Speakers to build a $6500 system around

Some people call Vandersteen "laid back", to my ears that's a bit of an overstatement. Veiled is not even in the picture (to my ears). I did not notice the fact that your room is tiled. In that case, I think the Vandys might be perfect. However, some have said that they are low on the WAF scale. The 3s are pretty darn big, but the 2s do not, to me, dominate a room, but you should definitely run them by "she who must be obeyed";~)

The Vandy's are indeed warm but, they are minimum baffle wide dispersion design that need appropriate space for amongst other things driver intergration. IMHO, they are very fussy about setup. To top it off the Vandy 2's bass is tad loose. I still think they are true high end great value. The overall sound they produce might appear be appropriate, but I think not in this siutation.

I've just passed thru to the other side of your situation (well, almost finished now.) I replaced my 20 year old system with a $6k budget in mind. I wanted to stay as high-fi as possible, so good used was the way I went. I have a moderately sized room 14 x 12 opening into an second 14 x 14 space and the speakers have to go near a side and back wall with 1' clear in rear and 3' clear on sides. After endless research ( I live way in the boonies) in ended up with a very nice set of Von Schweikert VR 4 jrs (front ports) and am driving them with a Bryston integrated B100. I am very pleased with the lower and upper ends, sound stage, and detail. The last $2k needs to go for a replacement cd player, but technology is moving so fast. Any suggestions out there for a used $2k player to complete this $6k system complete for Ejineffect?

In the shop, I definitely preferred the bass of the 3As to the 2CEs. The 3A bass is maybe a little loose, but this is compared to the twice as expensive Quatros. I wouldn't have considered the 3As if they smeared the bassline in Jazz (I felt this was a problem with the Sonus Faber Grand Pianos), and they don't. I'd look for some used 3As available for pickup nearby.

Oh, by the way, that sounds like a very nice room. I don't know why short wall setup is the conventional wisdom. Some very smart people (e.g. John Dunlavy) preferred long wall set up in their listening tests.