Curious what people think is the best "value" high end speaker (~5K to 15K)

I walked several shows and decided that the Dali Euphonia 4, 5 and now the Epicon series were giantkiller at the sub 15K level. Someone mentioned the Focal Elektra 1038 and, of course, Joseph Audio and Vandersteen are always strong.

@russbutton , thanks for your feedback on the Linkwitz speakers. I'm totally in agreement with you that the Orion is by far the more elegant looking speaker. The LX521 might be one of the best loudspeakers ever built, it sure has a huge amount of science backing it up, but it looks like it belongs in a church. Maybe you could grow to like it, I don't know.

I beginning to suspect, as richier31 mentioned, that open baffle designs are inherently superior to any box designs.

The problems of cabinet resonances are well known and other than the Harbeth thin-walled approach it is difficult to see what else can be done. I remember Alan Shaw pointing out the difficulty of controlling the complex internal cabinet pressures and resonances especially once you consider that the thinnest and weakest part of a loudspeaker cabinet is the cone material itself.

Open baffle designs, on the other hand, appear to cut that Gordian knot in one go.

I  absolutely love my GoldenEar Triton 1’s. There is a reason they have won just about every major award. I auditioned them, and completely agree. And they are at the very low end of your price range. 

The GoldenEar Reference is even better - audition them in your listening space.

Good luck,  because as you know there is no real answer! :-) Because it’s what you like, not what everyone else likes. 

Kinda like sports cars...

 

Porsche

At CAF today I heard the TAD ME1 speakers and they were incredible. Right at 15K.