Need Recommendations for a pair of Speakers around $1,000

I'm considering Danny's X-LS Encore.

make sure you set money aside for his upgrade kit... 😂😁

knowledgeable well informed diy always saves money relative to buying high grade branded gear ....and can bring other pleasures too (i.e. sense of personal accomplishment in improving a piece of gear) - there are risks too obviously

best of luck

over time i have had the 535 545 (i and ii) 555 - it was years ago of course

yes papa nelson pass designed them when he was a pup - but one needs to separate design and execution...

the adcoms were designed and spec’d to a specific (quite modest) price point, even for back in the day, so there were numerous execution tradeoffs in parts spec and quality, mechanical and electrical isolation... result is a nice sweet sounding product at fairly modest volumes but a glare, grain and glassiness that comes through once there are some demands placed on the amp and its power supply, especially into more reactive speaker loads

no free lunch here... take a nice resolving pair of speakers, like maggies, vandersteens, harbeths, revels, focals, get a clean source, run one of the old adcoms and then a modern day pass amp... there is a substantial, immediately audible difference

even leaving aside the capacitor aging issue, if a 30 year old 545 worth $400 could deliver for a discriminating audio lover what high-level modern ss amps can, we would all have them, and hegel, ayre, pass labs, belles, naim, exposure would all be out of business

Magnepan LRS+ and never look back.

while agree these are terrific, high value speakers, op said this:

The new speakers will be in the living room connected to the Adcom and also a signal fed from the TV but I don’t want a multi-speaker system. Stereo is fine and if they sound good to me with music the wife will be happy with the TV sound. She just wants them to look good and not have a lot of wires hanging around.

there will be issues with the grainy adcom driving them, but more serious issue may be w-a-f...

yes older vandy’s or maybe a set of tektons or elac floorstanders... you have a decent sized room to fill with sound, fairly modest budget