Certainly listen/look again to the Sonus Fabers... The Olympica 1 may be found used in the $ 3k price range... I have Oly II's and my wife likes the cosmetic appearance for our space better than any box style speaker... the Sonus Faber Olympica series is finely crafted and looks like sculpture... For the best sound they must have proper placement and that includes about 2' of air around them. Sonus also has some lesser priced models that are quite entertaining.
In my case the Sonus Fabers were replacing some older B&W speakers that looked like boxed robots... She loved the look of the Oly's so it was a non issue for us... and she loves the sound too.. Female vocals, live jazz and acoustic recordings are amazingly enjoyable on the Sonus Oly's.. Older rock can also be great depending on the recording qualities.. My old Buffalo Springfield album and Neil Young come through wonderfully... I am not a high db listener but the 4 ohm Oly's crank it out if I want to with an old 100 WPC ARC solid state amp.
My wife is a visually oriented person as are many of women that I worked with in my A/V sales years... I suspect as mentioned above that your wife might be interested in the visual qualities of the choices just as much as the auditory preferences.... Regardless, if you search around enough you will find something you both love.
In my case the Sonus Fabers were replacing some older B&W speakers that looked like boxed robots... She loved the look of the Oly's so it was a non issue for us... and she loves the sound too.. Female vocals, live jazz and acoustic recordings are amazingly enjoyable on the Sonus Oly's.. Older rock can also be great depending on the recording qualities.. My old Buffalo Springfield album and Neil Young come through wonderfully... I am not a high db listener but the 4 ohm Oly's crank it out if I want to with an old 100 WPC ARC solid state amp.
My wife is a visually oriented person as are many of women that I worked with in my A/V sales years... I suspect as mentioned above that your wife might be interested in the visual qualities of the choices just as much as the auditory preferences.... Regardless, if you search around enough you will find something you both love.