Looking for a great front ported bookshelp speaker recommendation

Are powered speakers an option?

So the ATC and Proac models wouldn't be loud enough?
 

ATC has excellent dynamic capabilities, but you also need an amp that can supply the power it needs.  What amp do you have?

Looking for a great front ported bookshelp speaker recommendation

The Wharfedale Elysian 1 would be a good bookshelp speaker for you at right under 5k.

This bookshelp doesn’t have a conventional front port where it is quite easy to heart port noise, etc... but, has some fairly involved engineering to deliver you a different type of base slot.

You can put this bookshelp right against a backwall, in a cabinet, etc..do all kinds of funky things you wanna do with it and hope for the best.

Buy some SVS powered bookshelf speakers. They are good speakers. No sense in spending 5K if you have to shove them in a cabinet.

Hello blackiridium!  Whatever you wind up with, pad the empty space around the speakers with blankets, towels, old sweaters - whatever, to kill resonances in the space between the speaker and the space in which they sit. If the front baffle of the actual speaker cabinet is not padded, cut up and old towel or get some felt or feece or something to stop sound from moving across the front of the cabinet (under the grille) and jumping off the edges of the "box." In the "old days" most companies paddded their front baffles. Happy listening!