12' x 14' room; $10k budget for speakers; help

Don't forget about power conditioner. I have inexpensive oneac 6.25 A. model, and it makes a difference already!

You can pick one up on ebay for less than $100.

Also, dedicated power outlet also helps your amp, as you probably know.

Maxh, it sounds like you are quite familiar with live music, and there are two areas in particular where most speaker systems fall short. Neither is obvious from published specs.

Dynamic contrast is one area where most speaker systems fall well short of live music (well so do most recordings, but that's another topic for another forum). The culprit is thermal compression. As the voice coil heats up (which can happen very quickly - imagine touching it with a 100 watt soldering iron), its resistance rises, and less power is delivered. Most drivers have less than 1 dB of thermal compression at less than 10% of their rated power, rising to 3-4 dB at their rated power. Now many if not most manufacturers' power handling claims are based on "music program" power handling, which is typically twice the actual AES rated power handling (and if they're based on "peak power handling", they're even more optimistic). So if you want negligible thermal compression on peaks (to preserve dyanmic contrast), you probably want the speakers to reach adequate peaks at about 5% of their claimed power handling (and unfortunately different manufacturers measure efficiency with different yardsticks too). Of course it helps to have plenty of reserve amplifier power, but that's only indirectly a speaker-related issue.

Another area where most speakers fall short is in getting the reverberant field right. Live music in a good venue generates a reverberant field that is spectrally correct (similar to the first-arrival sound), powerful, diffuse, relatively late-arriving, and which decays evenly across the spectrum. In a 12 by 14 by 10 foot room obviously we can't replicate the soundfield of a good live venue, but we can at least get some things right. Fairly directional speakers can be aimed to maximize the time delay between the first arrival sound and the arrival of the first reflections, and fairly constant-directivity speakers ensure that the reverberant energy will have the correct spectral balance (assuming the room isn't overly absorptive at some frequencies, which unfortunately may be the case with the room treatments you describe).

Of course these aren't the only things that matter, but imo they shouldn't be overlooked if your goal is to get a reasonable approximation of the live music experience.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

For a small room, I would give the Thiel 3.7 a listen. Heard them once in a smallish room (at a dealer) and they blew me away.

Duke's post is well worth noting and his speakers are well worth considering.

BTW - I use his speakers and have used them in various sized rooms, one slightly bigger than yours.

I remember him coming by once and he was amazed at how I had his speakers set up. They were on the room diagonal (something you should consider for a small room) and my chair was positioned as such that I was no more than 4' from the speakers. From my listening position you had the sense that you could reach out and touch the speakers. You would think that this would be a recipe for sonic disaster but funny thing was after listening for some time neither of us found fault with the sound.

I second Duke and Clio09. I'm a very happy owner of Audiokinesis Prizmas. My room is 15' x 13' I sit 8' from the front plane of the speakers(on the long wall), the right angle toe-in built into the cabinets makes for very controlled dispersion and the adjustable bass porting makes for a very room friendly speaker that loves tubes. I live in south central Pa. if anyone wants to listen.