Traditional looking speakers

This may cause some rebuttal and that's okay. I believe that speakers should be your last purchase, not your first. Buy your equipment first, get quality stuff that sounds synergistically good together, is easy to use (if that's inportant to you), has a history of reliability and has all the bells/whistles/power that you want. Spend down to your $2500 plus cables (people have different formulas for cable spending, mine is about 15% +/- of the total value of the rest of the system). I'm a firm believer that good speakers driven by average sources and amplification can only sound average at best. However, high quality components will make pretty good speakers sound their best. Speakers can only relay the signal provided to them, the better the source and signal, the better the sound. Just my opinion, it's your money. Good luck and have fun.

There are a pair of Audio Note speakers in your price range on A-gon. These are excellent speakers particularly for the type of music you describe and are about as traditional looking as you can get.

PS I have nothing to do with the seller

I second the Soliloquy's, including the 5.31's Also, Von Sweirkert VR2's fit your budget and criteria.

Good luck,

Try the Spendor Classic line. These are all shaped like "bookshelf" speakers though the larger ones in the line are big enough to be used as floorstanders. The SP2/3 is quite a nice speaker. You would probably want to put them on the recomended Sound Anchor stands or some other sturdy stand. Read Brothers in Charleston SC has helped me in the past with these speakers (good advice and fair prices on new ones).

I'll suggest Spendors as well. When I started my speaker search I was *told* that only traditional looking speakers would be allowed in our living room. I ended up selecting a pair of Spendor SP 1/2s with Sound Anchors and I think their retro-look is very cool.

In addition, Spendors are an excellent choice for the types of music that you enjoy, especially vocals.