Open baffle speakers

I have a pair of DIY 8" OB from the Decware site. VERY happy with them. I like them because of their efficiency and no xover - so very simple. The signal goes from my TT to pre-amp to amp to driver. cabinet is MDF and front is 2 x 3/4" maple.

I have about 100 hours on the Caladans. I hear refined  and tight bass pluckings of bass guitars I never heard of (listening to the same song for years).

@bache No, I like them fine, just saying that you aren’t paying for that on most OB speakers. Your money should be going to making the other components better on OB designs.

Would someone prefer the OB Caladans at $3500 or say the pretty Ash veneer of Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G speakers at $3400?  Guess it depends on their room and other associated equipment. 

Never gave open baffle speakers a thought, then I went to an Audio show.  Outside of $40k speakers, the open baffle ones sounded the best, actually had too much bass. These things blew me away, they sounded so good!!

Then found out they are DIY for like $2k, still on the fence about building a pair, but still can't believe how good they sounded. 

speaker video

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when an acoustic band is playing, the "sound" is coming from every direction, and not straight to your ears. So would an open baffle with both forward, and reflective sound be more realistic, and natural? Have a much bigger sweet spot? 

Dick Olsher's Basszillas worked out very well for me.  The bass reflex cabinet with the 16" woofer and the absorbent disk on the back wall gave smooth, articulate bass but not the submarine-low thunder that I didn't care for anyway, and the DX4's with the ribbon tweeters were magnificent.  Drove the things with a 4 watt 2A3 to as far as you'd wanna go.  That baffle, though, needs to be BIG.  The plans are still out there, I think.