$1000-$2000 Floor-standing speakers for larger room w/NAD 326bee


I’m looking for a set of floor-standing speakers for our main listening room. They will be 2 channel music only. They need to be "cat safe" (no fabric on front, or removable grills), able to fill a larger room (20x15 with vaulted ceiling) with decent volume (typical max listening level is 85-90db but a lot of listening is at low volume as well) and efficient enough for a NAD326BEE. Budget is ~$1000-$2000 for the pair. My old speakers in the room were open baffle design (Hawthorne Audio Duets) and I did like the relatively open sound stage they provided. I may move them to a different room or just sell them (they’re too wide for our current configuration in the room and they aren’t too high on the "cat safe" scale). I have a couple of Polk TSi400’s in the room now as "placeholders" until I decide on a permanent pair. Minimum distance between speakers is about 8-10 feet and listening position is about 10 feet from the speakers. The speakers will need to be within about of the wall behind them. The floor is carpeted.

Music is a mix of Jazz, Classic Rock and Classical and sources are turntable and streaming from a Roon server. I live in the Atlanta metro area and

I’ve been out of the speaker hunting game for a while so any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
ruleof72
i talk to Richard Vandersteen about every two weeks
i will ask about the cats....
i can already hear what he will have to say about cat armor on the model 2....
i expect his Dutch frugality will win the day...

@sunnyjim The Golden Ear model 7 looks appealing but they are covered with the acoustic cloth which is a "cat magnet". Is there a way to remove the cloth?
Hi, @tomic601 I was planning on going to HiFi Buys and see what they have.
As for the cats, they are a couple of very fun kitties but speaker cloth attracts them from all corners of the house. The Polk Tsi400's have the grills removed and neither of the cats has any interest. It's not worth the stress, even with great speakers, to have non-removable speaker cloth/grills
How about Elacs? Glowing reviews. Andrew Jones' expertise. Just another thought. Hope you're making some progress.

Tom