In the 3-5k used range you are definitely looking at Maggie 3.6s and perhaps Soundlab M-2s, or maybe M-3s. Soundlabs and Maggies are both great; they are different than each other, but great. One other possiblity would be a pair of Wayne Picquet's Quad 57s (which would probably fit in your budget even "new", ie with his refurbs) - they are outstanding, but won't have quite the low end or the large imaging of the full range planars (Wayne would tell you to solve those requirements by stacking two pair of 57s).
Back on the room, Duke is one of my all-time favorite hifi dealers (really, truly, seriously), but I don't share his opinion that you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. I know that Duke knows the difference between deep boomy/muddy bass and deep accurate bass and I have to assume that he meant deep acccurate bass.
Duke said:
"First of all, you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. Think of a high quality car stereo system, or as an extreme example headphones. The ears register pressure even if the room dimensions are too short to support a wavelength."
- headphones are like a system in an optimized room - the drivers and the room acoustics are both known in advance and are designed to have the intended dimensions, absorbptions, and reflections
- the trick is not to just get deep bass, but a frequency response that doesn't emphasize some frequencies at the expense of others; if you want deep bass, just push your speakers up against a wall or in the corners - the bass will get deeper and the rest of the sound will get muddier - because room size and relfections do matter.
Duke acknowledges this:
"Now with a speaker whose reverberant field response is tonally incorrect, the more "room sound" you get the worse the tonal balance."
But he then goes on to say:
"But what if the reverberant sound isn't detrimental to the tonal balance? In that case, the size of the room is much less important."
And that was original my point - you won't know if the reverberant sound is or isn't detrimental to the tonal balance until you hear the speaker in your room - there are too many variables to know without listening to the speakers in the room. If you try to put Soundlabs or Maggies in a small (short) room, you are asking for frequency response issues - starting with the low end and continuing right up the through the midrange and beyond.
If you like spending x on your speakers and selling them for 60% of x, just put them in whatever room you have and give it a go. The room matters more than people often know or like to admit.
Back on the room, Duke is one of my all-time favorite hifi dealers (really, truly, seriously), but I don't share his opinion that you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. I know that Duke knows the difference between deep boomy/muddy bass and deep accurate bass and I have to assume that he meant deep acccurate bass.
Duke said:
"First of all, you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. Think of a high quality car stereo system, or as an extreme example headphones. The ears register pressure even if the room dimensions are too short to support a wavelength."
- headphones are like a system in an optimized room - the drivers and the room acoustics are both known in advance and are designed to have the intended dimensions, absorbptions, and reflections
- the trick is not to just get deep bass, but a frequency response that doesn't emphasize some frequencies at the expense of others; if you want deep bass, just push your speakers up against a wall or in the corners - the bass will get deeper and the rest of the sound will get muddier - because room size and relfections do matter.
Duke acknowledges this:
"Now with a speaker whose reverberant field response is tonally incorrect, the more "room sound" you get the worse the tonal balance."
But he then goes on to say:
"But what if the reverberant sound isn't detrimental to the tonal balance? In that case, the size of the room is much less important."
And that was original my point - you won't know if the reverberant sound is or isn't detrimental to the tonal balance until you hear the speaker in your room - there are too many variables to know without listening to the speakers in the room. If you try to put Soundlabs or Maggies in a small (short) room, you are asking for frequency response issues - starting with the low end and continuing right up the through the midrange and beyond.
If you like spending x on your speakers and selling them for 60% of x, just put them in whatever room you have and give it a go. The room matters more than people often know or like to admit.