Speaker Selection Help

You are in a typical hopeless situation, that being the wife is in control of you listen life. Then there is the size of your room, another hopeless condition on the budget you have, especially considering the additional funds that would be needed to provide room treatments. My advice? Forget speakers, just get a good pair of headphones and maybe a headphone amp. Any money left over should be turned over to the wife to be used on her shoe wardrobe. The bonus of my suggested solution is that the benefits of martial bliss will flow to you, and do so quickly.

+1 Buconero, One of the most useful marital retorts is keeping track of exactly how many pairs of black shoes in your wife's inventory.

Be warned though, use this sparingly. I went overboard and she culled through her collection which made room for updates.

Consider upgrading the wife first, then the speakers :)

For OP,
I have Wavetouch Grand Teton (GT) speakers. GT speaker is well in your budget. GT are small stand mount speakers which your wife likes! It’s very loud at 94db and really musical that you don’t need a separate 2ch set up. A pair of GT speakers were too loud in a big hall (22’ x 35’x 15’h) without a sub.

I am using GT speakers for front LCR and small cheap no name speakers for 2 rears. I have a Marantz SR8500, OPPO BDP-95, Wavetouch GT speakers, Velodyne CT-120. I am very happy with HT and 2 ch. Sound. I sold all my hi-end gears. I don’t look back and no plan to upgrade. The receiver and GT speaker sound better than any hi-end set up I had for last 20 years. I don’t turn off music. I just lower the volume at night. No family member has complained last 3 weeks.