What does one purchase after owning horns?


I have owned Avantgarde Uno's and sold them because of the lack of bass to horn integration. I loved the dynamics, the midrange and highs. Now faced with a new speaker purchase, I demo speakers and they sound lifeless and contrived. The drama and beauty of live music and even the sound of percussion insturments like a piano are not at all convincing. I have an $8k budget for speakers give or take a thousand. My room is 13'X26' firing down the length. Any good ideas will be appreciated. My music prefrences are jazz/jazz vocalist.
renmeister
This has started to get a little daft.

Weseixas,

if your comment was aimed at me regarding Bel canto I would be glad to explain.

Before the AG Trio I had all sorts of planars. Magnepan 3.6r Apogee Duetta Sigs & Divas, ML CLS, Quad ESL to name a few. At the time I tried the AG Uno too. I realized the Uno had qualities in spades which I had struggled with to get any of my planars to do.

To get some life out of these wonderful planar speakers I tried every amp you can throw a stick at. Tubes,SS from 100w to 1,000w.

When the BC amps came out with an amp the size of a shoe able to stick 1000w into a 4 ohm speaker that ran cold, I thought I had died & gone to heaven.

They did a great job on the Duettas, they were cable of controlling and squeezing that last bit out of a bass ribbons and had the cleanest leading edge I had heard until then. Leaving all my other amps sounding slow,fat and tired.

When the Trios arrived I had not decided on an amp for them. I still had a cupboard full of giant powerful amps which I had amassed after years of planars. So I stuck the BCs on the Trio. They were so clean, amazingly quick and detailed. Without some harmonic texture granted, but in theory this was a daft combination, but it sounded very good. Now I have ended up with flea power SETs. A world I could never have entertained before.

This is why I bothered writing to help with this question. Our friend is finding it hard to replace his Uno. I know why. The alternatives are difficult. His issue was about bass integration with his Uno. So get a bigger AG where the Bass is cut off lower and is able to be moved anywhere in the room and can use a simple amplifier. Thats all.

This thread has got complicated with all sorts of random alternatives. From ATCs, Apogees, Genelec, and Soundlabs. It is simple.

The AG is the closest to a live person playing I had heard. Not a distant copy. It is still the same after a longtime owning a pair. I never think about speakers these days. To be honest I have access to most of the other speakers systems mentioned here. I never bring them home and when I have to use them I am reminded how superior the Trio is to them in just about every aspect. I am not saying this because I have one. I have one because I tried the rest.
Bill, Please don't completely trash Wal-Mart employment. I haven't completely figured out retirement yet. ;-)
My gut take is that good horns that are not "shouty" are quite difficult and expensive to design and build. However there are some that do it right and these can be quite exceptional (but still not the ONLY way to excel).

Again the sad but true dilemma that the really good horns will be big and expensive and out of reach and or not practical for most.