Speakers in 10-15K price range for Classical music

First of all, thanks much for so many great suggestions. I want to personally thank Tsciame, Krisjan, Shadorne, 4musica44107, Nealrm, Paladin, Kurt_tank, Magnumpi205, Glai, Grannyring, Hi_hifi, Nextlevelav, Ojgalli, Dfaulds, Jburidan, Macdadtexas, Abramsmatch, Rcprince, Larryi and Semi. Really appreciate your thoughtful response. I surely need some time and lot of research to absorb all the info.

My room is 20x13x9. Probably not the best room for a full range speaker. Where I live (Charlotte, NC), we got very few dealers. Closest I need to travel to is Atlanta or Raleigh. What I was looking for in a speaker is that can represent the ‘body’ of a full scale orchestra. That can soundstage and image well. And that can isolate different instruments. Can depict the depth of the stage, or can keep up with the increasing pace of say, Saint Saens’ Piano Concerto 2. Not sure if this info is helpful in any way.

My next step would be to look up places where I can audition these.

RMAF was a great suggestion too. I have booked my tickets to get there :), though this will eat into my budget, but I guess it would be worth every penny.

Neall502,
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Magnumpi205

Interesting thread...

I have the same size room, same budget, similar tastes, and am also looking. Please let us know what you come up with.

Neal1502...based on my reading of your posts, I think we seem to have similar room dimensions and, perhaps, similar musical preference. I also will be attending RMAF to scope-out speakers at that price range. The ones I will listen to include Horning Hybrid Eufrodite MK3, Ascendo, and Audio Acoustics.

I just might see you at RMAF. If you want a speaker-mate to demo speakers, let me know.

Ken

Avoid any speaker with a metal dome tweeter in it...in fact avoid metal drive units period...they ring and shriek and don't sound anything like real instruments.

The Spendors should be good prospects material-wise...I particularly like the sound of scanspeak tweeters (such as those used with some Spendor models) when it comes to accurate instrumental timbre with classical instruments...but based on what I have heard, they (SP 2/3 and SP 3/1P and SP 3/1R) don't quite do it...sounding too dull and too dynamically constrained to be convincing. They sound artificial and shut down and just lack the ability to recreate the drama and timbral qualities of real instruments.

Not to single out Spendor because I was not convinced by models from ATC (too dull and dynamically contrained), Magnepan (colored sounding...not realistic enough...had a tendency to shriek), Martin Logan (just missed the mark...a little synthetic sounding), and Gallo (good tweeter but midrange sounded weird and synthetic) either (just to name a few types that don't use metal drive units).

The Vienna Acoustics models sounded too sucked out in the presence band to convince with a range of instrumental timbres.

Truthfully, there are very few speakers that do classical well enough for me.

I like the sound of Phase Technology tweeters. They sound realistic and natural with classical instruments.

It's hard to get the power band i.e. lower mid-range right and modern speakers seem to mess this up really badly.

If you find a good speaker for classical music, I would like to know about it.