New Speakers under consideration - but I’m afraid

I’d also consider Perlisten S7T/R7T and the new Arendale flagship towers. 
 

I have a pair of Perlisten towers and find them to be incredible bang for the buck. Even at list price. But especially below. 

For your list of musical genres (and all for that matter) and the playback characteristics you mentioned, no doubt that Legacy Audio's Aeris speaker with Wavelet v2 should be on your list. I've heard the 3 speaker models you've listened play a wide variety of music in several settings.  I would still Aeris for what you are looking for. I owned them for a bit over two years and they handle everything you are looking for and more (IMHO).

I guess a more general question might be are  speakers today (>$15k) better than their 25 year old equivalents?

Some are, some aren't. I still use older speakers - Wilson, and Vandersteen and ML CLS that perform very well and I have heard and respect original Quads within their limitations. Very hard to assess speakers at a dealer in a totally different system than yours and be sure they will sound better.  The speakers you have are very good and it would be rolling very expensive dice to shell out for something that sounded good to you on the mainland in a totally different room and system.  Hope you make the right decision though.

That’s the thing. I can experiment with things like DACs and bring them back and forth in my carry on. Speakers not so much.

Maybe I should just get a killer DAC and be done with it 🤓

It's all a matter of taste.......I had B&W 802  ...rubbed me the wrong way.   I now have Vandersteens and am happier