High value, giant killer speakers?

Hifihandyman - you hit the nail on the head - Maggie’s need power to open up and perform well! Once you pour on the power they outshine speakers that cost 10X and above. That financial savings gets you a lot of quality sound if you spend it on a good preamp and amp - Maggie’s are not efficient, but if you pour on the power,  OMG. In my opinion!!

Happy listening

tom8999

Magnepan LRS 1+
Wouldn’t the Dirty Weekend speaker fro Zu Audio fit the bill?

I have a pair of ADS L810's. I paid $400/pair plus $100 for the best packed shipment I've ever received, so well-worth the cost. 

These speakers are the best all-around sounding speakers I've ever heard. Can't seem to find a genre of music where they don't sound great. Metal to jazz, blues to pop. 

I'm using them as near-field monitors on this desktop, so even at 6ohms and 94db efficiency, I don't push them very hard at all. Recently replaced the mids and tweeters, rebuilt by THE ADS Man, Richard So. ( The x-overs were recently rebuilt/installed before I bought them, thus the "high" asking price.)

I can't think of any speakers that would match them for less than $1500-$2000. 

Magnepan are my absolute favorite for the money.  I just upgraded from 1.7i to 3.7i and couldn’t be happier! The sound is really hard to believe. Unfortunately, unless you have a truly powerful good quality amp, you will be very disappointed.  My best friend just received his new LRS Magnepans but is running them with a NAD M32 and the amp just won’t power them.

I don't think Maggies need a high-wattage amp so much as they need an amp with a very robust power supply. I had no problem running Maggies with a 90 watt/ch amp with 72,000 microfarads capacitance and huge EI Core transformer. 

The problem with the NAD M32 is its class D topology - a topology which always sounds weaker than the specs suggest. It's why it takes a 1000 watt class D sub to match the grunt of a 500 watt AB sub. I don't know the teachnical reasons for this phenomenon, but IME, class D always sounds/feels about 50% the strength of A or A/B amps.

Back on topic, I find the Maggie .7s are the greatest value of the brand - even preferable to the 1.7i.  I much prefer Spatial Audio's open-baffles to the 1.7s, but compared to the .7s, it's a tougher call. 

   Did that twice accompanied by great dissatisfaction once in the home. Not very well schooled on the giant killer thing. The venerable speaker system that I wanted was and still is fairly priced which is subjectively expensive. 
   As luck would have it an original owner pair popped up on the local Craig's List in Portola Valley priced to sell quickly by a very well healed young stock optioned millennial noid with a new baby. His cup runneth over right into my Land Cruiser. 

Save up, get what you want used and stay off that merry-go-round.