I have a RR-2150 with JBL Studios circa 1973 (s/n 0005,0007) and am thinking of replacing them with either Polk floor standing or perhaps the new Atlantics Outlaw has on the site. Another consideration is Axiom. The room is 16 x 24, the music jazz and rock, and I like a flat response curve.
Any thoughts?

I've heard the AT-1's. If I was in the market for floor-standing speakers, I would put them on the list - and high on the list, for that matter. I got to hear them last fall, driven by an RR-2150. They are excellent speakers.

At $2500 (the price of the AT-1s) you have a TON of great options. Listen to as many as you can ... check out speakers from Dynaudio, Revel, Paradigm, Energy, Ascend Acoustics, NHT, JBL, KEF, Tannoy, B&W ... the list goes on and on.

For flat response on and off axis, and ultra low distortion I'd go Revel Performas on the used market. Actually, that's exactly what I did do ... so I'm biased. I went with M22s but they might be a tad small for your room so the F32 would probably be a better fit for you.

The AT-1s may be fine - even great - speakers but 29hz from a $2500 floorstander is not a huge breakthrough. At the $2500 price point, there are just too many options from far more credentialed speaker manufacturers to put it high on my list.

One of the reasons I was curious to hear the AT-1's was to find out of there was more to them than the <30Hz response. There is. They are really excellent speakers overall, not solely at the low end, and Atlantic has something like two decades of history as a very capable speaker company. That being said, Revel is another really good option.

Thanks for your comments. I really need to review my pricepoints.

I agree, at $2500 budget you could buy a set of Martin Logans or Maggies too. Both are outstanding speakers with world wide critical acclaim at a great price point.

I note that NHTs were recommended above by LightninBoy. I bought a NHT Evolution System 4 years ago. I chose NHT based on one of the most critical of audiophile reasons. That's right, I read an article where they were installed in Oliver Stone's house (as well as some other producer's house)! Therefore, I "modeled" my system off of Oliver Stone's setup (substituting Outlaw for Paradigm products given that the "internet" including the Saloon seemed to think that Outlaw performed as good for 1/3 the price!). The NHT Evolution price was fairly reasonable, but I was new to the audiophile thing, had no ability to judge accurately on my own (hence reading articles), and could not demo given the WAF (wife acceptance factor) (hence, again, reading articles). Therefore, I thought that if NHT Evolutions are good enough for Oliver Stone, they had to be good enough for me--and I do understand that Oliver Stone probably received all of his gear for free as a promotional plug for the installer and/or equipment. The NHTs and, of course, Outlaw have turned out to be quite incredible--at least to me and every other person that has listened to my system.

With that said, NHT seems to have dropped their higher end products a few years ago and "dumbed" themselves down for the masses to increase sales. I have no first hand listening experience with NHT's current lineup, and was wondering if anyone has any thoughts given that they were recommended by LightninBoy (and, I guess, me).

I'm always leery of assuming a setup like that has been assembled based on critical listening by the wealthy and famous owner. There are a few potential pitfalls. The biggest is the "freebie" factor. If Stone did try to get companies to give him equipment for free, then the system has less to do with what he found to sound the best and more with what company thought they could write off a set of speakers as an advertising expense. Second is the potential for the custom installer to limit the options. If a wealthy person walks in to a custom installer's shop and says "set me up with a great system," that installer is going to start pulling from the lines he reps. That will greatly restrict the number of brands being considered for inclusion. Third is personal taste. Does what sounds good to Oliver Stone sound good to me? There is a personal taste factor, especially with speakers, that can't be overlooked.

All that being said, this approach can work out - after all, whoever was doing the install for Stone wouldn't put bad speakers in there.

I think the only way to get a system that sounds good to you is to listen to a lot of speakers. The reviews are great as a starting point, to narrow down the field of speakers you listen to. But all those graphs and charts, and "expert" evaluations don't tell you what your ears will hear.

About 8 years ago my wife and I decided to upgrade (replace) our great early 1970s stereo system. We picked out some CDs we really liked, a mix of classical, jazz, rock, folk, and tramped around the area to places that sold Dynaudio, B&W, Mirage, Canton, etc., speakers for weeks to find the speakers that sounded best to us. Finally, it came down to Dynaudio's lower-end HT speakers and B&W within our price range. We found a place that had both, so we could listen pretty close to side-by-side.

In addition to getting the speakers we liked, we got to listen to a lot of good equipment.

Gonk and Bob Becker, I really could not agree more with both of you. Unfortunately, at the time I was purchasing my first "hi-fi" system, I had a certain budget opportunity that I could wrap up into new house expenses, very limited time (given family, work, and moving cross country), and a wife who barely tollerates the system at all ("why do we need anything other than a TV? ...." on most days but she does like the system when watching movies or listening to music) and she would not be agreeable to me taking weeks to check out various systems and/or home demo various speakers. Therefore, reading on the internet and in magazines was my only viable option. The reason I actually picked Oliver Stone's system to model after was because it was featured in one of the magazine's I happened to purchase, and the NHT speaker prices were not out of this world; and in the article Oliver said that listening to his system made him feel like he was in the studio listening to and editing the soundtrack to the "Doors" movie which he produced. Therefore, I thought that level of sound quality was probably good enough for my purposes. Besides, sufing the internet and reading opinion in the Saloon and other reviews was how I found out about Outlaw, which I am sure you will all agree has pretty incredible equipment for the price; and which allowed me to know that the Outlaw products were probably pretty good and justifiable substitutes for the much more expensive Paradigm products in Oliver Stone's system.