I’ve had Ushers, Paradigm Sigs, Merlin’s, KEF Reference, Vapor Audio, Dynaudio, Klipsch, Golden Ear, and more I’m not thinking of.
Yeah not top of the heap but not Best Buy Stuff either.
The Sigs and KEFs were very detailed. The Ushers were great for vocals and not bad on everything else. The Dynaudios were smooth and had good tone with surprising amount of bass as long as you have a high current amp. The Vapors have a wonderful tweeter and do everything else pretty well. The Golden Ears were well balanced and had pretty slammin bass.
In my room my non SE DIs have the detail of the Sigs and KEFs, the tone of the Ushers, the immediacy of the Klipsch, the bass approaching the Golden Ears “with better articulation”and the smoothness of the Dynaudios. So for me nothing in the 3k range will come close. Get up to 30k well then I really dunno. I’m guessing they can compete in certain areas. For 3k I truly believe you are not gonna touch them. My opinion, no fights, 213 I’m ready for ya buddy.