I've had my Ascend Sierra 1s for a while now and they've suffered some mishaps over the years due to cats and a recent moving incident. They still work, but I've had it in my mind for a while that I might want to upgrade eventually, not necessarily out of good sense and financial intelligence, especially now that we're settling in to our forever home.
My first instinct is to just go for a pair of the Sierra 2EXs as I have loved both the build, look, and sound of the Sierra 1s. Admittedly I'm well out of the loop on speakers these days and sometime I want to upgrade the home theater too, but that's another can of worms.
I more or less plan to stick with a pair of bookshelf speakers but might consider towers as well. I've looked at RBH and others, and am not super keen on going with mass market brands unless there's something that stands out. My budget is around the $2000 mark for the pair and the room is fairly big (15x20), although I'm not concerned about actually filling the whole room with sound on the regular as I'll have a listening position set up about 8 feet away.
Any recommendations for a fairly neutral/linear pair of speakers? It will be paired with a 12" sealed SVS sub for the time being.