If all you are after is the stereo sound you had in the 70s, you will be more than pleased with the standard M60s. They will knock your socks off!
Keep in mind though what I've said about bass management. No matter what speaker you get, even bookshelfs, bass management in any but the largest rooms becomes very tricky. It's easier to manage that bass when you have a sub. I have a 7.1 system with the M80v2 and an EP600v2 in a 5,000 cubic foot room and it took a lot of work to get the bass under control. The bass came together when I got an Onk with XT32. I can now say I am a very happy camper.
Right now I am tinkering with a 1900 cubic foot room that is open to the rest of the house. I want to use this for 2.0 and hopefully 2.1 one day (if I can get a sub out on the Axiom Air Gateway). I have a pair of bookshelves I had set up along the width (short dimension) of the room. Even though I had them many feet away from the room boundaries, the bass was terrible even with some room treatments I got from Serenity_Now. I had to knock them down by 4 dB at 100Hz to tame them. They still didn't sound right though. Without the room treatments it was so bad I couldn't listen to it. I decided to try something different. I set my room up so that the speakers were positioned along the length of the room. Bingo! Nirvana! In this configuration, the closest wall behind them is about 6 feet away because, as I said, the room is open to the rest of the house. They are also well away from the side walls.
My advice to you is to consider getting less speaker (like the standard M60) and put the rest of the money into room treatments.
Give Serenity_Now your room dimensions and he'll give you some computer output that tells you where you should put what treatments :-).
