mscarlson
The wilson benesch PS 2's are in your budget and offer tremendous resolution without that harsh sound of an overly detailed speaker. You won't find more hi technology then Wilson Benesch. Carbon fiber cabinets and so much more. When I had a business I would take them to the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Here were some of the show reports from a few years back:
"deHavilland Electonics with Wilson Bensch speakers, the room we revisited most. Sound to die for." John Zurek from positive-feedback.com
"Oddly enough, I believe last year, this room was my runner up. The sound was largely how I remember, but even better. I have my reasons for voting this room "the best" and here they are. It played music for me. Its presentation was very big and wide and spacious, yet intimate. It was as if the music was being played just for me. The timing and pace were right on as was the instrument and vocal definition.
This was a room that I found myself returning to more than once when my ears were tired of all the noise. This is certainly not a cheap system, but it sounded better than some systems that cost three times as much. Most importantly, it was a system that allowed you to really enjoy music. The deHavilland room had almost the same system as last year, but in a different room. The big difference is that, this year the sound was perfectly beautiful. An Esoteric X-03SE CD player into the a deHavilland Mercury III Linestage was providing the signal to a pair of the deHavilland 50A Signature mono amps which was powering a pair of Wilson Benesch’s Curves, all the cables were by Kubala-Sosna.