Picking Speakers 20k-30k

@grislybutter Fyi, the Rockport Atria II are now $38k.

Wow $38k for the Rockport Atria II. Talk about inflation. 

Definitely take your time. Speakers in the range you are looking at are really good and very different. You want to hear them… holding off until a speaker connects with you. @grislybutter had a pretty good list of must hear. You also need to take into account what equipment the folks demonstrating the speakers are using. I would take your time, make it a fun exploration. 
 

Do all this before upgrading any of your electronics. If you want the very best sounding system it is best to choose your speakers… the component that will most influence the sound and then buy the electronics to best support the speakers and the sound quality you want. 
 

just going through this process is likely to change the direction of your search. This is why auditioning (then reading professional reviews), can slowly lead you to a great synergistic system. Unless each purchase is carefully chosen with the whole system in mind you can end up with a very expensive and unsatisfyingly sounding system.

@gordon I am looking at several pricelist, all for 26 or 28K. But they may be out of date. Just no one cared to remove them. It's hard to impossible to find up to date pricelists from Rockport's distributor list. Zero prices published. 

Are you seeing it online?

@james633 I love my Personas/Sub combo and most well-recorded music sounds great.  If i put on the Black Keys recording of Crawling Kingsnake I feel like I’m in the studio with them or jamming with friends in the basement of my college house twenty years ago.  That’s pretty perfect.  But it’s a super-resolving system and lesser recordings have their warts on full display.  Maybe I’m chasing a dragon but hopefully i can keep the great instrument separation and soundstage that I have but with a presentation that’s a touch more….forgiving?? Musical?? (Not sure what word I’m searching for here.) with run-of-the-mill recordings.  If i only ever wanted to listen to Steely Dan or Pink Floyd or [fill-in-the-blank-masterfully-engineered-recording] then my search would be over.  Alas, not every great band has equally great recording/engineering.

Sonus Faber is on my shortlist from a previous audition of the Olympica Nova 3.  Chose the Paradigm specifically for it’s more resolving presentation but the SF was more “musical” so I’m hoping further up the line (Amati?) may provide the best of both worlds.  Others on my shortlist were Raidho and Borresen because of their stellar reviews and association (either past or present) with Aavik Acoustics makes good synergy likely.  Kef Blade 2 Meta was a recent audition that was pretty great as well. 

I’m not in a rush for change but I’m not realistically going to audition twenty or thirty speakers so hoping the group’s collective wisdom can help pare things down for me.  Then if I have to drive or fly somewhere once or twice, it’s a doable task.