Shopping for speakers is a frustrating exercise. The variables are almost limitless. For instance, how good is your hearing? If you're a guy over 30, it's unlikely that you can hear much over 15 KHz, if that high! So, does it matter if a certain speaker has a flat response up to 23 KHz? How about the acoustics of your room? If they're bad and you don't want to go through the effort and expense of addressing the problem, don't chuck money away on great speakers in hopes that they will compensate.
Then, there are certain speaker reviews, where no measurements are taken and vague terms like "introverted/extroverted", "meaty", "tactile", etc. are thrown around. My BS sensor goes into the red zone when I read such things and I take the reviews with, not a grain, but a heavy dose of salt.
Plus, if you're relying on reviews as a guide, you may be shutting yourself off from some terrific speakers that have not been reviewed.
As previously suggested, you need to get out and listen for yourself. However, there's a problem in that as well. Let's be honest - how good is our "auditory memory" when comparing different speakers in different locations? Sure, you can take notes while listening - but it's still just a written comment and you have to depend on your memory to a great extent. Then there are the different acoustics in different stores.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're personally comparing speakers of similar quality, it should be double-blind, side-by-side and level matched. That's the only valid listening comparison. Otherwise, it's half-educated guesswork. Of course, arranging such a test is non-starter for most people.
That's why we see so many posts, asking about the best speakers. People get bewildered by the vast number of makes, models, specs and reviews - I'm one of them!
Anyway, sorry if my little rant was of no use to you.
I do have one suggestion that I don't think was mentioned. If you're planning on buying a subwoofer anyway, you could go with a pair a main speakers that might not have very deep bass capabilities and sink the money saved into that sub.
