Thanks very much for the positive responses to my post, and Xentithon, thank you very much for your patience, and apologies again for diverting your thread.
Rbischoff, I had to postpone my purchase last year so I've stopped auditioning and havn't gotten anything new yet. The speakers that I liked best last year were the Vienna Acoustics Beethovens, for the reasons I explained above. They're rarely discussed, and seem to have next to no press, so go figure.
I only had one short, but impressive session with them, so I'll be doing more extensive listening just before I'm ready to buy. And before I do pull the trigger, I plan to listen to several new speakers that have become available this year, the Vr4jr being one of them.
I'll probably be posting here again down the road to see what kind of experiences people may have had with whatever my final two candidates turn out to be. Hopefully someone like me won't come along and hijack the thread!