Just thinking out loud here but if you are accustomed to the Klipsch sound, I believe that Klipsch heritage has a general character of high efficiency, high dynamics, which leads to a "live" sound signature. Probably bc the mid range is so good on those things(la scalas). I own zu speakers and that is the kind of sound you get from them as well. Sure it is a scaled down from the la scala, but so is your new room. Well within your budget too. Dirty Weekend is what I have but my room recently moved to a bigger room, so now I may be parting with them. After running the zu's for years I picked up a pair of Vandersteen 2 sig 3's and it took awhile to get used to the opposite side of sound signature(low efficiency, lower dynamics, etc) I no longer have the "live" sound especially at low volume like the zu's did. Now I have a smooth musical sound. Both good but very different.