Considering a POSSIBLE replacement for speakers. Opinions?

If you like Monitor Audio, which I do, and you want to keep it semi simple, get a newer pair of Golds.  Gold 100’s or 200’s with the ribbon tweeters.  Really really nice speakers… I’ve had a ton of speakers, and golds are awesome.  You will not be disappointed!

If you audition something via Crutchfield, as I did, some of the bigger speakers only cost $10 each, one way, to audition for two months. They don't carry everything but some of their stuff is excellent. 

@soix

I’m not one to make recommendations blindly, but I’d highly recommend you do an in-home trial of the LSA-20 Signatures available here from the manufacturer for $2299/pr. You have pretty darn good speakers already IMHO so won’t be easy to significantly beat without a decent cost outlay, but as the LSAs are sold direct they offer extraordinary value and perform way above their price point (read reviews), and I do believe they’ll significantly better your RS8s in pretty much every meaningful way. Several people here have bought these on my recommendation and have all been surprised and thrilled with how good they sound, and nobody returned them. BTW, I have no relation to Underwood HiFi (manufacturer/seller), just a big fan of who designed them and how they were designed from the ground up. Plus, and as you obviously know it’s hard to demo good speakers these days so the in-home trial is a very nice feature of the LSA speakers. Hope this helps, and best of luck.

i thought one thing that walter will not do is offer money back trials for products he sells... perhaps i am mistaken on this regarding his selling l-s-a speakers...

Great pair of monitor audio pl100 mk ii for sale on us audio. 2500.00$. 

You have a lot of good choices. The Magnepan LRS with a pair of subs (especially the GR Research/Rythmik OB Sub) is a good one, the Maggie-killer Eminent Technology LFT-8B an even better one. VPI’s Harry Weisfeld considers it to have the best midrange he has ever heard, regardless of price (I compared the LFT-8B to the MG1.7i---no contest). But both those options require spacing of at least 3’ from the wall behind them, 5’ even better.

For a monitor plus sub(s), I know what I would do: Posted just today here on Audiogon is a pair of GR Research NX Studio Monitors, custom made by a private speaker builder from the GR Research kit (the only way the speaker is available). The seller has priced the speaker at the cost of it’s parts, so not only do you not have to build it yourself, the cost of him doing it is.....nothing! Add a pair of subs (again, the OB sub would be optimal), and you have a really, really good loudspeaker, at a very modest cost. But this speaker also requires 3’ spacing, as the NEO3 magnetic-planar tweeter is employed in open baffle/dipole fashion.