the Fidelio would be the right size. While the Parsifals ar better, not for your room.

Thx Pubul...Merlin does interest me but not sure if they have distrubutor here in Hong Kong...did try the Parsifals and while the soundstaging...no the location of instruments within the soundstage was incredibly precise, and overall resolution was very impressive I did not find them to be my cup of tea. They lacked that body of tone, tonal color when called for ,..at least to me. Tubes may do the trick and perhaps my Darts which excel at this will help as well, but ceteris paribus I think some others that I have tried so far like the Magico Minis or Kharma Mini-Exquisties are more along my tastes.

James, you are the first one to comment on the V3s i've seen. Can u elaborate a bit more in relation to the Minis?

Check out the Tetra stuff, maybe 506, 406, etc. www.tetraspeakers.com. These are somehow a bit different than most other box speakers... They have a different feel. These are fairly popular with musicians - they cerainly aren't studio monitors, but are sort of the 50/50 blend of 'the high end' with professional recording requirements - which have much better nearfield listening characteristics and overall are more accurate to the recording, sometimes to a slight fault where other epeakers we might be more used to are colored in a way that perhaps improves bad/flawed recordings.

The main thing here is that they certianly hold their own versus similarly prices 'high end' speakers and have really incredible nearfield response (not always a goal for high end speakers), so could be perfect.

You really must treat the room, otherwise you will never get the best performance from any speaker that lives in it.
The smaller the room, the more it needs to be treated.
Take some of the money you plan on spending on speakers and buy some bass traps for the corners and RFZ panels for the 1st reflection points. This is money well spent and you will not regret it. Take a look at Real Traps and budget about $4k if you are serious about getting a good sounding room, regardless of speaker choice.

Frank ....most definitely. I am currently constructing the room to reflect this, real traps, corner taps etc.

Lightminer: yes indeed...i saw similiar comments from reviews...nice to hear a fellow audiogoner to confirm. will check them out!