Out of that list of voting options, I had to go with Harmon. Revel alone kind of puts them over the top for me, but Infinity has some very good low cost options that work well for a lot of people's budgets and a lot of the pro JBL and studio JBL speakers are basically a "standard" or as close to one will find in a lot of mixing and dubbing stages.
I quite like the Paradigm Reference Signature speakers - big fan of that Beryllium tweeter
But other than the Signature series, I'm not super hyped on Paradigm as a whole, although they're pretty good all around.
I do like Ascend Acoustics. I really love that SEAS tweeter in their SE series speakers that I think plays way above its price point.
I've got a lot of love for Aperion too. And you certainly can't beat their deal of shipping BOTH ways, so why not try them, right? Literally no risk!
I like several Axiom models, but not their whole line, so I can't put them at the top for this vote. Despite what direction the forum winds might be blowing about Axiom on any given day, I still really like their bookshelf speakers and their M60 towers. I have high hopes for the new VP160 center as well!
I must say though that a couple of my very favorite brands are not on this list, and those would be Focal and Magnepan. I really haven't heard a Focal speaker that I haven't liked. And their professional studio speakers are the best I've ever heard. the $8000/each SM11 monitors are crazy expensive, but they are also the most amazingly detailed speakers I've ever heard. The Solo6 monitors are brilliant for a small theater at a somewhat more reasonable price.
And Magnepan, they are just something unique. You have to have the room for them and TONS of amp power, but nothing else quite sounds like them. For music fans who want that uncanny sense of realism, it's awfully hard to top Magnepan, provided you can position them proplery and feed them all the power they crave!
This is a tough poll to try and run. In all honesty, Bose ought to be in the poll, not because anyone who actually cares about sound quality thinks they deserve a spot, but because this is a poll about public opinion, and I think it would be very revealing to let people vote any brand that they want - Bose would, without any joking here, probably get the most votes
I feel a bit bad for Gene because there's really no winning when you put up a poll like this. There will always be a ton of brands left off the ballot and some folks are always going to say, "why is brand A on there when brand B is not?!"
There's always the "catch all" option though, which is to just make one of the voting options, "something else (detailed below)"
