I'm ready to pull the trigger on some new speakers.looking for some last minute advice

Thanks bugredmachine for the Sulk suggestion! I’ve been seeing many positive impressions of their stuff popping up lately, and I’m looking to upgrade my monitors, so those Exotica’s have me intrigued.

Snoopgordie, I personally feel that you could do absolutely no wrong with either the R700s or Aria936s. Both series seem to sound very decent with modest gear, but will also scale very well as you improve upon your upstream components. Obviously, it will boil down to personal preference. I feel that the Focal Aria series, for the money, are tough to beat. This from my own, fairly limited experience. (For what it’s worth, I have CC 900 and 906s in my home theatre system, and a friend has the R500s.)

The truth is that a speaker will never sound in the showroom as they will sound in your house.  ...and a year later the ones  with the sound in your house will sound different again, after you tweak them with new cables, position changes, etc.   The showroom with 12 different speaker in the room will sound different because each of those speakers will add their colorations to what you hear.  ..funny, but Richard Vandersteen and I was just talking about this very same issue with him last night.  ...by the way, Vandersteen speakers should be on your short list as well.  Anyway, listening to the same orchestra in 3 different concert halls will sound different as well.  ...just for the halibut, call John Rutan at Audioconnection in Verona, New Jersey.  He sells everything and knows from what he speaks.  ...just listen to what he has to say....a phonecall.

I bought the Focals about 2 weeks ago.  Still tweaking and trying to get MQA streaming. No complaints so far.