High value, giant killer speakers?

GoldenEar. Great value. Money is spent on driver and x-over tech not in expensive wooden enclosures.  Read the reviews, then take your money and music to the dealer to listen and compare....

I would vote for two speakers.
1. Tekton Design Ulfberht. Amazingly dynamic and realistic full range sound.
2. Triton Reference. Powerful and refined.

Both sell for about $9,000.

I find that the Dutch and Dutch punch well above their weight, in particular due to their acoustic design.

I wouldn't describe them as being necessarily cheap, but when you consider that they have all of the electronics already on board (amplification, dacs, dsp, room eq, and eventually roon), the value proposition starts to become very strong.

In general dipoles play nicer with your room than box speakers, hence Maggies, and my current home built Fostex 103/Eminence Alpha 15s.

Quad ESL 57.  For me the 63s and their derivatives throw too much treble and midrange energy into all but the largest rooms.

Vandersteens - all of them.  I honestly prefer the 2s to the 3s, even though the 3s are more accurate, and the 2s with a pair of the subs over the 5s, for the same reason.

Siegfried Linkwitz was a giant; it would take the price of a new car to best his Orion speaker system. Behold the dominating sound stage, my audio brothers!