Speakers to hang on to for LIFE

I bought my first pair of Harbeth P3 mini-monitors in 1994, sold them in 1998 and bought a pair of Harbeth HL Compact 7s, which I promise you I will never sell. Lots of reviews available so I won't bore you. To me they are completely characterless in tonality and produce real life-like macro and micro dynamics.

I have had QUAD ESLs since the late 70s. I have actually given some of my pairs away as gifts during this time but have always had a pair. These of course are the so-called 57s. I find as electronics improve eg. Pass amplifiers, they get better sounding. I use surge protection on them and have had the latest electronic protection mods done to isolate them as much as possible from electrical faults, thus hopefully increasing their longevity.

For 10 yrs I lived with a pair of active stats -- AudioExclusiv, a German product. The amps were an OTL design, with adjustable input gain. The electronic cross-over was also adjustable to +/-3db @ 30Hz/12kHz.
The sound was beautiful: soundstage, imaging, and speed were obvious characteristics, as were the natural timbres. Unusually (for stats), I also had dynamics and reasonable transient attack! The lower register was also well developed by stat standards of the time... by comparison to the Quads (THEN, 1990), the A-Es went higher and lower and louder.

They were also beautiful to look at (tall & narrow, art-deco style) with outstanding WAF.

So why sell? I could no longer deal with the constant need for servicing. The amps operated at their very limit (by comparison, class A is polite) and would go beserk (i.e. components were surpassing their limits, & blowing) at any fluctuation in the power supply -- of which, I had many.

Apparently the problems I had have been addressed in newer models.
I do beleive that if this had been the case then, I would have kept these speakers -- "for life", as it were.

The Dunlavy SC-5s is as close to the perfect speaker that I've heard. Had them now for several years and keep getting
surprised with what there are capable of. Many of my friends are just amazed by the multi-channel effects coming from a two channel system.

For 25 years, I have been listening to a good old JBL speaker until last year.
I'm not an upgrade fever patient as you are. I would like to buy the BEST audio equipment, to my ears, within a budget, and keep it for a while. So, I researched for a year and came up with few lists of speakers.

1) B&W Nautilus series (801 - 805) speakers.
2) Revel speakers.
3) Wilson Audio Puppy.
4) Dunlavy speakers.

Any of these speakers are truly the "speakers to hang on for life" but, to select just one among these speakers, I used following criteria:

1) Electrical specification. BTW, I am an electronic engineer.
2) Mechanical design.
2) Sound. I used classic and jazz music.
3) Company's reputation.

The final winner is B&W N802. I would like to say a lot about this speaker but you should auditioned the speaker and judge it yourself.
The B&W N802 is the "speaker to hang on for life" for me.