Speakers free of grain, glare and steel?

Mapman, I disagree. Not all of OHM's speakers feature bending wave Walsh drivers, the DDD drivers that German Physiks uses doesn't have the mechanical cross-overs that the Walsh drivers do.

What people's experience been with and without Merlin RCS, standard and master? Do they generally make a difference, and if so, how much? Are they more effective with tube or solid state amps?

Unsound,

OK, you can disagree but the fact is they ARE Walsh drivers, and pretty good sounding ones at that.

How much one design bends waves versus the others is another question and subject to debate. Walsh drivers, even the original (and flawed from a reliability perspective) OHM Walsh models do not rely solely on wave bending. That is also a documented fact, although its true as best I know that wave bending is a function unique to a Walsh driver

Walsh drivers produce wave bending more at higher frequencies so Walsh drivers that are designed to cover higher frequencies, like the DDDs will most likely tend to do more of that than the OHM Walshes, where the Walsh driver covers only up to 7-8 Khz or so by design.

All OHM Walsh style speakers I have ever heard exhibit the sonic qualities that the OP seeks in the stated price range, though to different extents. That's what matters for this thread, not how many waves are bent or not. That's a topic for another discussion perhaps.

Granted, wave bending is a relatively poorly understood topic in home speaker design. If it's "magic" one seeks, perhaps wave bending Walsh drivers fit the bill best in that sense. Although some may argue that its magical how the newer OHMs sound as good as they do. I'd be willing to label John Strohbeen (the designer) as a "magician", in that sense.

Unfortunately, I need to rule out Ohm Walsh out for size and WAP factor. Maybe someone needs to start a new Ohm Walsh thread.

Wait, I take it back on the Ohms after looking at their website: the new model Walshes are reasonable scaled and cosmetically improved. Plus free in-home trial Hmmm.