Dragonbtx, are you near Springfield IL? (You said three hours from Indy or Chicago. I live in Indy.)
We have 3 dealers here, but a wider variety of what you want to audition can be found in the Windy City - a road trip is an excellent idea. You could even plan it around a Chicago Audio Society meeting ;-). For the kind of investment you're making, take two days if you can. Don't rush yourself. We went on an auditioning spree last spring and ended up going in a completely different direction from the one we originally thought we would take.
I've been in the hobby a long time and once had an 800+ square foot room with high ceilings - not easy to find speakers that satisfy in that large a space. My advice is to look at only truly full range speakers that can go very low and render dynamics realistically. That usually means big and heavy and $$$ but not always.
It's been nearly 15 years since I heard the EW Andra IIs but I thought they were outstanding - they sounded great on every kind of music played through them. They would work well in a large space. The Andras were 19k back in the day and will demand excellent and powerful amps with comparable front end to show what they can do. There was a pair earlier this month here on Agon with an asking price of $7500 - a screaming deal if there ever was one. The seller was in Nashville - worth a drive IMO.
I would also add the GoldenEar Triton Ones and (especially) the Triton References to your audition list. Just make sure the dealer has some serious electronics feeding them - GET speakers tend to get plopped down in HT theater rooms with mid-fi multi-channel amps that won't show what they can do. These are seriously good speakers: full range, huge soundstage, transparent, dynamic and they go LOW - courtesy of their integrated powered subwoofers (the Refs are rated to 12hz) - while remaining superbly coherent. They are also, unlike some other speakers listed in this thread, easy to drive and not too fussy about room placement. And they're very attractive in a minimalist-modern sort of way. I dismissed the GET line as HT speakers for years until I actually heard them.
Happy hunting!
We have 3 dealers here, but a wider variety of what you want to audition can be found in the Windy City - a road trip is an excellent idea. You could even plan it around a Chicago Audio Society meeting ;-). For the kind of investment you're making, take two days if you can. Don't rush yourself. We went on an auditioning spree last spring and ended up going in a completely different direction from the one we originally thought we would take.
I've been in the hobby a long time and once had an 800+ square foot room with high ceilings - not easy to find speakers that satisfy in that large a space. My advice is to look at only truly full range speakers that can go very low and render dynamics realistically. That usually means big and heavy and $$$ but not always.
It's been nearly 15 years since I heard the EW Andra IIs but I thought they were outstanding - they sounded great on every kind of music played through them. They would work well in a large space. The Andras were 19k back in the day and will demand excellent and powerful amps with comparable front end to show what they can do. There was a pair earlier this month here on Agon with an asking price of $7500 - a screaming deal if there ever was one. The seller was in Nashville - worth a drive IMO.
I would also add the GoldenEar Triton Ones and (especially) the Triton References to your audition list. Just make sure the dealer has some serious electronics feeding them - GET speakers tend to get plopped down in HT theater rooms with mid-fi multi-channel amps that won't show what they can do. These are seriously good speakers: full range, huge soundstage, transparent, dynamic and they go LOW - courtesy of their integrated powered subwoofers (the Refs are rated to 12hz) - while remaining superbly coherent. They are also, unlike some other speakers listed in this thread, easy to drive and not too fussy about room placement. And they're very attractive in a minimalist-modern sort of way. I dismissed the GET line as HT speakers for years until I actually heard them.
Happy hunting!