Small room, "budget priced" speaker advice, please

Zk,

YEs, I've had at least one pair of Ohms in my system for 30 years.

I've been researching upgrades heavily for the last two years.

Now, I own 3 pair of Ohms (2 Walsh design) as a result. MAggies and B&Ws have seen the door in the process.

Mapman,

Thanks for your good wishes. Audiogon is a great community, and this thread has been a complete education for me. Thanks for your considerable role in this process. :-)

Knownothing,

Thanks for the good wishes! You have also given me priceless advice and counsel in this thread. I'm very grateful. The speakers should be here in about a week; the dealer had to order them.

By the way, I ended up buying them from a little dealer here in Austin called Tube Dreams. It's run by a nice guy named Simon Hill. He has a "day job" in the computer industry, but has converted his garage into a showroom and sells audio equipment (lots of pricey tube gear, along with Usher, Totem and other speakers) out of his home. I could've bought the Totems from a home theater outfit here (and they were perfectly nice) but it's clear to me that audio is a labor of love for this guy and I wanted to give him the business. He was even good enough to sweeten the deal when he saw me wavering due to price.

Mapman:

By the way, if I have any lingering regret, it's having not given the Ohm Micro Walsh Tall's a try. I would love to hear them some day (I even posted a message to our neighborhood list-serve to see if anybody knew anybody who had them) but didn't think I had the energy to bring them in, set them up, burn them in, and then deal with returning them if I didn't like them. Although I hadn't had a chance to hear the Arro, the home theater store did have the Dreamcatcher and Rainmaker, and I really liked the sound of both, so at least I had a clue of how the Arros might sound. Also, I thought my wife would like the appearance of the Totems a bit more, plus they're supposed to be very forgiving in terms of room placement. Anyway, at some point you have to make a decision, and since I still have upgrade/refurb decisions to make on my SOTA Sapphire once SOTA calls with their recommendations, I settled on Totem. It's weird… I usually am drawn to unconventional choices when it comes to buying stuff like this (heck, I had an Amiga computer for over 10 years!) but in the case of this speaker decision, I made a "more conventional" choice. Oh, well...

Asa,

Thanks for the amplifier advice. "Down the road," as you say.... ;-)

By the way, do all of these newer amps lack phono stages and so require a separate phono section?

Rebbe,

If you ever get to the DC/Baltimore corridor area let me know in advance + I'd be happy to give you a listen.