Ready for my first expensive speaker purchase

[smooth]

Well, I've always broken the cardinal rule about speaker purchases (high priced components and cheap speakers) because I could never bring myself to part with the cash I necessary for the speakers I wanted.

Now, however, my wife is a classical and jazz singer, and I would like to give her a treat. She doesn't have any idea what a stereo can do. I can only convince her to let me part with about $2,000 USD. So I have to start with the mains and then go from there over time.

I started to look at paradigms but haven't yet found a small shop in my area (Southern California, Orange County). I did find another brand I am interested in hearing about after speaking with the owner: dynaudio.

We listen primarily to jazz, classical, classic rock, and rap. On the last two genres, we can just pump the bass. But excellent fidelity is critical to us for the first two. We want to do our homework bathed in rich, warm, soothing tones. I have been looking at the Audience 72SE, 82, and Contour 1.3 Mark 2.

The owner is telling me that all three are around the same price range (the 82's are demo with ~20% off). The 1.3's are silver finished. He said something about them being a special order, once they are gone they are gone. He also said that they will put the audiences to shame.

I like the look of the floorstanding models, but I'm hoping someone will have some input our decision. We will audition them on Friday. Bass is not so important, we feel we can add subs if bass isn't enough. We live in an apartment complex, our living room is 14'x19'. Also, smooth and clear midrange is more important to us than boomy bass.

We primarily listen to music, but we would like to enjoy the weekly movie.

Thank you for your help in this and any ideas you can give us.