I find energy speakers muddy with little bass punch. I don't care for them at all. Just my opinion of corse...
I find Polks to lack dynamics and but are ok for consumer products. Klipsch on the other hand has some good stuff. I would look into a used pair of RB-81 (retial 800- used 400) that would be very good and great for the money. You could also run them off very little power because they are 97dB @ 2.83V / 1m.
I should note, I also find Paradigms (S8 newest version) too laid back and unvolving.
As for B&W... I own a pair of 703s in my secondary system and really like them. They were my college speakers (I ate a lot of romin and peanut butter to by them). I had them in a room with a pair of Klipsch RF7s for a demo. I find the B&Ws better in all aspects (wider sound stage with more natural tone, etc). But and this is a big BUT B&Ws lower price speakers are weak for what you pay. I would not recommend any of there speakers below the 703s. As for "cheep" speakers I vote Klipsch reference line.
PS. have you thought about headphones? A pair of Sennheiser 650s run about $300 and give a lot of 10,000+ speakers a run for their money. They have good sound stage but are a little on the darker side. Grados would be more forward (on the bright side) and also very good but have a smaller sound stage. I would start with the Music Series Two from "Alessandro High-End Products".
http://www.alessandro-products.com/headphones.html
www.head-fi.org is a good place (and last place for that matter) to look for headphones info.
I find Polks to lack dynamics and but are ok for consumer products. Klipsch on the other hand has some good stuff. I would look into a used pair of RB-81 (retial 800- used 400) that would be very good and great for the money. You could also run them off very little power because they are 97dB @ 2.83V / 1m.
I should note, I also find Paradigms (S8 newest version) too laid back and unvolving.
As for B&W... I own a pair of 703s in my secondary system and really like them. They were my college speakers (I ate a lot of romin and peanut butter to by them). I had them in a room with a pair of Klipsch RF7s for a demo. I find the B&Ws better in all aspects (wider sound stage with more natural tone, etc). But and this is a big BUT B&Ws lower price speakers are weak for what you pay. I would not recommend any of there speakers below the 703s. As for "cheep" speakers I vote Klipsch reference line.
PS. have you thought about headphones? A pair of Sennheiser 650s run about $300 and give a lot of 10,000+ speakers a run for their money. They have good sound stage but are a little on the darker side. Grados would be more forward (on the bright side) and also very good but have a smaller sound stage. I would start with the Music Series Two from "Alessandro High-End Products".
http://www.alessandro-products.com/headphones.html
www.head-fi.org is a good place (and last place for that matter) to look for headphones info.