Thanks to all for the input. Some good speaker suggestions that I will look into and some good feedback on the general concept of system balance. I am particularly interested in the comments recommending British speakers (ProAc, Harbeth and Spendor are Brits, correct?) I always loved the Kef 103.2 when I was a starving college student 20 years ago and could not imagine spending $900 on a pair of small 2 way speakers. How things change, huh?
Is the consensus that my front end might need some warming up versus a very revealing speaker? It is so hard for me to tell with my existing speakers that are not revealing at all. I am cool with a “musical” speaker, by all means. BTW, several people suggested Vandersteens, which I know are pretty much universally loved and thought to offer great value, but they have just never done the hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thing for me. It is all very personal, I know.
Also, given the difficulty of directly A/B’ing multiple speaker lines, what does everyone think of the concept of getting a well-regarded but inexpensive reference (Triangle Titus/Paradigm 20) and then bringing a series of speaker in to compare or even taking the reference speaker with me? Then it would move to the rear channel in my surround set-up. Just an idea I had. I know that acoustic memory is VERY unreliable and auditioning a bunch of different speakers on different days in different rooms with different electronics is hardly ideal. I used a journal with the same music in the same order the last time I did this, and it was better than nothing, but still not great.
Fun problem to have, though. It beats working.
Is the consensus that my front end might need some warming up versus a very revealing speaker? It is so hard for me to tell with my existing speakers that are not revealing at all. I am cool with a “musical” speaker, by all means. BTW, several people suggested Vandersteens, which I know are pretty much universally loved and thought to offer great value, but they have just never done the hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thing for me. It is all very personal, I know.
Also, given the difficulty of directly A/B’ing multiple speaker lines, what does everyone think of the concept of getting a well-regarded but inexpensive reference (Triangle Titus/Paradigm 20) and then bringing a series of speaker in to compare or even taking the reference speaker with me? Then it would move to the rear channel in my surround set-up. Just an idea I had. I know that acoustic memory is VERY unreliable and auditioning a bunch of different speakers on different days in different rooms with different electronics is hardly ideal. I used a journal with the same music in the same order the last time I did this, and it was better than nothing, but still not great.
Fun problem to have, though. It beats working.