Warm and accurate bookshelves that can handle volume

Thanks much for all this great advice. Just want to answer a few of the questions:

1) the room is 15 x 20, but the speakers are about 6 feet from the back wall. On one side wall behind one of the speakers there is a 6 foot opening to the rest of the house.

2) I misused the word accurate I guess. I meant that they were able to reproduce the timbres of instruments. I can really hear the difference between oboes, clarinets etc. Massed strings are not just one mess. (I like rock and roll and jazz, but really hearing the nuances of classical music is the ultimate for me.) 

3) Re the subs, I have heard that it is best to use a crossover on the sub itself and let full spectrum go to the satellites. Others have said you can help your satelittes by shunting all the low frequency to the sub. I use a second preamp out to go to the sub amp, and there set a low pass at about 50 Hz. The speakers have good output until about 50. 

4) I go for about 80 or 85 as loud

Thanks again! Enjoy the music.

I guess the only way to get loud is to go to floor standing. However, the speakers are pulled so far forward our listening area resembles a small room. I think having a lot of space behind the speakers is good, but does not greatly affect how one calculates room size. I have been doing web searches, and found it is really hard to audition a lot of these speakers. I might travel to a large east coast city in the US but even then only a few will be available. I wonder if the whole model for speaker sales will change. Maybe direct sales like PS Audio, or truck delivery for audition, like magnepan. 

This is a lot of tremendous advice. Will hit the road, and never thought of going to an audio show. The you tubers say it is hard to listen properly at an audi9 show but might as well find out. From a near vacuum to being surrounded by audiophiles.