Ghoeper, Ah, Altec Lansing. Man, I haven't heard that name in ages! Memories...Altec was one of the speaker brands that everyone knew back then. I'll bet a lot of Agoners owned them.
They've seen better days, and the technology is WAY better (on virtually all speakers)now. If they've served you well for two decades, it's time to reward yourself and get some contemporary speakers. You won't believe the difference in sound!
Your goal: "What I'm looking for in a speaker is one that will be a big step above what I have now, one that my system will be able to give justice to it's capability's, and one that is good enough so that future epuipment upgrades will benifit from their quality."
There are many speakers which can achieve that goal. If you're serious about the Focus HD's, while I must leave guarantees to the manufacturer's, let's say I don't think you would have any problem whatsoever in more than meeting those goals with the HD's. These speakers fit very comfortably in $30k rigs. So, you'd have some upgrade room.
If you get them here's what you'll notice, in general:
World's better treble, with far cleaner highs, less enmeshment of cymbals, triangles, and synthesized effects etc. Mids will be magical, extremely listenable and placed at a realistic height to be authentic sounding to the ears. Your gear is pretty strident, so don't expect absolute warmth. In fact, with your current gear, you will hear much more treble, but if it's too much for you the attenuation switch can be activated until you get some more forgiving components. However, as you progress in components the speaker will get more and more rich and captivating, and absolutely non-fatiguing. Bass will be intoxicating; far cleaner and fuller than the Altec. It would be difficult to get this degree of improvement in a speaker without spending much more money (possibly double).
Again, many speakers now can offer vast improvements over the Altec's. I have heard many excellent speakers. I do know that if you get the HD's, you're likely to think, "I've really reached it, the ultimate in sound." Not even close. There's LOT's of upgrade performance in them, even with $20k of components. I'll be curious what you end up doing. Make sure to post it on this thread.