Depend on what you want the speakers to do - what kind of system you intend on building and ultimately the sound you like. The best thing is to listen a LOT - it took me four years to find something and I made sure to listen to as many of the touted speakers in Stereophile as I could and to take samples froma breadth of designs from Ribbons, panels stats, stat hybrids, horns and even just weird looking speakers like Cabasse - the one with the big eyeball looking drivers. That is really the best suggestion I can give you and it really is the only suggestion worth giving you because no matter the reviews and forum hype not everyone and not you are going to like em all.

The more you hear the better off you'll be - you don;t want to just by a $2k speaker of one kind of design when all you hear is 4-6 others all of which are pretty much exactly the same. Trouble is to get the auditions - not every place carries a lot of this 'other' stuff. Then some of them don;t make surround sound packages - if that;s what you want a lof of companies get lopped off the list.