Is $3000 pushing the limits for a geat monitor??

The Harbeth or Spendor would be perfect for a room that size. They both have sealed woofers so you can place them close to a wall with none of the problems a ported design will cause. You will be very happy with either one of these . However you may just find the Harbeth a tad better like I did. Happy hunting!

Guy says $3k and people recommend magico and raidho...outstandingly lame.

Its great to be lame joker

be careful with monitors (or floorstanders that lack stability) if you have cats ... I speak from experience :(

This is why I went with Magico S1. I hoped to get the coherence of a 2-way monitor speaker, with the cat-proof stability of a stable floor stander.

So far, the sound is fantastic, and they have remained vertical!

It's surprising that no one has mentioned the Evolution Acoustics MMMicros One's (also referred to as "Micro One"). If you look through the threads, you'll see that the issue is not whether they sound great - pretty much everyone who has heard them thinks they do - but whether they sound better than much more expensive monitors (many believe that they do). I've heard one system with them and think they're incredible for the money. Disclaimer: I own the big Evolution Acoustics MM2, so I obviously like the house sound.

As for other monitors in that price range, I also like the Dynaudio Confidence 1, but they need a lot of power to come alive, which is problematic because most high-powered amps use a lot of negative feedback, which I am very sensitive to and can't tolerate.

Both of these speakers use very simple crossovers that cause little phase shift - if used with the right electronics, they deliver truly high performance.