if I needed new speakers and could only spend $1600 to $1700 bucks, the stand mount Revel Performa 3 M106's. I heard them demo'ed recently in a home theater size room at a dealer with several rows of seats and a number of fellow Houston Audio Society members and their recordings and was amazed when the lights went on- I arrived late as usual into a darkened room- to see that I wasn't listening to much larger speakers. They are two ways with a 7" mid/bass driver that integrates seemlessly with a very detailed tweeter. I heard the drivers combine to a whole cloth presentation that didn't get ragged at high volume levels. Imaged their asses off, too. I couldn't believe this kind of clean volume could be made available from such small enclosures. The mid range allowed for fully saturated instruments in front of me with lots of detail about the performances. Exceptional and well worth the bread, imo. Might be the last speaker some folks would own.
Oh, if you look em up, you can't tell in the photo cause the example is black, but the cabinets are canted back above the mid/bass driver and ducktailed behind. Good physics.
My sentiments exactly, posted just after 2012 (or 11?) CES in January when they first showed the new Performa3 line, sharing absolutely nothing with the Performa line it replaced (should not have recycled the long of tooth "Performa" name). Search my old posts with "M106."
Harman (Revel distributor) drove that M106 with their $10k Levinson power amp. It was one of the best reproduced sounds I ever heard (sub turned off). Frankly, as is often the case, I liked it more than the larger floor standing Performa3 line in the outer/larger room. You have to audition the M106 even if you consider spending up to at least double the amount.
Modern speakers to compare to the M106 are the latest Chinese made (same as Performa3) "Venere" series from Italian Sonus faber. They have an apparently killer $1200/pr model that not coincidentally also employs a wave guided dome.
Regardless of it's low cost, you also have to hear the insanely under priced $1k/pr GoldenEar Aon3 with Heil folded ribbon tweeter. IMO, without having directly compared, I'd bet the Aon3 has the best/biggest/deepest bass, but gives up some transparency. Designer Sandy Gross did something rare, which is to follow the classic design parameters for passive radiators, almost universally ignored: PR cone area = active driver cone area x2. At CES Sandy positioned the Aon3 next to their tower (unknown model). I would have sworn I was listening to the tower the sound was so huge, exactly as per Jeff Dorgay's killer review. As Jeff mentioned, Sandy's loudspeaker design record is as long as your arm, going way back to early days at Polk.
The larger the speaker the greater the panel surface area to radiate unwanted secondary noise into the room. Also, the longer the maximum internal dimension (i.e. tower height) the lower the cavity resonant frequency and the more likely is it to dip below the HP filter pole of the mid bass driver.
Same exact thing happened with Martin Logan's "Motion" series with superb Heil folded ribbon tweeter: I preferred the smallest (or second smallest) Motion series (really tiny curved box) more than the far larger floor standing Motion. The worst of the three speakers I directly compared that day was a Def Tech tower with powered woofer, which was pretty bad vs. the other two.
Actually, the way I'd approach this is to get the smallest Performa3 M105 or possibly Aon2, and move up to a distributed sub array later, which defines state of the art bass exceeding any single column speaker regardless of cost and complexity. IMO state of the art bass in any domestic room requires (not optional) separate reproduction system for bass.
