I'd look at the revel m20, or maybe some of the used proac's. I just saw the m20s for $700, those were very nice speakers. When I got my thiel's it was down to the thiels, the m20s, the nautilus 805s or the proacs (1.5 or 2, i believe). Was not an easy decision, since these were all great speakers. the coherence of thiel won out then, but I'm getting excited now thinking about those revels with the dma 50. This could be an amazingly cheap (like deal of the century) high end amp speaker combo. Preamps to consider include mccormack micro line drive, or tlc, or if you want to splurge - spectral dmc 12. I had a mccormack dna 0.5 amp, a golden tube amp, and the dma 50. The dma 50 was the smoothest of them all, no contest. So although it's transparent, it should not be adding any harshness to the signal upstream.