Nmurro, You are truly fortunate to have that much disposable income for this hobby. It is my personal opinion that many of the super speakers out there sound worse than some of the smaller speakers in the same product line. For example I thought the Wilson Watt Puppys sounded better than the Grand Slamms. Each and every design has some tradeoffs that we end up living with. In my opinion, given enough space, it would be better to have two or three systems available depending on the music of choice. For rock maybe I would have some real big horn speakers like the Classic Audio Reproductions Hartsfields. For vocals and acoustic material I would have a pair of electrostats like Soundlab Ultimate 1's or the Quad 988's. For pop music I'd have the Watt Puppy 7's with the Whow subwoofer. I haven't heard the Vandy 5's but have read enough to know it is one of the best regardless of price. I'm sure you would do well to audition a pair. If low level listening and stunningly real vocals is a priority I'm sure you'd love the Soundlabs or Quads. If you like chest thumping bass then avoid the Quad or Soundlab. The speaker that comes darn close to bringing all the above requirements together is the Shahinian Diapason. They will play very loud but not as loud as a big horn. They have stunning vocals but not quite as breathtaking as a Soundlab. They have powerful deep bass but probably not quite as chest thumping as some of the real big dynamic speakers. I am in the camp with Duke LeJeune of Audiokinesis. He believes the most realistic sounding speakers get the reverberant field right. Most of the speakers that do this are omnidirectional speakers or planars. Plain box speakers don't do it for me but this is a subjective arena we are in so let your ears decide. With your resources, I would be out listening to the following. (in no particular order)
Soundlab Ultimate 1's
Classic Audio Reproductions Hartsfields
Verity Audio Parsifals
Wilson Audio Watt Puppy 7's
Nearfield Acoustics Pipe Dreams
Shahinian Diapasons
Avalon Eidolons and Diamonds
Vandersteen 5's
German Physiks
MBL
Magnepan MG-20's
Quad 988/989
Genesis
Aerial
I suspect that if you take the time to hear most of these, in the end you will select a loudspeaker closer to $15000 than $35,000. Your budget affords you some travel money to seek out several of the above. It pays to take enough time to find a speaker you really love. The megabuck speakers are usually hard to sell if you don't like them.
