How about "The Clue" speakers. Designed to work their best with wall placement. Below your budget, but so what! Something like that with careful room treatment could work really well. You may have to scale down your high-end expectations and find something sweet that just allows you to groove with the music. Something with rich beautiful tone. Less High-End, more soul. Place less importance on depth, soundstage, etc. I remember the old days with AR's, KLH's, Dynaco A25's. We used them in whatever crappy rooms we had and loved every minute of it.
Afraid to buy new speakers
I'm stuck with hideous acoustics that simply couldn't be worse, and I have to place speakers close to a concrete block wall. There's no getting around it. I have decent CD player and integrated amp recently bought new (NAD 365BEE) as well as a Parasound P3 and PS Audio HCA2. Given my sorry room configuration I fear any speaker I buy will be a mere shadow of itself in a different environment, and I cannot change this environment. I'm finding that a set of small monitors and a sub seems to work, but these speakers have their own limitations. I've got a max $3K budget for a pair of speakers, but read time and again how any speaker will sound like crap when their back panel is placed close to a wall. If true that kills anything and I might as well stick with my monitors or if I want to play really loud when the wife's out put my old Advent 2s on and launch the cones. Is there ANY speaker in the 2-3 thou range that is designed to function well close to a wall save an in-wall unit? I look at these long ribbons of 3-4" drivers and can't help but think they'll sound horrible, but who knows. I'm probably going to be here for some years, so I have to make the most of it.