Magico A3 vs. Joseph Audio Perspective vs. Spendor D9

@otinkyad Hope you are having as much fun as I am with this search. There are definitely a lot of candidates at this price point. One thing that I have learned is that the question, "which speaker to get" leads to more speakers to add onto the list instead of narrowing down your choices. Enjoyment of sound is such a subjective thing and it really comes down to your system and your ears. 

Revel F228BE doesn't match my decor but I have heard great things about them. Ditto with the GoldenEar but I have some of their speakers before and have not been impressed - granted that was with McIntosh gear which I also am impartial to after a few listening sessions. Legacy Audio is supposed to be fantastic but again, not a good match with the decor of my room. ProAc D48R is one that I have considered previously but have heard from a couple of folks that compared to the Spendor's, they preferred the D9's all around. I do like a good ribbon tweeter though as my current speakers have them and they voice those highs so smoothly and transparently without any harshness. 

@freesole

I do find the Perspectives to be somewhat polarizing though which is funny. People who enjoy the Perspective’s, love them. Those that do not feel strongly against them as they did not perform the way that they expected them to. Very little middle ground.

That’s interesting to hear.

Like many of us here, I go all OCD when researching a speaker I’m very interested in buying. For the last year I’ve scoured the web for show reports, user reports, forum comments, reviews etc on the JA speakers, especially the Perspective, and I have a huge number of bookmarked links to these.

From what I’ve seen, the remarks have been pretty much universally positive on the Perspectives (with the exception of one person in a forum who remarked that they sounded incredible in the store, but had a harder time dialing them in for the same sound at home.)

I’m curious where you are seeing the hate for the Perspectives?

Out of those 3 choices if I were you I would go for either the Joseph Audio or the Spendor. I'm not a fan of lower end Magico especially the A3.
However the Magico top of the line model or series called the M series such as the M3 & the M6 are superb extraordinary flawless speakers but are very expensive and will be way way out of price range. 

In your price range also consider the Harbeth. 

@freesole  Thanks for the response.  Yes, I've already been seeing how subjective this is -- the one high-end speaker I've auditioned so far just didn't sound good to me, even though many seem to really love it, and it is very well reviewed.  Thanks also for sharing your reasons for leaving out the Revels, Legacy, and ProAc from you shortlist -- that was very helpful.

@prof I've read with interest your detailed impressions of the various speakers you auditioned, in the thread you started.   Wrt Revels, my take on what you wrote is that you found them accurate, but clinically competent, not organic, not engaging for you, and perhaps a bit fatiguing (hope I'm not misinterpreting your words too much).  Did those impressions include either Revel F228Be or Salon 2, if you auditioned them?  I ask because the Revel F228Be's are ones I'm very interested in, but haven't heard yet.  Thanks!