Bookshelf speaker ideas....

I started 8 months ago with a pair of paradigm mini monitors (v.6 made in canada, not the current v.7, which is made in china) and they were good enough that I caught the upgrade bug and now have paradigm studio 20's, which I absolutely love. If you are really interested, I will connect them to my 55wpc onkyo to let you know how they sound with that amp. As for stands, I've always used cinder blocks as they are solid and heavy as hell, along with being acousticaly dead and cheap. I used to place my turntables on them with great results too. You can also stash your c.d.'s in them. You could get a pair of v.6 mini monitors for $200, or a pair of used studio 20's for $1,000.

moverbob,
in the studio line of paradigm's, they are on v.5. to my understanding, studio v.4's use the same tweeter, different midbass. the studio line is still made in canada, as are the signature line. the monitor line is now made in china. the difference between the monitor series and the studio series is fairly substantial in my oppinion. i feel that the studio line is far more musical. you need to look at the sensitiviy rating of a speaker to determine how well a lower powered amp like yours will play them. the studio 20's need some power to sound good, so your onkyo may not do the trick. i didn't think about zu audio, but now that i have, you might want to look into them. a while back they were offering zu omen standard's for 1,000. these are awesome speakers, built by cool people who care. the zu speakers are also incredibly efficient, meaning that your onkyo will push them without a problem. my vote would be to start checking out some zu's :-)

moverbob, the sjofn clue seems to need quite a powerful amp as they have a very low sensitivity rating (86 db). In the reviews, they were hooked up to some pretty serious equipment. Alot of $1500 monitors sound good with $10,000 worth of equipment upstream. The zu's should sound pretty decent, and loud, with only 55 watts, and if later on you upgrade the rest of your system, they'll sound even better. My vote still goes to zu in this particular application :-)

I like dynaudio quite a bit, but I'm curious about the clue's. Maybe you ought to start a new thread "clue vs. excite" it'd be interesting to see if anyone has heard the clue's and what they thought about them. I like the idea of their placement as you could gain alot of width to the soundstage in a small room.