I have both the VR-4 Jrs. and VR-4 HSEs in my room at the moment. I haven't done a direct A-B, but the Jrs. don't strike me as having a particularly recessed or distant sound. The HSEs might be a BIT more forward, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing or not--depends on one's perspective. I think the Jrs. are better soundstagers than the HSEs, and they seem to have 95% of the slam factor of the larger speakers. All in all, I think the Jrs. are one of the best deals in high-end. There's no way they should be able to deliver the performance they do at the 4k mark, but they do. The HSEs are probably still a little bit better--for 2k more, they should be--but, at least as far as I can tell, the differences are slight at best.