budget speakers

Monitor Audio Bronze 50 will deliver the clarity you're looking for without being overly bright as well as the best dynamics in their price range. Unlike most small speakers, they work best at least 5ft from the listener. Highly recommended.

I always thought paradigm measured their speakers in an anechoic chamber causing them to sound bright compared to most of the competition. When a buddy was looking for 'budget' speakers we compared mission,paradigm, and klipsch . the Klipsch were ear bleeders with the cheap electronics all these speakers were connected to, the paradigm's were probably the most balanced, but something about the mids from the British speakers made him select the Missions. That said 3 days later he returned the missions and bought a pair of dept store cerwyn vega at-12's. I really think paradigm works pretty hard to bring perceived value to their budget speakers.

Get an amp with tone controls and crank the treble knob...(problem solved...bright as fk is delivered...).

On the other hand, if you are looking for a highly revealing speaker on a constrained budget, get one of the GR Research speaker kits such as the NX studio kit and build it.

@deep_333 

That NX looks like a keeper!!

@blackbag20  Definitely a keeper for me!! I built it with the kit+flatpacks and it came out to 1500-ish dollars. It sounds immaculate with my luxman gear.... I just noticed that they've also started offering it as a fully finished speaker for 3k-ish dollars (must be a recent thing, https://gr-research.com/product/nx-studio-pair/). Even at 3k, i don't think there's any standmount speaker under 10k that comes close to this thing.

I would love to build that NX-treme 7 foot floorstander. But, my ceiling height is not gonna cut it.