Road trip to demo $10,000 speakers

I have one suggestion. Bring paper and pen to make notes on speakers, amps, preamps, sources and your thoughts about each audition. 

ieales,

Reading your two posts above is humbling and relieving at the same time. I would dare to say that most of us have not even close to as much understanding of technical details as you do. I, personally, can be described just as skyscraper described himself. Enough knowledge to be dangerous. That was the humbling part, accepting reality that I am clueless.

Relieving part was that, despite the black hole of ignorance, I function on the simple level. "I hear it, I like it, here is my credit card." If I knew all you do, it would drive me crazy. To understand that I am buying something so imperfect would be a torture. Like this, I walk out satisfied. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and, apparently, there are many blessed ones here.

"However, I’m not buying furniture."

You surely are a hard-core enthusiast. Many speakers are bigger than some of the furniture in the room they are placed in so they are hard to ignore. Once you do not care about that, you have really arrived. Consider yourself lucky.

Some other threads mentioned Boenicke. I looked it up and remebered that I heard the small W5 at a show and they impressed me. You might want to listen to their W11 or W8 floorstanders.

@skyscraper , since you listen mostly to jazz I would also suggest that you listen to Focal Kanta 2. I heard them with an acoustic piece and it was very suitable for them.

If you are spending 10k. listen to the Mac  XR100’s. I’m very pleased with mine 
Martin Logan’s were a close 2nd.   Listen to music you know and choose what sounds best...  & try to have similar source. as your amp / preamp  etc. 
Good Luck