Your best picks for 2006 Best Speakers under 4K.

B&W 804S is my nomination. Excellent all around sound, easy to drive, well designed, well made and looks very good, too.

look at the totem mani 2's. a speaker doesn't have to be a certain size to produce the low octaves. my mani's go lower than 30hz with a 6.5" woofer, but there are 2 of them in an isobarik design. the revel salon and studio speakers are in the 20-25hz range with 8" woofers. i have heard many speakers with smaller woofers that produce the lower octaves better than speakers with bigger cones. the design of the speaker along with how many woofers are involved make more of a difference than the size of the woofer.

Get some Traingles then use the savings to treat the room. First order reflections (including the ceiling) and tame bass nodes. Good speakers sound much better in good rooms with the right set up than great speakers in a bad room/set up (ever been to a high end show? most of the systems/rooms sound horrible)

are you talking new or used? the best sub $3000 speaker used are, in my opinion, the gershman avant garde rx-20 speakers. there are 2 pair right now going for $2000 which is an absolute steal. i bought mine about 3 years ago for $2800 after shipping and duties from a canadian a'gon member. before purchasing the avant gardes, i listened to thiel cs2.3, martin logan aeons and ascents, revel f30, von schweikert vr-4 gen. III, and some nht evolutions (don't remember the exact model). the gershman's shamed them all. their bass is very deep for using a single 8" bass driver. specs claim down to 24 Hz and you can definitely feel it in your chest. out of my audition list, i'd say the top three i listened to are:

gershman avant gardes
thiel cs2.3
martin logan aeons

granted, none of these speakers are "current" as they've been out for a while (the thiels and ml's have already been replaced or improved upon). just my 2 cents.

I was talking either actually. Triangles are inexpensive. I prefer used