Speaker recommendation for married couple

With 6 foot ceilings, you may have a lot of unwanted reflection from that source.

I have 7 foot ceilings, and I solved the problem by putting in a lattice of 1x3's, which are 0.75 inch thick strips of wood, in 1 foot by 2 foot rectangles. In addition to taming reflections, it gives an interesting and finished look to the place.

Thanks guys!

I will try to answer most of your questions/comments. And if I miss some, I am sorry.

I did mention the budget in my second post, $2000 used. Demo speakers are fine too. Just don't like to buy luxury items new.

Very good question:) We are currently in Europe. I can listen to pretty much every brand from Elac to Rockport, PSB to Magico.

I thought exactly like you did! I thought let me go by what she likes most as long as I am happy too. Almost wanted to end the search with the LS50 but we still want to listen to more speakers.

As I mentioned before the ceiling is all wood. No concrete. And my friend measured it with his mic/minidsp and found the acoustics pretty good actually. He was surprised too.

Thanks again guys!

Notes from the wife :)

Thanks everyone for the input! I really do leave these decisions to my audio geek - he can have whatever he wants and I just want him to be happy. Unfortunately for him, he has a burning urge to pass it through me for approval because he thinks I have better ears 😂

I want to feel the music in my bones, I want to feel like I can close my eyes and am listening to it live. The full reverberation of the bass, the nuances in the metal strings of an acoustic guitar. The sibilance in vocals just grates my ears. I basically want to sit in the 1980s Maxell poster and be blown away.

I don't particularly remember the Sonus Fabers except that they were very expensive 😂

The KEF LS50, it's tiny and aesthetic perfection (imho). We've listened a few times. It's a very tight and clean sound, bass is pretty damn good (even better supplemented with a sub), but perhaps not as natural in the vocals for me to be blown away. Not as warm as I'd prefer.

Harbeths, I cannot pinpoint it, but I just didn't feel it. I felt like it was a simple speaker, and it just felt flat. Definitely a warm sound but I just didn't feel the power in the vocals. I think the lows drowned the sound.

So, I guess I am looking for warmth and bass, detail in mids, and no/low sibilance in vocals.

Certainly listen/look again to the Sonus Fabers... The Olympica 1 may be found used in the $ 3k price range... I have Oly II's and my wife likes the cosmetic appearance for our space better than any box style speaker... the Sonus Faber Olympica series is finely crafted and looks like sculpture...  For the best sound they must have proper placement and that includes about 2' of air around them.  Sonus also has some lesser priced models that are quite entertaining.

In my case the Sonus Fabers were replacing some older B&W speakers that looked like boxed robots... She loved the look of the Oly's so it was a non issue for us... and she loves the sound too.. Female vocals, live jazz and acoustic recordings are amazingly enjoyable on the Sonus Oly's.. Older rock can also be great depending on the recording qualities.. My old Buffalo Springfield album and Neil Young come through wonderfully...  I am not a high db listener but the 4 ohm Oly's crank it out if I want to with an old 100 WPC ARC solid state amp.

My wife is a visually oriented person as are many of women that I worked with in my A/V sales years... I suspect as mentioned above that your wife might be interested in the visual qualities of the choices just as much as the auditory preferences.... Regardless, if you search around enough you will find something you both love.