Help chossing a good speaker. $ 3-5 K

Thanks again. I have narrowed my choice to harbeth vs ATC. Dodgealum showed little entusiasm for the ATC. I undertsand that they maight be a little too big. The only reason I though they might work is that it is a sealed enclosure. The mid range has great reviews. Could you elaborate a little more? With regards to the dealers in Dallas, I have visited some of theme. I heard the Viennas and at my price range I did not think it offered a signifincat improvement over the JM Focal Cobalts 826 that I just sold. Have not heard the proacs. May try to do that today. The Wilson Benesch at AUdio Concept are great but above my spending limit.

Thanks again. I have narrowed my choice to harbeth vs ATC.

Either will make a great choice and should make you happy.

IMHO, Harbeth's excel at lower volumes with a lovely midrange and warm delicious sound. ATC's prefer to be driven harder as they have a very precise tight punchy bass (sealed box low Q). Depending on your music tastes and how well the room is treated one may work better than the other.

ATC's midrange could easily overpower a small untreated reflective room without carpet - too harsh - so vocals and pleasant sound may favor the Harbeth. However if you want detail in large orchestral classical pieces or big band jazz then ATC will probably carry the day. Horses for courses - remember Harbeth's tend to be used in broadcasting and drama and excel in speech intelligibility and natural non-fatiguing sound whilst ATC's are more like a race horse (rock, movies soundtrack and classical monitoring).

Are your listening preferences more towards going for a nice pleasant enjoyable trot in the countryside or do you want the exhilaration of tearing around the race track? Or put another way, if you like drums with a kick drum and crash that sound like the real deal then ATC will float your boat (for others it may drive them from the room...)

Thanks Shadorne. Do you think I will need to crank the ATC's volume up to more than an average of 75-80 db to get them to sound good? That would definetly be a problem for me. That is my average listening level and I do want to get good/decent orchestral/symphonic sound that is not congested and grainy.

small room! Well, it looks as if you have narrowed it down, but if you are still open to suggestions,I would probably look at Tyler Acoustics new offerings. I have been extremely pleased with his Linbrook Sig System, and he has smaller floorstanding monitors that would be a good match. He told me that his newest offerings (Decade line) are a better match with tubes. I may try a Mac MA2275 with my new D2's. I demoed a bunch of items before purchasing my Linbrooks, and for the money, nothing I demoed at retail was close.

Do you think I will need to crank the ATC's volume up to more than an average of 75-80 db to get them to sound good?

Sincs you have a sub you will be able to compensate for teh lean bass response of ATC at low volume levels. However, I think that ATC 40 will be overkill if used this way. Why pay for something with typically less than 1% THD at very high SPL levels if you only ever need to listen at modest levels. I'd go with Harbeth's for your application.

FWIW - your concern about congestion might be related to your room (most any speakers perform quite well at such modest SPL levels). Unless heavily treated with acoustic panels, a small reflective room will tend to sound congested with most any speaker...you get a "claustrophobic" of cluttered kind of soundfield. So it might not be a speaker issue at all...