I think the problem with asking about the "best value" is that it is almost always the least expensive items in the range. The law of diminishing returns seems to still be in effect.
Unless you start counting in absolute money "savings" then a high price item that sounds like even higher priced items will be "worth" the most money. Then you run into the problem that most of us have not spent very much time with a variety of +20k components and therefore have a hard time telling with certainty when a 10k component is as good.
Reviewers are probably the ones with the best suited experiences to do this but since many don't trust paid reviewers that doesn't help. If you don't mind the reviewers you can just read magazines year-end issues and see which component they did think were "punching above their weight" during the last year.
After saying all this, just for fun, I would say that the Boenicke W5 impressed me during the few minutes I heard them. About $5k.
http://boenicke-audio.ch/w5_c/
Unless you start counting in absolute money "savings" then a high price item that sounds like even higher priced items will be "worth" the most money. Then you run into the problem that most of us have not spent very much time with a variety of +20k components and therefore have a hard time telling with certainty when a 10k component is as good.
Reviewers are probably the ones with the best suited experiences to do this but since many don't trust paid reviewers that doesn't help. If you don't mind the reviewers you can just read magazines year-end issues and see which component they did think were "punching above their weight" during the last year.
After saying all this, just for fun, I would say that the Boenicke W5 impressed me during the few minutes I heard them. About $5k.
http://boenicke-audio.ch/w5_c/