All about the bass

If your budget is now around $7k, the Vandersteen Quatro will give you the best of both worlds (given the integrated powered sub with 11 bands of EQ). However, I still would budget $1k for room treatments. It will be some of the best money spend on your system.

Within your $5K budget, I'd recommend the Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grands with a REL sub woofer. You only mentioned tight/powerful/fast. If you go with the setup I'm suggesting, you'll get that plus you'll hear the true character of the bass. With double bass you'll hear the woodyness of the body, with electric bass you'll be able to tell a Sadowsky from a Fender, etc. Lot's of systems get the TPF right but leave out the character. For your classical listening you'll really need that.

Hooking up with the Sumiko guys (distributors for VA, REL, OCOS, Sonus Faber, Pro-ject, Sumiko, etc.) will get you in with some guys that really know how to put a system together.

Dave

how about dunlavy sc4 or sc5; able to biamp using solid state on the woofers and tubes on the mid/highs; I ran a pair of sc3's like this with excellant results for several years until I moved into soundlab's m2 speaker.

Lilu

ATCs work very well in their active line--which include built-in amplification. You should look at the new 16As at 4 grand, or their proven ATC20A, which is 8 grand. The 16A came out two months ago and are a great bargin, since you also get a world class 250 watt amp that seemlessly handles the cross-overs. I have heard the ATCs side by side with the Scorpios and you will hear better bass and drum sonics with ATC around electronica music. Vocals and mids are great with both, but you will likely find classical works better with the ATCs.

If you go with Audio Physics, be sure to demo them in your environment. I have seen many threads about how they need special placement to get the soundstage right. You should read the many threads on this site.