Searching for the most "accurate" speaker (below 15K)

Grgr4blu, your comments are based on hearing them at one show, which dealer did you hear them at and what were they using? Your negative bias against the Personas is more based on your issues with us.

The Personas now have three outstanding reviews, Tone Audio, TAS, and Soundstage, and so far not one of these noted reviewers said the speakers are too bright, they are howerver, extremely revealing so if this other dealer was not using the right stuff of course you would not be blown away. Our setup  at the New York audio show was not bright at all, we played loud and most people raved over the sound. 

As per ATC vs Personas we sell both and they both are great but totally different and by the way Vermeer lives in Europe so we are not going to be selling him anything!

Vermeer has heard the speakers and loves them, they will also work in a small room with the 3f.  

Audioman58 haven't heard those Martin Logans, all the others in the past sounded great in some ways, but had issues. No speaker is perfect. 

The large soundstage of the ML is great, I have yet to hear a set of any panels image the way a good set of dynamics speakers do, the Wilsons, Paradigms, and Rockports all create an image that can be very life like
most panels produce an image which is too large without the image specifitiy that that the best dynamic speakers do.

I get the impression that few posters realize that under 20 sq m is actually a very small room, both to physically fit some of the larger speakers, and to make them sing without room modes. 20 sq m = 215 sq feet.

Exactly, this is al about pairing a good speaker to the room. A natural sounding speaker that is 8’ tall is going to sound incredibly bad if it over pressurizes the room.

Small rooms can sound amazing but you approach needs to be different. This is an intimate, out of body listening room in my opinion. You need to pair speakers that will align with that approach.

You don’t want to listen to concert level SPLs in that sized room (IMHO).

What about a nice nearfield powered monitor like the Focal CMS 40 or bigger brother? Perfectly matched amps, some eq and damping, and then spend on our source?

I get the impression that few posters realize that under 20 sq m is actually a very small room, both to physically fit some of the larger speakers, and to make them sing without room modes. 20 sq m = 215 sq feet.

True. However, regarding making them sing without room modes, if I recall reading elsewhere on this forum and other sites, given the option between a larger and smaller speaker, larger is preferable from a sound quality perspective. If my understanding is incorrect, I'm sure others will chime back in and impart their knowledge.

Depending on what you mean by large, you are wrong. Room modes are peaks (and nulls) at the resonance frequencies of the room. The smaller the room, the higher the frequency this occurs. Hence, using big speakers with a lot of low frequency output is asking for trouble.
There are five ways to deal with this:
1 use a bigger room
2 use bass traps (hard and ugly in a small room)
3 avoid low frequencies altogether, by using mini monitors (the only possiblility in really small rooms).
4 smoothen them by using multiple subwoofers
5 equalize them

In a small room the best way to proceed I think is a combination of the last three options. Multiple small subwoofers can give you enough extension for anything other than mega bang HT, and are a lot smoother than two main speakers. They can be located discreetly for best bass response and that is unlikely to be the best spot for midrange image. Avoid subs that go very deep.
Use room equalization like the Antimode 8033 to smoothen the response even further. Here, the use of multiple subs is particularly beneficial. The higher the frequency, the more localized the equalization will be. So if you start with a wider listening position by using multiple subs, you have a much better starting point for equalization. For the same reason, you do not want the main speakers to go very low.

There is one alternative to all this, and that is to use dipole speakers like the Quad electrostats (only the smaller 2815 in a room of this size). Dipole speakers excite far fewer room modes (which is why they sound so clean and neutral). However, they are pretty massive and need a bit of space behind them as well.