Acoustic Zen Crescendo Mk2 or Daedalus Ulysses v2

If you share your general location you may be able to find someone nearby who has speakers for you to listen to?

FWIW I use the Crescendos for both 2-channel and home theater at reference levels (85dB dialogue, 105dB peaks) and have tested running them set to LARGE to confirm they can handle it.

- I'm a dealer for Acoustic Zen, after being a customer first, so weigh my words as you wish.

@Mtrot I haven't left them running LARGE, but that's also because I have custom subs (4x15" drivers in a sealed configuration; 4000W) I built myself that will hit 115dB peak at 5Hz, flat response through a simulated Linkwitz-Transform. I do have a large, open room.

I would see no problem with keeping Crescendos set to LARGE if you are listening to movies around 75dB with 95dB peaks at your seat, assuming you sit about ~10-15 feet away from the speakers. You could go higher in volume but I think that's probably about the point you will get better results from really beefy subs. You can't cheat physics. :-)

If you have any specific questions about AZ I can try to answer them. For myself, these were the speakers I heard and immediately knew that I wanted. None of the other speakers I'd heard jumped out to me the same way. Regardless of price.

Like you, I wanted something that could run double duty for music and home theater and that narrows the choices because a lot of nice speakers have low sensitivity coupled with a maximum power handling that equals SPL less than reference level movie playback. (Or reference level 1812 Overture playback.)

Since you might be a few hours away from the nearest dealer in Texas, you could email or call Robert at AZ and ask if he knows of any customer in East Texas that might be willing to have you over to listen. Before I was a dealer I did that.