Curious what people think is the best "value" high end speaker (~5K to 15K)

This is getting interesting. A speaker company [B&W] with a long tradition of building really esteemed products gets more than just one "not my kind" response on this thread. Again, no haters but just not impressed ones. I thought I was the only one out there. I guess it is time to come out of the closet. Maybe higher models are significantly different?

FWIW I have never cared for B&W speakers, ever. :) Always thought their sound was cold, hard and shallow. When they first started using metal tweeters, the treble was downright unlistenable. Over the years they have gotten better at controlling the resonances but they still can’t match a 20 year old Dynaudio Esotar in naturalness, to say nothing of something like a good AMT. 

There is a B&W I like - one of the cheapest ones, the 686. I think it’s a fun little speaker that sounds more natural than their expensive ones - I have always preferred it to any of the 800 series.

BTW I can vouch for @audiokinesis - Duke knows what he’s talking about. His room was one of my absolute favorites at RMAF 2018 - it was the one I wanted to keep coming back to, so good. (Duke, I still owe you a shout-out for that, coming soon!)

Cheers,
TAWW
http://taww.co

I walked several shows and decided that the Dali Euphonia 4, 5 and now the Epicon series were giantkiller at the sub 15K level. Someone mentioned the Focal Elektra 1038 and, of course, Joseph Audio and Vandersteen are always strong.

@russbutton , thanks for your feedback on the Linkwitz speakers. I'm totally in agreement with you that the Orion is by far the more elegant looking speaker. The LX521 might be one of the best loudspeakers ever built, it sure has a huge amount of science backing it up, but it looks like it belongs in a church. Maybe you could grow to like it, I don't know.

I beginning to suspect, as richier31 mentioned, that open baffle designs are inherently superior to any box designs.

The problems of cabinet resonances are well known and other than the Harbeth thin-walled approach it is difficult to see what else can be done. I remember Alan Shaw pointing out the difficulty of controlling the complex internal cabinet pressures and resonances especially once you consider that the thinnest and weakest part of a loudspeaker cabinet is the cone material itself.

Open baffle designs, on the other hand, appear to cut that Gordian knot in one go.

I  absolutely love my GoldenEar Triton 1’s. There is a reason they have won just about every major award. I auditioned them, and completely agree. And they are at the very low end of your price range. 

The GoldenEar Reference is even better - audition them in your listening space.

Good luck,  because as you know there is no real answer! :-) Because it’s what you like, not what everyone else likes. 

Kinda like sports cars...

 

Porsche