Looking for "realistic" speakers

Suggest you look at the new Bud Fried Towers. A BIT more than you requested, but VERY similar to the Cary speakers you lost.

http://www.friedproducts.com

"The Bud Fried Tower not only earns a no-brainer thumbs-up recommendation at its price point, but I find it to be competitive with any box speaker I’ve evaluated under $6k." ...Dick Olsher, 11/11/13, The Absolute Sound

^^^ ... well, true enough, but the Cremona M is a $10K speaker now available on the lightly used market for $6K. Reviews can't capture how the Cremona Ms put a smile on your face, even when driven by the right $1K integrated amp. It is one fast and resonance-free box speaker.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Problem is there's a limited selection of speakers to listen to locally. I DID hear the B&W PM1's. They're nice sounding but a bit forward (at least in their setup).

Also listened to the Sonus Faber floor standers ($9K) and bookshelf ($7K) and the were good but didn't light my fire. The less expensive $3.5 floorstanders were a major step down as I expected.

I finally heard Dynaudio Confidence bookshelves ($7.5K) - These were my favorites so far. They were also a bit forward sounding on the Ayre integrated they were playing on but that could be fixed with higher end electronics. Plus the guy set them up so i had to be literally 4 feet in front of them.

They played the same CD on the Contours and it honestly sounded like completely different music - and even so they sounded good for a speaker half the price. In fact in the $3.5K range the contours were by far the best I've heard so far.

Went to another store and listened again to regular Totem Forests (not signatures) on not so great electronics and they sounded not so great.

I wish I could hear Proac, Legacy, Tetras, even KEF LS50's locally but no dice.

Where does that leave me? I might have to start auditioning speakers in home from companies that sell direct and offer that. I'm thinking of Salk Song and others. Anyone have recommendations for speaker companies that sell direct? I may start a new thread about that..

Larry, the Legacy, Deadalus(30 day no-risk audition period on all non-showroom direct sales), and Selah(45-day money-back guarantee) brands I mentioned above are sold direct.

Not sure where you are in Maryland but if you can get to Déjà Vu Audio in McLean, VA go over and have a listen. They carry a nice line of speakers including Audio Note, Spendor, ProAc and Quad. I think the classic British monitor sound might appeal to your tastes. Don't be fooled either, many of these monitors are fairly large in size and tend to image better than floorstanders.

Personally I would give a good listen to the Spendor Classic Series and specifically the 1/2. This is still one of my favorite speakers. Derek Hughes has recently designed the Stirling SB-88 which has a lot of similarities to the 1/2 and is also worth checking out.