Speaker Selection with "difficult" room

Joe22ny1,
Trying to get a handle on this room...
17' wide, 23' long. Speakers will be near one end with french windows on one side of the listening area and opens to a dining room on the other side of the listening area. Your seating position will be 8 ft in front of the speakers... Do I have this right? By the way average listening is typically 82 to 90 db. I find myself at around 86 or 87.
If this is correct and you want to keep your current receiver, you will need fairly sensitive speakers. I would suggest 90-91db 8 ohm speakers minimum. I would not risk 4 ohm speakers with this receiver... Next, if truly on a 5K budget. I would highly recommend you take
$1000 to $1500 toward a good integrated, then $2000 to $2500 on speakers and $500 to $1000 on a source and the balance on good cables....
If I have the room correct, We can give you some easy and inexpensive room treatments and make recommendations about speakers or electronics once we hear what you are dealing with. Tim

I would suggest staying away from Paradigm speakers. I really enjoyed listening to Paradigm speakers in the store, but they are probably the brightest speakers that I've ever heard and I suspect a very poor match for you room.

I own Focals (Chorus Series) that are fairly bright speakers to my ears, but they actually sound wonderful in my listening room that is fairly live as well so you might give them a listen and see what you think.

What equipment have you previously owned or heard that is sort of your target? Though I'd love to have seperates, I'm very happy with my receiver and it comes with Audyssey built in.

My Integra 50.1 AVR and Focal 836v speakers would be under your $5,000 budget and might be a satisfactory setup for you, I'm very happy with it. You might even step down to the 816v speakers and add a nice subwoofer to the system for a similar total budget. I suspect that a subwoofer would do wonderful things in a room that large.

A lot of members are anti-AVR because they don't sound quite as good as stereo equipment and they simply can't be happy with less. I know that things can sound better, but can't imagine not being happy with the sound that I currently have. You'll have to figure out where you stand on the subject.

If you're only planning for stereo listening then a nice integrated amplifier would be the ticket. Some options to consider are the Cambridge Audio Azur 840A or Krell S-300i.

Thank you everyone for your comments. Very constructive.